Jean-Daniel Verhaeghe

In 1827, Berthet, the son of a craftsman and a young seminarian, was tried and sentenced to death for murdering his former mistress, the wife of a noble who had hired him as tutor to his children.

Claire's handbag is stolen. It contained a letter written ten years previously by the man who is now the French President. In the letter, he urges his pregnant mistress to have an abortion. Claire immediately alerts the President's men. From that moment, the machinery of state swings into action.

A poor but ambitious young man arrives in Paris and settles down in the boarding house run by Madame Vauquer. He soon gets to know the guests: Victorine Taillefer, a young lady her rich father refuses to recognize; Horace Bianchon, a medical student; Monsieur Vautrin, a mysterious and disconcerting man; Goriot, a rich merchant who spent all his fortune for his daughters, Delphine and Anastasie, to make a rich marriage. Eugène becomes friends with Goriot but while the former, thanks to his cousin Madame de Beauséant, is introduced in high society, Goriot, both exploited and scoffed at by his daughters, continues his descent into hell.

In the French countryside at the beginning of the 20th century, Raboliot, who gets his name from looking like a burrowing rabbit, is a small-time poacher who loves and lives for freedom. Married with two children but traumatised by the war, it is only when he is out hunting at night that he feels really free and happy. But these escapades do not please the local policeman, Sommedieu, who is set on putting an end to them.

Spain conquered the seas, found a new world and different realities than the one known in Europe. But a question needed to be answered with what they found in those new territories: do the Indians have souls? The Church, bound to protect and convert the natives and the conquerors who treated them like slaves and thought they were only merchandising, expose their arguments and reasonings at what would be known as the Vallidolid controversy. Between them, there's a cardinal hearing both parts and trying to get reasonable answers from this critical question.

A coming-of-age story set in France in the years leading up to World War I. Two teenage boys experience love, loss, anguish and betrayal in a rural setting of great beauty.

The last three days in the life of Elizabeth of Austria before her assassination.