From indulgent treats to sultry love affairs, these six France-inspired stories will put some extra spice in your summer reading.
Paris, My Sweet: AYear in the City of Light (and Dark Chocolate), Amy Thomas’s memoir released last year, takes us on her emotional journey from New York to Paris. Woven through each chapter of deeply personal tales – of making friends, navigating the grim dating scene, surviving bouts of self-doubt and defining happiness (both in and outside of the bakery) – are rapturous tasting excursions on both sides of the Atlantic. Not one to discriminate, Amy relishes the treats each city has to offer and provides a little black book of all her most cherished shops and bakeries so you can experience her edible adventures firsthand. Self-discovery, questions of identity and the search for meaningful life experiences in Paris after college: the joys and hardships of Hilary Reyl’s heroine Katherine in her first novel Lessons in French remind me a great deal of myself when I first came to the city (sans the intellectual jousting at dinner with Henri Cartier-Bresson and Umberto Eco, of course). Paris in the late 1980’s may be the backdrop but this is a character-driven coming of age story that…
