Everything French – Our Ultimate Book Reading List for Francophiles

Our Ultimate Book Reading Guide Especially for Francophiles

Our ultimate book reading guide on everything French is perfect for Francophiles, jam packed with books on France, French people, events, history and fun fiction. This list of 31 books covers just some of the books I have in my own library which I've read and can personally recommend.

For even more 'must read' books and my personal reviews search 'book' on the home page search bar and loads more reading options will pop up.  There is honestly something for everyone either in this list or in our other already published book reviews.

Enjoy your reading ...

Demystifying the French

How to Love Them, and Make Them Love You

By Janet Hulstrand

A practical guide aimed at first time visitors to France as well as longterm expatriates, Demystifying the French will help travellers avoid common mistakes and get off on the right foot with the French. Five easy to follow tips essential “for even brief encounters” will pave the way for a positive experience in France. Hulstrand shares the perspective she has gained in nearly 40 years spent living, working, teaching and travelling in France.

Paris My Sweet

By Amy Thomas

Forever a girl obsessed with all things French, sweet freak Amy Thomas landed a gig as rich as the purest dark chocolate: leave Manhattan for Paris to write ad copy for Louis Vuitton. Working on the Champs-Élysées, strolling the charming streets, and exploring the best patisseries and boulangeries, Amy marvelled at the magnificence of the City of Light.

Paris My Sweet explores how the search for happiness can be as fleeting as a salted caramel soufflé’s rise, as intensely satisfying as molten chocolate cake, and about how the life you’re meant to live doesn’t always taste like the one you envisioned.

Part love letter to Paris, part love letter to New York, and total devotion to all things sweet, Paris My Sweet is a treasure map for anyone with a hunger for life.

Murder on the Eiffel Tower

A Victor Legris Mystery 

By Claude Izner

The brand new Eiffel tower is the glory of the 1889 universal exposition but one sunny afternoon a woman collapses and dies on this great Paris landmark. Can a bee sting really be the cause of death. Or is there a more sinister explanation?

Enter young bookseller Victor Legris. Present on the Tower at the time of the incident, he is determined to find out what actually happened.

In this dazzling evocation of late nineteenth-century Paris, we follow Victor as his investigation takes him all over the city. But what will he do when the deaths begin to multiply and he is caught in a race against time?

Other Victor Legris books: Strangled in Paris; The Père Lachaise Mystery and The Marais Assassin.

The Paris Vendetta

Conspiracy, Vengeance and Nap​​​​oleon’s Secret Legacy

By Steve Berry

Ex-agent Cotton Malone’s closest and most dangerous friend, Henrik Thorvaldsen, is in serious trouble – and the men who want to kill him are on Malone’s doorstep.

Thorvaldsen has been tracking a shadowy group called the Paris Club – not only because they are about to trigger a global financial meltdown, but also because he believes they were responsible for the murder of his son two years ago.

Dragged into his friend’s schemes and secretly under pressure from the US government to stop both Thorvaldsen and the Paris Club, Malone discovers that the answers he needs lie in the past, and an astounding treasure that Napoleon took to his grave.

Labyrinth

Three secrets. Two women. One Grail.

By Kate Mosse

July 1209: in Carcassonne a seventeen year old girl is given a mysterious book by her father which he claims contains the secret of the true Grail. Although Alais cannot understand the strange words and symbols hidden within, she knows that her destiny lies in keeping the secret of the labyrinth safe.

July 2005: Alice Tanner discovers two skeletons in a forgotten cave in the French Pyrenees. Puzzled by the labyrinth symbol carved into the rock, she realises she’s disturbed something that was meant to remain hidden. Somehow a link to a horrific past – her past has been revealed.

Off The Road

A Modern-Day Walk Down the Pilgrims Route into Spain

By Jack Hitt

In this irreverent, ruminative adventure, Jack Hitt sets out to walk the 500 miles along the pilgrimage route from France to Santiago de Compostela, Spain.

Off the Road is an unforgettable tour of the sites that people believe God once touched: the strange fortress said to contain the real secret Adam learned when he bit the apple; the miraculous chickens of the fourteenth century whose descendants still dance in the church of Santo Domingo and more.

Along the way, in small town shelters or lost among Spanish mountains, Jack Hitt finds himself persevering by day and bunking down by night with an unlikely case of fellows – a Flemish film crew, a drunken gypsy and a Welsh family with a mule.

