Editions du Rocher - foreignRights

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In the arms of the Mekong

Inspired by a true story, the details of which were preserved in letters.

Irene and Francois got married in Brittany on the 1st May 1945, the day Hitler committed suicide. The war in France would soon be over, but another would break out in Indochina. Francois, a career soldier in the French Navy, left about the Pasteur for his ‘colonial tour’ four years later. He left behind his wife and their first child, who showed symptoms of unexplained trouble with movement.
Francois and Irene exchanged letters between Saigon and Kerylen until the 21st April 1949, when the Glycine, a minesweeper on which Francois was then serving, exploded in the Mekong delta. There was only one survivor, and thirteen crew members were killed, including Francois…
Time passed and the letters were lost. Everyone is caught up in their own life… Some loves die down, others are born and come together to sweeten life’s daily tragedy.

Dans les bras du Mekong is the story of a man in exile and of a mother which ties together life and the history of the war in Indochina, all told with great honesty.

Hélène Armand was an itinerant journalist before moving to the Alps where she devotes her time to publishing. She has for a long time covered sport/adventure/leisure stories for specialist sport magazines and magazines aimed at a wide audience. She has written illustrated books on the culture and heritage of the French Alps based on meetings with those who live their. She also works as a literary assistant for adventurers and sportsman who want to write their story.

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This book uses an easily comprehensible style with no heavy medical jargon to explain current medical techniques from the most proven to the most recently developed. The results sought, the could combinations of remedies, the zones concerned; the duration of the effects, for whichever age group, skin type, affliction, and how long you will have to restrict your social activities. The latest advances are presented in detail: self-regenerin’, LEDS etc…
Most of the book is devoted to the face, neck, and breast, with a chapter on hair, one on the eyes, and another on the teeth. It also turns its attention to plastic surgery and the latest advances in that field which have made operations and their consequences less onerous.
The book is structured as a detailed guide to the many acts – used in conjunction with one another or not – to help women to correct a flaw and rejuvenate themselves in a natural and stress-free way, by giving them the systems that will work best for them.

In 2007 there were eight instances of cosmetic medicine for every instance of cosmetic surgery. Lasers, radio, chemical peel, wrinkle-removing creams (Hyaluronan, a gel with a calcium base), Botox, Mesolift, Self regenerin’ (rejuvenation using your own platelets), light pulses… Aesthetic machines and actions work closely to give women and men – in increasing numbers – natural results with a minimum of time spent unable to do what you want (practically no time at all). These measures can either be used in isolation or, ideally, combined in a ‘path to beauty’, to keep one’s looks, smooth the skin, reshape the face, remove bags under the eyes – in short, to rejuvenate your appearance. In doing this, one can delay a facelift or even avoid it altogether.

When it comes to plastic surgery, blepharoplasty (surgery on the eyes) is still the first step and the facelift itself has become less onerous: the operation no longer takes as long (which avoids haemotoma and so allows the face to heal more quickly). Botox has replaced surgery to the forehead which leaves surgery on the lower face and neck and simple nip and tuck, which are performed under a local anaesthetic.
Short-sightedness, presbyopia, and long-sightedness can now be corrected using increasingly accurate lasers so one no longer has to give away one’s age by wearing glasses.
As for the teeth, they can also be rejuvenated thanks to products and whitening treatments, but also thanks to the latest advances is cosmetic dental surgery (e.g. former French presidential candidate Segolene Royal). Panoramic dental imagery and the use of robots allow us to place an implant precisely.

These techniques must all be practised only by qualified and certified cosmetic surgeons. In any case, the constant development of new products and equipment necessitates practically continuous training to stay up to date. An interesting secondary effect of this is that mistakes and failures are becoming rarer…

Dr Guy Haddad has been an expert in cosmetic surgery and plastic surgery for 28 years. He is the president of the French National Union of Plastic Surgery and head of the cosmetic surgery department at the Clinique du Rond-Point des Champs-Elysées, the première cosmetic surgery clinic in Europe.

