Athletes from more than 200 countries are competing in Paris for the 2024 Summer Olympics. For the first time ever, the Opening Ceremony won't take place in a stadium, but will instead be held on the River Seine in the heart of the city.
Celebrate Paris 2024 with a book that will transport you there. Take a stroll through the City of Light with a travel guide, a recipe book, a romance, or a captivating whodunnit. Click the titles to borrow and reserve. Bon voyage!
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1. A Moveable Feast – Ernest Hemingway
Hemingway's memories of his life as an unknown writer living in Paris in the twenties are deeply personal, warmly affectionate, and full of wit. Looking back not only at his own much younger self, but also at the other writers who shared Paris with him - James Joyce, Wyndham Lewis, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald - he recalls the time when, poor, happy and writing in cafes, he discovered his vocation. Written during the last years of Hemingway's life, his memoir is a lively and powerful reflection of his genius that scintillates with the romance of the city.
2. The Lost Girls of Paris – Pam Jenoff
1940s With the world at war, Eleanor Trigg leads a mysterious ring of female secret agents in London. Twelve of these women are sent to aid the resistance. They never return home.
1946 Passing through Grand Central Station, New York, Grace Healey finds an abandoned suitcase tucked beneath a bench. The case is filled with a dozen photographs, each of a different woman.
Setting out to find the women behind the pictures, Grace is drawn into the mystery of the lost girls of Paris. And as she delves deeper into the secrets of the past, she uncovers a story of fierce friendship, unthinkable bravery – and, ultimately, the worst kind of betrayal.
3. The Beasts of Paris – Stef Penney
Anne is a former patient from a women's asylum trying to carve out a new life for herself in a world that doesn't understand her. Newcomer Lawrence is desperate to develop his talent as a photographer and escape the restrictions of his puritanical upbringing. Ellis, an army surgeon, has lived through the trauma of one civil war and will do anything to avoid another bloodbath.
Each keeps company with the restless beasts of Paris' Menagerie, where they meet, fight their demons, lose their hearts, and rebel in a city under siege.
4. After Paris – Nicole Kennedy
Alice, Nina and Jules have been best friends for twenty years. They met in Paris and return there once a year, to relive their youth, leave the troubles of home behind, and indulge in each other's friendship and warmth. But this year, aged thirty-nine, the cracks in their relationships are starting to show...
After their weekend together in Paris, the three women never speak again. Each claims the other two ghosted them. But is there more to the story?
5. A Waiter in Paris – Edward Chisholm
A waiter's job is to deceive you. They want you to believe in a luxurious calm because on the other side of that door...is hell. Edward Chisholm's spellbinding memoir of his time as a Parisian waiter is the perfect summer read. It takes you below the surface of one of the most iconic cities in the world and right into its glorious underbelly.
He inhabits a world of inhuman hours, snatched sleep and dive bars; scraping by on coffee, bread and cigarettes, often under sadistic managers, with a wage so low you're fighting your colleagues for tips. Colleagues - including thieves, narcissists, ex-Legionnaires, paperless immigrants, wannabe actors and drug dealers - who are the closest thing to family that you've got.
It's physically demanding, frequently humiliating and incredibly competitive. But it doesn't matter because you're in Paris, the centre of the universe, and there's nowhere else you'd rather be in the world.
6. The Paris Apartment – Lucy Foley
Welcome to No.12 Rue des Amants. A beautiful old apartment block, deep in the backstreets of Montmartre. A place of twisting staircases, locked rooms, watchful eyes from every window.
A place of murder. One resident is missing. And another holds the key...
7. Murder at the Louvre – Jim Eldridge
Paris, 1899. Abigail Wilson has received an invitation from Alphonse Flamand, a prominent French Professor of Archaeology, to join him on a dig in Egypt. Overjoyed to be presented with such an opportunity, Abigail and her husband, Daniel, travel to Paris to meet him to discuss plans.
However, when Abigail goes to the appointment at Flamand's office in the Louvre, she finds him dead with a knife in his chest. In a whirl of confusion and despite her pleas of innocence, Abigail is arrested. Determined to prove that she has been framed for Flamand's brutal murder, the Museum Detectives will delve far into the shadowy corners of the City of Light for the truth.
8. Lonely Planet: Paris – Alexis Averbuck
Lonely Planet's local travel experts reveal all you need to know to plan the trip of a lifetime to Paris.
Discover Paris' most popular experiences and best kept secrets - neighbourhood by neighbourhood - from beholding the beauty of Cathédrale Notre Dame de Paris to dancing the night away in Bastille, and visiting the world's first elevated park atop a railway viaduct. Build a trip to remember with Lonely Planet's Paris travel guide.
9. Paris Echo – Sebastian Faulks
In the depths of the archive, Hannah dances with the ghosts of Vichy France, lost in testimony and a desire to hear the voices of the past. Back in her apartment, Moroccan teenager Tariq crashes on her sofa, consumed by his search for the mother he barely knew. Their excavations will unearth rich histories that will teach them both just how much the future is worth fighting for.
10. My Paris Kitchen – David Lebovitz
French cooking has come a long way since the days of Escoffier. The culinary culture of France has changed and the current generation of French cooks, most notably in Paris, are incorporating ingredients and techniques from around the world. In My Paris Kitchen, David Lebovitz remasters the French classics, introduces lesser known French fare, and presents 100 recipes using ingredients foraged in the ethnic neighborhoods of Paris.
Stories told in David's trademark style describe the quirks, trials, and joys of cooking, shopping, and eating in France, while food and location photographs reveal modern life in Paris.
11. The Clockwork Girl – Anna Mazzola
Paris, 1750. In the midst of an icy winter, as birds fall frozen from the sky, chambermaid Madeleine Chastel arrives at the home of the city's celebrated clockmaker and his clever, unworldly daughter.
Madeleine is hiding a dark past, and a dangerous purpose: to discover the truth of the clockmaker's experiments and record his every move, in exchange for her own chance of freedom. For as children quietly vanish from the Parisian streets, rumours are swirling that the clockmaker's intricate mechanical creations, bejewelled birds and silver spiders, are more than they seem.
And soon Madeleine fears that she has stumbled upon an even greater conspiracy. One which might reach to the very heart of Versailles.
12. We’ll Always Have Paris – Emma Beddington
As a bored, moody teenager, Emma Beddington came across a copy of French ELLE in the library of her austere Yorkshire school. As she turned the pages, full of philosophy, sex and lipstick, she realized that her life had one purpose and one purpose only: she needed to be French.
Instead of skulking in her bedroom listening to The Smiths or trudging to Betty's Tea Room to buy fondant fancies, she would be free and solitary, sitting outside the Cafe de Flore with a Scottie dog at her feet, a Moleskine on the table and a Gauloise trembling on her lower lip.
And so she set about becoming French: she did a French exchange, albeit in Casablanca; she studied French history at university, and spent the holidays in France with her French boyfriend. Eventually, after a family tragedy, she found herself living in Paris, with the same French boyfriend and two half-French children. Her dream had come true, but how would reality match up? Gradually Emma realized that she might have found Paris, but what she really needed to find was home.