The Baby of Belleville

A Parisian novel of life, love and motherhood

By Anne Marsella

Every new mother has a story to tell. This is Jane de Rochefoucault’s story and it contains all the familiar yet magical landmarks of feeding, teething, toddling and measuring stuff in and out of Tupperware. But, as an expat in Paris, Jane also faces other challenges. Such as, how to juggle a new baby with the demands of an aristocratic husband, a competitive nursing circle, a celebrity intellectual employer, an artisan plumber and a formidably French (and possibly law breaking) mother in law.

Deftly plotted, linguistically playful and sparkling with wit, The Baby of Belleville will draw you into a unique imaginative universe.

Paris For One & Other Short Stories

By Jojo Moyes

Nine stories in total giving us a cast of strong, relatable women in the midst of their everyday lives.

In “Crocodile Shoes”, a business woman’s blossoming confidence emerges from a fateful locker room mix up. A desperate holiday shopper strikes up an unexpected friendship just in the nick of time in “The Christmas List”; and in both “Love in the Afternoon” and “A Bird in the Hand”, two couples dance around the trickiness of longtime marriage. In this irresistible new collection by Jojo Moyes, readers will be whisked from elegant perfume shops to taxis to five star hotel rooms and more.

Versailles

Love and Death & Sex and Vengeance

By Elizabeth Massie

1667: The civil wars are over. King Louis XIV crushed the nobility’s rebellion against his father; the throne is his. But far from giving up, the aristocracy hounds his every step. If they will not be loyal, they will obey, no mater the cost. To ensnare them, he must spin a web: the greatest palace the world has ever seen – Versailles – a prison of opulence where his power is absolute. Trapped by his invitation, the nobles have no choice but to play Louis’ game of manipulation and treachery.

Meanwhile, the court becomes a battlefield of tactical liaisons and salacious passions. The Queen, Theresa of Austria, must fight to keep her husband’s attentions while he falls under the spell of his powerful mistress, the sister of the King of England, who knows full well that the power of desire can bring even a king to his knees. Versailles is not the paradise it appears to be; instead, it is a labyrinth of treason and hushed secrets, of political schemes and deadly conspiracies. It is a place of passion and death, love and vengeance. The King will take what is rightfully his.

White Truffles in Winter

An Extraordinary tale of France’s greatest chef, his loves and a country on the brink of war

By N.M. Kelby

White Truffles in Winter imagines the world of the remarkable French chef Auguste Escoffier, who changed the way we eat through his legendary restaurants at the Savoy and the Ritz.

A man of contradictions – kind yet imperious, food-obsessed yet rarely hungry – Escoffier was also torn between two women: the famous, beautiful and reckless actress Sarah Bernhardt and his wife, the independent and sublime poet Delphine Daffis. In the last year of his life, he returns to Delphine, who requests a dish in her name in the same way as he has honoured Bernhardt, Queen Victoria and many others. But how can even the best chef in the world define the complexity of love on a single plate?

N.M. Kelby brings us the sensuality of food and love amid a world on the verge of war in this work that shimmers with beauty and longing.

Ritz & Escoffier

The Hotelier, The Chef & The Rise of the Leisure Class

By Luke Barr

In early August 1889, the young Swiss hotelier César Ritz found himself at the Savoy Hotel in London. Ambitious and well funded, he was determined to create the world’s best hotel. Ritz’s team included his business partner, Auguste Escoffier, a chef known for his brilliant, original dishes who would soon create the modern kitchen brigade and popularise French cuisine for the ages.

The Savoy would be the first hotel in Europe with electricity and elevators, but more than that, it would refine the very idea of luxury. All of cosmopolitan London ate at the Savoy’s restaurant – aristocrats and opera stars, artists and writers, courtesans and industrialists – and Ritz and Escoffier presided over this glittering world.

But the success wouldn’t last. Soon the men were embroiled in scandal and forced to retreat to Paris, where they launched the Hôtel Ritz, bringing sex appeal and a new glamour to the city’s social life.

Set against the spectacular backdrop of London and Paris during the Belle Epoque, Ritz & Escoffier is a sweeping and novelistic narrative replete with disaster and opulence.

Balzac

‘The False Courtesan’ and other bawdy tales from ‘Droll Stories’

Licentious monks, willing nuns, gay courtesans and lusty young lovers … Balzac’s famous collection of ‘droll stories’ is a ribald full blooded recreation of 16th Century French life.

