For forty years Charles Alavoine has sleepwalked through his life. Growing up as a good boy in the grip of a domineering mother, he trains as a doctor, marries, opens a medical practice in a quiet country town, and settles into an existence of impeccable bourgeois conformity. And yet at unguarded moments this model family man is haunted by a sense of emptiness and futility. Then, one night, laden with Christmas presents, he meets Martine. It is time for the sleeper to awake.

'His artistry is supreme' John Banville They suddenly found themselves in an impersonal world, where everyday words no longer seemed to mean anything, where the most mundane details were translated into unintelligible formulae. The judges' black gowns, the ermine, the prosecutor's red robe further added to the impression of a ceremony set in stone where the individual counted for nothing Maigret receives an anonymous phone call concerning the brutal murder of a woman and young child. The tip off concerns the woman's nephew, a mild-mannered man by the name of Gaston Meurant. Maigret remains unconvinced of the man's guilt and at his trial exposes some shocking truths about Meurant's private life that may prove his innocence. 'One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century . . . Simenon was unequalled at making us look inside, though the ability was masked by his brilliance at absorbing us obsessively in his stories' Guardian

'Penetrating, fully researched and very well written. It describes this extraordinarily productive literary genius at all stages of his life and adds to an understanding not only of Simenon's art, but the art of the novel itself.' - Muriel Spark in Scotland on Sunday

It is Friday evening before Labor Day weekend. Americans are hitting the highways in droves; the radio crackles with warnings of traffic jams and crashed cars. Steve Hogan and his wife, Nancy, have a long drive ahead--from New York City to Maine, where their children are in camp. But Steve wants a drink before they go, and on the road he wants another. Soon, exploding with suppressed fury, he is heading into that dark place in himself he calls "the tunnel." When Steve stops for yet another drink, Nancy has had enough. She leaves the car. On a bender now, Steve makes a friend: Sid Halligan, an escapee from Sing Sing. Steve tells Sid all about Nancy. Most men are scared, Steve thinks, but not Sid. The next day, Steve wakes up on the side of the road. His car has a flat, his money is gone, and there's one more thing still left for him to learn about Nancy, Sid Halligan, and himself ...

On the shore of the Black Sea, on the edge of the Soviet Union, a little city has a new Turkish consul. Adil Bey - alone in an alien land - has taken the job after the mysterious death of his predecessor. Receiving only suspicion and hostility, he soon becomes reliant on his secretary, Sonia, for any taste of intimacy. They begin a quiet love affair, and from his window at the consulate, he watches her and her family go about their lives in the room across the way. But this is Stalin's world before the war, and nothing is as it seems. . . Georges Simenon's most starkly political work, The People Opposite is a tour de force of slow-burn tension and existentialist meditation.

Seventeen stories feature Simenon's dauntless detective as he works on some baffling cases both from his base--Paris police headquarters on the Quai des Ortevres--and throughout the provinces.

Maigret is a registered trademark of the Estate of Georges Simenon.