Muriel Barbery

The lives of fifty-four-year-old concierge Rene Michel and extremely bright, suicidal twelve-year-old Paloma Josse are transformed by the arrival of a new tenant, Kakuro Ozu.

A French food critic faces his mortality in an "entertaining [and] witty" novel by the New York Times–bestselling author of The Elegance of the Hedgehog (Newsday).
In the heart of Paris, in the same posh building made famous in The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Pierre Arthens, the greatest food critic in the world, is dying. Revered by some and reviled by many, Monsieur Arthens has been lording it over the world's...

Alejandro de Yepes and Jes's Rocamora, young officers in the Spanish regular army, are stationed alone at Castillo when, out of nowhere, a friendly redhead appears to them in the cellar. There is something magnetic and deeply mysterious about this Petrus. Alejandro and Jes's are bewitched, and, in the middle of the sixth year of the longest war humankind has ever endured, they abandon their post to follow him across a bridge only he can see. Petrus...

From the best-selling author of The Elegance of the Hedgehog comes a story of one man's promise to keep a secret that will keep him at a remove from the greatest joy in his life. One night at a party of artists and intellectuals in Kyoto, Japanese art dealer Haru encounters a woman who unsettles him more than anyone else ever has and he is compelled to know her. Maud, a French woman passing through Japan, is distant. Her cold gaze challenges any exchange,...

The timely story of Paloma a young girl bent on ending it all on her upcoming twelfth birthday. Using her father's old camcorder to chronicle the hypocrisy she sees in adults, she begins to learn about life from the grumpy building concierge, Renee Michel. She begins to understand that there are allies to be found beneath the prickliest of exteriors.