First published in 1832, Les Contes Drolatiques represents the culmination of a tradition built by such bawdy geniuses as Boccaccio and Rabelais. But this work is unique in that Balzac faithfully recorded these ripe anecdotes for posterity because he feared that this vital aspect of a more liberal age was being stifled by the moral attitudes of his contemporaries.

Therefore, the stories in this volume have been selected as being most illustrative of Balzac’s original intentions: dedicated to ‘tosspots and drinkers’ these tales are, in the author’s own words, not for ‘virgins, if there still are any, because the book would go up in flames’.

Published by the by New English Library Limited

Sex With Kings

Five Hundred Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge

By Eleanor Herman

She was the royal mistress. She was ready to converse gaily with the kind when she was tired, make love until all hours when she was ill, and cater to his every whim. She was never to be exhausted, complaining or grief stricken. Hundreds would vie to unseat her or push her toward a tragic end. But she often had the last laugh, living well and richly off the fruits of her ‘sins’.

Eleanor Herman’s Sex With Kings takes us into the throne rooms and the bedrooms of Europe’s most powerful monarchs and the women who loved them – from Madame de Pompadour, the famous mistress of Louis XV, who kept her position for nineteen year despite her frigidity, to modern day Camilla Parker-Bowles, who usurped the beloved and glamorous Diana, Princess of Wales.

Based on impeccable research from diaries, personal letters, and diplomatic dispatches, and alive with flamboyant characters, outrageous humour, and stirring poignancy, Sex With Kings “will please readers who like their history liberally spiked with glamour and gossip” (Boston Globe).

Tender Is The Night

By F Scott Fitzgerald

While holidaying at a villa on the French Riviera, Dick and Nicole Diver, a wealthy American couple, meet the young film star Rosemary Hoyt. Her arrival causes a stir in their social circle and exposes the cracks in their fragile marriage. As their relationship unravels, glimpses of their troubled past emerge, and a series of disturbing events unfolds.

Peopled by un unforgettable cast of aristocrats and high fliers, Tender Is the Night is at once a scathing critique of the materialism and hypocrisy of the Roaring Twenties and a poignant and sensitive account of personal tragedy and disillusionment.

Peopled by un unforgettable cast of aristocrats and high fliers, Tender Is the Night is at once a scathing critique of the materialism and hypocrisy of the Roaring Twenties and a poignant and sensitive account of personal tragedy and disillusionment.

The Maid and the Queen

The Secret History of Joan of Arc and Yolande of Aragon

By Nancy Goldstone

How did an illiterate 17 year old peasant girl manage to become one of history’s most salient women? It is almost 600 years since Joan of Arc’s breathtaking story culminated in the restoration of France’s hereditary monarchy and saved her kingdom from English domination.

At the age of thirteen, Joan heard the voices of angels that would change her life forever: she was to become the saviour of France. Joan summoned and led an impressive army of French loyalists against the English, marking the siege of Orléans as an exhilarating victory that would liberate the city. The following year witnessed Joan’s capture by the enemy and, after a series of heroic endeavours to escape cruel adversaries, she was subjected to trial by inquisition. Her courageous journey came to a heart-breaking conclusion in Rouen shortly afterwards. This is the story at the core of centuries of myth-making.

But what if we no longer accept this tale? What if we question whether the Heavens and their angels were truly Joan’s only source of strength and power? What if we demand a different narrative?

This revisionist biography by a pre-eminent historian unearths the secular and verifiable basis for Joan’s heroic exploits: Yolande of Aragon, a forgotten mentor. This is a story of not one life, but two; two lives that together were intertwined in the restoration of France’s greatness.

Les Parisiennes

How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved and Died in the 1940s

By Anne Sebba

June 1940. German troops enter Paris. The dark days of Occupation begin. How would you have survived? By collaborating with the Nazis, or risking the lives of you and your loves one to resist?

The women of Paris faced this dilemma every day, whether choosing between rations and the black market, or travelling on the Metro, where German soldiers had priority for seats. Between the extremes of defiance and collusion was a vast moral grey area which all Parisians had to navigate in order to survive.

Anne Sebba has sought out and interviewed scores of women, and brings us the unforgettable testimonies of both native Parisiennes and temporary residents: American women and Nazi wives; spies, mothers, mistresses, artists, fashion designers and aristocrats. The result is an enthralling account of life during the Second World War and the years of recovery and recrimination that followed. It is a story of rear, deprivation and secrets – and, as ever in the French capital, glamour and determination.

