Recipient of the Florida Writers Association Royal Palm Literary Award When Paris Was Dark The story of a young French boy during the WWII German occupation. When five-year-old Alain, a little boy living in Paris, is strafed by German planes at the onset of the German invasion in 1940, his world is instantly turned on its head. During the next four years, like the children who fight to survive today’s many conflicts around the world, he grows up fast and must be mentally strong and alert to stay safe. With limited parental support, Alain and his young friends face increasing deprivation, devastating hunger, and constant fear of the occupying Germans soldiers, with their intimidating rules and random street blockades and checkpoints. He also dreads the Allies’ air raids, although he knows the bombers are on his side. After being silent for four years, one day all the churches of Paris ring their bells to celebrate the end of the occupation, and Alain welcomes the American GIs who fought bravely to liberate him. His story—of fear and courage, despair and determination—is laced with the realism only an author who lived through the occupation himself can provide, bringing this bittersweet, beautifully rendered novel to vivid life.

Conventional wisdom said it could never happen. For starters, he was from >Arizona and she was from Pennsylvania.Almost a whole continent apart. And he was a widower and she was a widow. With 42 and 47 years, respectively, of happy marriage behind them. And if that wasn’t enough, he was a young 75 and she was a lovely 69; old enough to know better, one might say.Then one day they boarded a plane for . They noticed each other, but didn’t meet. When the plane landed they ended up in the same hotel. Arranged by the same tour group. But both so engrossed in Paris they still didn’t see each other. Then it happened. On the third day their group gathered for an introductory meeting and dinner. They ended up sitting across from each other. ">He said, “Hi.” She said, “Hello.” And the sparks began to fly. That’s when the love story that couldn’t happen began to happen...

A Coretta Scott King Honor Book Paris has just moved in with the Lincoln family, and she isn't thrilled to be in yet another foster home. She has a tough time trusting people, and she misses her brother, who's been sent to a boys' home. Over time, the Lincolns grow on Paris. But no matter how hard she tries to fit in, she can't ignore the feeling that she never will, especially in a town that's mostly white while she is half black. It isn't long before Paris has a big decision to make about where she truly belongs.

The City of Light. For many, these four words instantly conjure late nineteenth-century Paris and the garish colors of Toulouse-Lautrec’s iconic posters. More recently, the Eiffel Tower’s nightly show of sparkling electric lights has come to exemplify our fantasies of Parisian nightlife. Though we reflect longingly on such scenes, in Illuminated Paris, Hollis Clayson shows that there’s more to these clichés than meets the eye. In this richly illustrated book, she traces the dramatic evolution of lighting in Paris and how artists responded to the shifting visual and cultural scenes that resulted from these technologies. While older gas lighting produced a haze of orange, new electric lighting was hardly an improvement: the glare of experimental arc lights—themselves dangerous—left figures looking pale and ghoulish. As Clayson shows, artists’ representations of these new colors and shapes reveal turn-of-the-century concerns about modernization as electric lighting came to represent the harsh glare of rapidly accelerating social change. At the same time, in part thanks to American artists visiting the city, these works of art also produced our enduring romantic view of Parisian glamour and its Belle Époque.

Dependence upon grain deeply marked every aspect of life in eighteenth-century France. Steven Kaplan focuses upon this dependence at the point where it placed the greatest strain on the state, the society, and the individual—on the daily supply of grain and flour that furnished the staff of life. He reconstructs the history of provisioning in pre-industrial Paris and provides a comprehensive view of a culture shaped by the subsistence imperative. Who were the agents of the provisioning trade? What were their commercial practices? What sorts of relations did they maintain with each other? How did the authorities regulate their business? To answer these questions, Professor Kaplan combed the archives and libraries of France. He maps out the elementary structures of the trade and shows how they were transformed as a result of cultural and political as well as commercial and technological changes. In rich ethnographic detail he evokes the dayto-day life of merchants, millers, bakers, brokers, and market officials. He shows how flour superseded grain and how the millers overtook the merchants in the provisioning process. He explores the tension between the suppliers' need for freedom and the consumers' need for security. Even as he weaves the intricate patterns of life inside and outside the marketplace he never loses sight of the immense interests at stake: the stability and legitimacy of the government, the durability of the social structure, and the survival of the people.

“Paris” could be the first word of an epic poem. While there are many cultural pilgrimages in Western Arts (The Alhambra, Venice, Mumbai, Machu Picchu, and others), Paris stands above others, flourishing as an image of possibility and sophistication. The city has a rich history with foreign artists and writers, intellectual and political exiles, military leaders and philosophers from all over the globe. Americans have gone to Paris since the colonial period – and their writing about the city is a captivating corpus of literature. Looking into novels, memoirs, poetry and other writings, Paris in American Literatures: On Distance as a Literary Resource examines the role of the French capital in the work of a diverse range of authors, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edith Wharton, Sherwood Anderson, Ernest Hemingway, Henry Miller, Saul Bellow, Monica Truong, and many others.

"A top-notch walking tour of Paris. . . . The author's encyclopedic knowledge of the city and its artists grants him a mystical gift of access: doors left ajar and carriage gates left open foster his search for the city's magical story. Anyone who loves Paris will adore this joyful book. Readers visiting the city are advised to take it with them to discover countless new experiences." —Kirkus Reviews (starred) A unique combination of memoir, history, and travelogue, this is author David Downie's irreverent quest to uncover why Paris is the world's most romantic city—and has been for over 150 years. Abounding in secluded, atmospheric parks, artists' studios, cafes, restaurants and streets little changed since the 1800s, Paris exudes romance. The art and architecture, the cityscape, riverbanks, and the unparalleled quality of daily life are part of the equation. But the city's allure derives equally from hidden sources: querulous inhabitants, a bizarre culture of heroic negativity, and a rich historical past supplying enigmas, pleasures and challenges. Rarely do visitors suspect the glamor and chic and the carefree atmosphere of the City of Light grew from and still feed off the dark fountainheads of riot, rebellion, mayhem and melancholy—and the subversive literature, art and music of the Romantic Age. Weaving together his own with the lives and loves of Victor Hugo, Georges Sand, Charles Baudelaire, Balzac, Nadar and other great Romantics Downie delights in the city's secular romantic pilgrimage sites asking , Why Paris, not Venice or Rome—the tap root of "romance"—or Berlin, Vienna and London—where the earliest Romantics built castles-in-the-air and sang odes to nightingales? Read A Passion for Paris: Romanticism and Romance in the City of Light and find out.