Ten years ago, Janine Marsh decided to leave her corporate life behind to fix up a run-down barn in northern France. This is the true story of her rollercoaster ride.

A vibrant, enchanting tour of the Seine from longtime New York Times foreign correspondent and best-selling author Elaine Sciolino. Elaine Sciolino came to Paris as a young foreign correspondent and was seduced by a river. In The Seine, she tells the story of that river from its source on a remote plateau of Burgundy to the wide estuary where its waters meet the sea, and the cities, tributaries, islands, ports, and bridges in between. Sciolino explores the Seine through its rich history and lively characters: a bargewoman, a riverbank bookseller, a houseboat dweller, a famous cinematographer known for capturing the river’s light. She discovers the story of Sequana—the Gallo-Roman healing goddess who gave the Seine its name—and follows the river through Paris, where it determined the city’s destiny and now snakes through all aspects of daily life. She patrols with river police, rows with a restorer of antique boats, sips champagne at a vineyard along the river, and even dares to go for a swim. She finds the Seine in art, literature, music, and movies from Renoir and Les Misérables to Puccini and La La Land. Along the way, she reveals how the river that created Paris has touched her own life. A powerful afterword tells the dramatic story of how water from the depths of the Seine saved Notre-Dame from destruction during the devastating fire in April 2019. A “storyteller at heart” (June Sawyers, Chicago Tribune) with a “sumptuous eye for detail” (Sinclair McKay, Daily Telegraph), Sciolino braids memoir, travelogue, and history through the Seine’s winding route. The Seine offers a love letter to Paris and the most romantic river in the world, and invites readers to explore its magic for themselves.

This tour book of France's Brittany captures the charm and treasures of its rural lifestyle

Written by locals, Fodor's travel guides have been offering expert advice for all tastes and budgets for more than 80 years. Unforgettable artwork, heavenly villages, and dream cities--there are so many reasons to visit France that deciding where to go and what to do can be a bit overwhelming. Fodor's Essential France takes the guesswork out of choosing the perfect French experiences by compiling the top choices chosen by Fodor's army of France-based writers. This travel guide includes: · Dozens of full-color maps · Hundreds of hotel and restaurant recommendations, with Fodor's Choice designating our top picks · Multiple itineraries to explore the top attractions and what’s off the beaten path · Side trips from Paris including Chartres, Versailles, and Monet's Garden · Coverage of Paris Neighbourhoods, Western Ile-de-France, Eastern Ile-de-France, Loire Valley, and Grenoble Planning to focus on just part of France? Check out Fodor's travel guides to Paris and Provence & the French Riviera.

First published in English in 1971, The Ile-de-France presents the reader with a study of the countryside around Paris through the eyes of Marc Bloch, a man with his own view of history. It looks at the area’s origins, extent, geographical features, archaeology, and past local histories. The book extends beyond the region of Paris itself and offers the reader a masterful demonstration of the methodology of such enquiries and their purpose within the wider context of historical research. The work is particularly valuable in that it covers a wide variety of subjects and makes extensive use of archives and original documents.

Following the format of the small classic An Hour from Paris, and written with the same delight in the little-known treasures of the Ile de France, comes Annabel Simm's latest guidebook, Half an Hour from Paris. Simms presents 10 new destinations easy to reach from central Paris, each with a carefully planned walk, ample meanderings through the cultural, historical and social milieu, comprehensive practical information and clear, detailed maps. This new edition has been updated and is now in full color.

The Ile de France, first published in 1960, is a fascinating history of the memorable ship, the Ile de France. The Ile de France was a French luxury ocean liner that served the important transatlantic route between Europe and New York from 1927 to 1959. She was named after the region around Paris known as "L'Ile de France". Her maiden voyage, on June 22, 1927, made the ship the first major ocean liner built after World War I, and the first ship to be decorated almost entirely in a modern Art Deco style. Ile de France became a favored ship of the pre-World War II era among the young and also with wealthy and fashionable elites. Her passenger list would include notables of the day such as Marlene Dietrich, Gloria Swanson, John D. Rockefeller, Buster Keaton, Maurice Chevalier, Will Rogers, Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart, and Marie Curie. When World War II broke out, she briefly served as a troop ship before all her luxurious fittings were removed for conversion into a prison ship. After the war, Ile de France resumed transatlantic operations. In 1956 she played a key role in rescuing passengers from the SS Andrea Doria after that ship's collision with the MS Stockholm off Nantucket, Massachusetts. Her last public appearance was starring as a doomed ocean liner in the 1959 movie The Last Voyage, filmed while waiting to be scrapped in Japan. Included are eight pages of photographs.

For the seasoned Parisian traveller or the novice looking to get off the beaten track Cahill provides a roadmap to parts of the city most visitors will never seeIn a city that is the destination of millions of travelers every year, it can be difficult to find your way to its lovely, serene spaces. Away from the madding crowds, the gardens of Paris offer the balm of flowers, tall old trees, fountains, ponds, sculptures, with quiet Parisians reading Le Monde, taking the sun, relishing the peace. These places are often tucked away, off the beaten tourist track, and without a guide they're easy to miss: The Jardin de l'Atlantique, out of sight on the roof of Gare Montparnasse. The enchanting Jardin de la Vallee Suisse, invisible from the street, accessible only if you know how to find the path. The Square Boucicaut, its children's carousel hidden inside a grove of oak and maples. Square Batignolles, the shade of the old chestnut trees an inspiration to the painter edouard Manet and poet Paul Verlaine. Hidden Gardens of Paris features 40 such oases in quartiers both posh and plain, as well as dozens of others Nearby to the featured green space. It is arranged according to the geographic sections of the city Ile de la Cite, Left Bank, Right Bank, Western Paris, Eastern Paris a lively and informative guide that focuses on each place as a site of passionate cultural memory.

When the luxury liner Ile de France sailed into New York harbor for the first time in 1927, she brought to America the first great, coordinated example of what the French then called L'Art Moderne. The revolutionary Art Deco interiors found on the Ile de France were unlike anything previously seen on the North Atlantic and set a standard in ocean liner décor for decades to come. Her glittering passenger lists of the 1920s and 1930s were the envy of other shipping lines: Marlene Dietrich, Gloria Swanson, John D. Rockefeller, Buster Keaton, Barbara Hutton, Maurice Chevalier, Will Rogers, Cary Grant, Marie Curie and Arturo Toscanini were but a few of the luminaries that graced its salons. The Ile de France served heroically in World War II as a troopship, and in peacetime came to the rescue of other ships nine times during her career, most notably when she rescued more than 700 survivors from the stricken Andrea Doria following its collision with the Stockholm in 1956. In a last gasp of immortality, the Ile de France appeared in the epic disaster film The Last Voyage standing in for a fictional, stricken liner. Forgetting her ignoble end, the Ile deFrance is still held in awe and reverence both in her native France and by the maritime community worldwide. Although neither the fastest nor the largest liner of her time, one writer said of the Ile de France, “She was handsome without being grand, comfortable without being overstuffed, class-conscious without living by exclusions.” The penchant the Ile de France had for attracting the famous, the talented, the youthful, along with her special chic and verve ensured her place in the pantheon of immortal Atlantic liners.