La Seduction

How The French Play The Game Of Life

By Elaine Sciolino

France is a seductive country, seductive in its elegance, its beauty, its sensual pleasures, and its joie de vivre. But Elaine Sciolino reveals that seduction is much more than a game to the French: it is the key to understanding France.

Seduction lies at the essence of the French approach to human relations, and it is the ever present subtext for how the French relate to one another – not just in romantic relationships but also in how they conduct business, enjoy food and drink, define style, engage in intellectual debate, elect politicians, and project power around the world.

From gardeners to politicians, waiters to sportspeople, academics to farmers, all levels of French society employ seduction, in myriad forms, to conduct day to day life.

While sexual repartee and conquest remain at the heart of seduction, for the French seduction has become a philosophy of life, even an ideology.

In La Seduction, Sciolino gives us an inside view of how seduction works, analysing its limits as well as its power. She examines the French way of life in an entertaining and personal narrative that carries us from the neighbourhood shops of Paris to the halls of government, from the gardens of Versailles to the agricultural heartland.

La Seduction is a vital tool in understanding France and in demystifying a nation that has seduced so many.

Chic & Slim Toujours

Ageing Beautifully Like Those Chic French Women

By Anne Barone

The further into your 60s you are the harder it is to look 29. Not impossible. Just more difficult.

Yet ageing beautifully can be easy and enjoyable with Anne Barone’s French-inspired techniques. With the information in Chic & Slim Toujours, you can stay chic and slim and happy toujours – forever.

Once Anne Barone was fat and frumpy. Then, in her mid-20s she learned French womens techniques for a chic style and a slim body. With those techniques, Anne Barone lost 55 pounds and acquired a chic French style wardrobe.

Now 66, Anne Barone writes books and website articles that explain how those chic French women eat all that rich food and still stay slim – and how those women manage chic French wardrobes on a slim budget. And how you can too!

Almost French

The story of an Australian woman's impetuous heart and finding love in a magical city

By Sarah Turnbull

After backpacking her way around Europe, journalist Sarah Turnbull is ready to embark on one last adventure before heading home to Sydney. A chance meeting with a charming Frenchman in Bucharest changes her travel plans forever. Acting on impulse, she agrees to visit Frédéric in Paris for a week. Put a very French Frenchman together with a strong-willed Australian girl and the result is some spectacular - and often hilarious- cultural clashes. Language is a minefield of misunderstanding and the simple act of buying a baguette is fraught with social danger.

But as she navigates the highs and lows of this strange new world, from the sophisticated cafes and haute couture fashion shows to the picture perfect French countryside, little by little Sarah falls under its spell: passionate, mysterious, infuriating and charged with that French speciality - seduction. And it becomes her home. 

The Little Breton Bistro

A love letter to second chances and rediscovering yourself among life’s challenges

By Nina George

Marianne Messmann in The Little Breton Bistro longs to escape a loveless marriage. On a trip to Paris, she decides to leap off the Pont Neuf into the Seine, but is saved from drowning by a passer-by. While recovering in hospital, Marianne comes across a painting of a beautiful port town in Brittany and decides to embark on a final adventure.

Once in Brittany, Marianne is swept up in an enchanting new way of life at ‘Ar Mor’ (The Sea) restaurant. She meets Yann, the handsome painter, Geneviève, the fiery restaurant owner, Jean-Rémy, the heartbroken chef, and many more friends who open her eyes to new possibilities.

Among food, music and laughter, Marianne discover a new version of herself – passionate, carefree and powerful. That is until her past comes calling. And when it does, Marianne is left with a choice: to step back into the known or to cast is aside for an exciting and rewarding future.

April in Paris 1921

Meet the Glamorous, Effervescent Kiki Button: Socialite, Private Detective – And Spy

By Tessa Lunney

1921: After two years at home in Australia, Katherine King Button has had enough. Her rich parents have ordered her to get married, but after serving as a nurse during the horrors of the Great War, she has vowed never to take orders again. She flees her parents and the prison of their expectations for the place of friendship and freedom: Paris.

Paris is the city of dreams, the place where she can remake herself as Kiki Button, gossip columnist extraordinaire, partying with the rich and famous, the bohemian and bold, the suspicious and strange.

But on the modelling dais, Picasso gives her a job: to find his wife’s portrait, which has mysteriously gone missing. That same night, her old spymaster from the war contacts her – she has to find a double agent or face jail. Through parties, whisky and informants, Kiki has to use every ounce of her determination, her wit and her wiles to save herself, the man she adores, and the life she has come to love – in just one week.

Cooking for Picasso

By Camille Aubray

The French Riviera, spring 1936. It’s off season in the lovely seaside village of Juan-les-Pins, where seventeen year old Ondine cooks with her mother in the kitchen of a their family owned Café Paradis.

A mysterious new patron who’s slipped out of Paris and is travelling under a different name has made an unusual request – to have his lunch served to him at the nearby villa he’s secretly rented where he wishes to remain incognito.

Pablo Picasso is at a momentous crossroads in his personal and professional life – and for him, art and women are always entwined. The spirited Ondine, chafing under her family’s authority, is just beginning to discover her own talents and appetites. Her encounter with Picasso will continue to affect her life for many decades onward, as the great artist and the talented young chef each pursue their own passions and destiny.

Queen of Fashion

What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution

By Caroline Weber

Marie Antoinette remains a style icon even now, more than 200 years after her execution. In this sparkling new portrait of the rebellious French queen, Caroline Weber shows she employed dress as a weapon using striking and extreme costumes to boost her public profile, particularly her trademark pouf  hairstyles recreating scenes from military victories. But the strategy devised to secure her triumphs would ultimately be the cause of her undoing. she approached the guillotine in a plan utilitarian dress, her hair brutally shorn.

Stylish, witty and highly entertaining, Queen of Fashion offers a moving reinterpretation of one of history's most controversial figures.

Paris

The Epic Novel of the City of Lights

By Edward Rutherford

Inspired by the haunting, passionate story of the City of Lights, this epic novel weaves a gripping tale of four families across the centuries from the lies that spawn the noble line of de Cygne to the revolutionary Le Sourds who seek their destruction from the Blanchards whose bourgeois respectability offers scant protection against scandal to the hard-working Gascons and their soaring ambitions.

The story of Paris bursts to life in the intrigue, corruption and glory of its people. Beloved author Edward Rutherford illuminates Paris as only he can, capturing the romance and everyday drama of the men and women who, in two thousand years, transformed a humble trading post on the muddy banks of the Seine into the most celebrated city in the world.  

Drawing Lessons

At an artist's retreat in Provence, a woman learns it is never too late to start over

By Patricia Sands

Sixty-two year old Arianna arrives in the South of France for a two week artists' workshop full of anticipation but burdened by guilt. Back home in Toronto, she has been living with the devastating diagnosis of her husband's dementia and the heartbreak of watching the man she has loved for decades slip away before her eyes. What does her future hold without Ben? Before her is a blank canvas.

Encouraged by her family to take some time for herself, she has traveled to Arles to set up her easel in the same fields of poppies and sunflowers that inspired Van Gogh. Gradually, she rediscovers the inner artist she abandoned long ago. Drawing strength from the warm companionship and gentle wisdom of her fellow artist at the retreat - as well as the vitality of guest lecturer Jacques de Villeneuve, an artist and a cowboy - Arianna searches her heart for permission to embrace the life in front of her and, like the sunflowers, once again face the light.

My Good Life in France

In pursuit of the Rural Dream

By Janine Marsh

One grey, dismal day, Janine Marsh was on a trip to northern France to pick up some cheap wine. A few hours later she returned to England having decided to buy a rundown old barn in the rural Seven Valleys area of Pas de Calais.

Leaving her job in London, Janine moved to France to live the good life. Or so she hoped. While getting to grips with the locals and la vie francaise, and renovating her dilapidated 'new' house - a building lacking the comforts of mains drainage, heating or proper rooms - she started to realise there was a lot more to her new life than she could ever have imagined.

This is the story of Janine's rollercoaster ride through a different culture - one that, to a Brit from the city, was never short of surprises.

The Paris Wife

By Paula McLain

A tragic story of love and betrayal

Chicago, 1920: Hadley Richardson is a shy twenty-eight year old who has all but given up on love and happiness when she meets Ernest Hemingway and is captivated by his energy, intensity and burning ambition. After a whirlwind courtship and wedding, the pair set sail for France. 

But glamorous Jazz Age Paris, full of artists and writers, fuelled by alcohol and gossip is no place for family life and fidelity. Ernest and Hadley's marriage begins to founder, and the birth of a beloved son only drives them further part. Then, at last, Ernest's ferocious literary endeavours bring him recognition - not least from a woman intent on making him her own. 

The Lost King of France

How DNA Solved the Mystery of the Murdered Son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette

By Deborah Cadbury

In 1793, when Marie Antoinette was beheaded at the guillotine, she left her adored eight year old son imprisoned in the Temple Tower. Far from inheriting the throne, the orphaned boy king had to endure the hostility and abuse of a nation. Two years later, the revolutionary leaders declared the young Louis XVII dead, prompting rumours of murder. No grave was dug, no monument built to mark his passing. Soon thereafter, the theory circulated that the prince had in face escaped from prison and was still alive. Others believed that he had been killed, his heart preserved as a relic. The quest for the truth continued into the twenty-first century when, thanks to DNA testing, a stolen heart found within the royal tombs brought an exciting conclusion to the two hundred year old mystery. 

A fascinating blend of royalist plots, palace intrigue and modern science, The Lost King of France is a moving and dramatic tale that interweaves a pivotal moment in France's history with a compelling detective story. 

The Widow Clicquot

The story of a champagne empire and the woman who ruled it

By Tilar J. Mazzeo

Veuve Clicquot champagne epitomises glamour, style, and luxury. InThe Widow Clicquot, Tilar J. Mazzeo brings to life – for the first time – the fascinating woman behind the iconic yellow label: Barbe-Nicole Clicquot Ponsardin who, after her husband’s death, defied convention by assuming the reins of the fledgling wine business they had nurtured together. Steering the company through dizzying political and financial reversals, she became one of the world’s first great businesswomen and one of the richest women of her time.

As much a fascinating journey through the process of making this temperamental wine as a biography of a uniquely tempered woman, The Woman Cliquot is the captivating true story of a legend and a visionary.

My (Part-time) Paris Life

How running away brought me home

By Lisa Anselmo

Liza Anselmo wrapped her entire life around her mother, a strong woman who was a defining force in Lisa’s life – maybe too defining. When her mother dies from breast cancer, Lisa realizes she hasn’t built a life of her own and struggles to find her purpose. Who is she without her mother – and her mother’s expectations?

Desperate for answers, she turns to her favourite city, Paris, and impulsively buys a small apartment, refusing to play it safe for the first time. What starts out as an act of survival sets Lisa on a course that reshapes her life in ways she never could have imagined. Suddenly, she’s living like a local in a city she thought she knew, but her high school French, while fine for buying bread at the corner boulangerie, goes only so far when Paris gives her a strong dose of real life. From dating to home ownership in a foreign country, Lisa quickly learns it’s not all picnics on the Seine, and starts to doubt herself – and her love of the city. But she came to Paris to be happy and she can’t give up now. Isn’t happiness worth fighting for?

Paris to the Past 

Travelling Through French History by Train

By Ina Caro

With lively historical stories, dramatic biographies, and countless tips on everything from charming bistros to grand hotels, Ina Caro guides us through the splendour of French history - all through twenty-five of her favourite train trips from central Paris. Never before has French history been this rewarding.

Beginning her historical journey in the twelfth century, Caro illuminates France's Middle Ages with absorbing and informative detail. At Saint-Denis in Paris we are introduced to the scheming Abbot Suger, who ignited a veritable architectural explosion that resulted in the building of France's great Gothic cathedrals; Loan, Chartres and Reims. Caro then accompanies us into the Renaissance, a period dominated by absolutist kings and queens and era unrivalled in regal majesty. Here she brings to life such legendary characters as Catherine de Medici, Diane de Poitiers, and Francis I, who once roamed our most treasured sixteenth century chateaux like Blois and Fontainebleau.

She splendidly evokes the monumental creation of Versailles, one of the great wonders of the world, and recounts the sybaritic exploits of its most famous denizen, Louis XIV, the Sun King himself, Madame de Pompadour, the beautiful but sagacious mistress of Louis XIV, whose Rococo visions helped create the Place de la Concorde and the Petit Trianon. As the book reaches its nineteenth century conclusion, we are resoundingly brought back to Paris, where the sweeping visions of Napoleon III transformed a medieval tangle of muddy cobblestone streets into a modern metropolis of grand boulevards and filigreed railroad lines, which become our own portal to the past.

There you have some of the books that live in the A French Collection library. So, before heading to France, or if you're a Francophile looking for something to read, why not read a book telling the fascinating history or stories behind the people that shaped France or choose one of the entertaining fiction books from our Ultimate Book Reading Guide Especially for Francophiles.