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Hollywood Love Affairs

Who among us as never dreamed of finding out more about the private lives of the stars? Pierre Lunel plunges his reader into the legendary heart of America from 1940 to 1960 through examining the stories Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy; Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth; Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart.
Combing facts (based on several documents from the time) and fiction, the author invites us into the private lives of these legendary couples: the larger than life couple that was Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, the unexpected passion between the lovely Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth, Bogart’s problems with alcohol, and the stormy relationship between Hepburn and Tracy…
Moving between shadows and sparkling brilliance, these love affairs reflect an era characterised by excess. Pierre Lunel includes famous scenes such as the deaths of Bogart and Tracy, Warhol’s famous words about Elizabeth Taylor, and the films which raised a generation: Gilda; The Lady from Shanghai; To Have and Have Not, and tells of a Hollywood where gossips could make and break reputations…

Pierre Lunel is an expert in Roman law and was an adviser to the office of Alain Decaux when Decaux was the French Minister of Francophonie. He has also been controller of fiction programming at France 3, President of the University of Paris VII and worked besides Bernard Kouchner when he was Minister for Foreign Affairs. He began his career as an author in 1989 with the bestseller L’Abbé Pierre (Stock), which sold more than 500,000 copies. His career has been very successful thanks to books based around remarkable characters such as Sœur Emmanuelle (Fixot, 1994) and Ingrid Bétancourt (L’Archipel, 2008).
He is passionate about contemporary society and has written the polemical essays: Un bébé, s’il vous plaît ! (Anne Carrière, 2004), Fac, le grand merdier ? (Anne Carrière, 2007), Parents, sauvez vos enfants et l’école avec ! (Albin Michel, 2008), and developed his passion for history with a series of novels which tell the stories of Roman emperors from Caesar to Nero (Pygmalion, then Anne Carrière). With Le Roman de l’amour, Pierre Lunel uses his talents as a storyteller to evoke four love stories which according to him have defined the twenty-first century.

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Economists are agreed that the first and most urgent of the measures that need to be taken on a global level is to solve the problems with food supply. It is the only way to reduce costs in the West while allowing developing countries to avoid famine riots and war. A little less animal protein on our plates and a few more cereals and vegetable and a little more animal proteins for developing countries.

This would be a decisive step towards the reduction of health costs on a collective and an individual level. Besides, Nobel Laureate Professor Luc Montagnier and Dr David Servan Schreiber have been telling us for years that we must take preventative measures.

The France Guillain method has been taught for 25 years and perfectly combines all these things without exhorting us to renounce our most precious traditions or damaging our culture.

By combining an intelligent, appetising, and simple diet, the judicious use of the sun – available free all over the world! – derivative bathing and the occasional use of clay, France Guillain provides us with a simple and effective means, which is available to anyone, even if on a very limited budget, to keep ourselves in good physical and mental health: 95% of our natural antidepressants (serotonin) are made in our stomach from the things we eat! It is interesting to note that France Guillain devised this type of diet 27 years before the publication, in April 2008, of a synthesis of 22,000 international studies which confirmed his dietary advice to the letter.

France Guillain has written several bestsellers and has become a point of reference in the growing ‘Bio’ world, alongside Dr Lylian Le Goff and Professors Joyeux and Seignalet. His scientific training and his extensive experience following 22 years travelling the world have made this book a serious reference work which is constantly used in official studies. In this very practical manual with questions and answers the reader will very quickly find what he is looking for and how to apply it.

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An erotic novel in which Gerard de Cortanze intertwines history, modernity, and pastiche with plenty of wickedness. It contains very charged erotic scenes.

Sitting in the reading room at the Royal Library of Turin, Gerard de Cortanze pores over documents relating to his family, one of the most illustrious aristocratic families in Piedmont (the Roero di Cortanze family). The librarian, a pretty brunette with a good body, brings him a box marked with the family’s coat of arms. In it Gerard finds a sealed envelope in which is a small notebook the pages of which are crammed with very fine handwriting in brown ink. It is an erotic text signed ‘Marie Galante’ and featuring a certain ‘Felicita.’
The decidedly alluring librarian gives him a conspiratorial smile as she hands him a brown sheepskin pouch which contains ten other notebooks in the same handwriting and with even more explicit content. She can shed light on the famous Marie Galante. Her tragic story has become a legend in Piedmont. Gerard goes to Cortanze Castle to check the truth of the legend. There a certain Francesca leads him to the marchioness’s bed chamber…
Such connections arise between the librarian and Maria Galante, Francesca and Felicita that Gerard no longer knows whether what he experiences, feels, and sees in the room is real or fantasy. And it is the real Maria Galante, visiting him in the bed chamber, who will tell him her real story. Curiously, she has the same beauty spot on her breast as the librarian.

About the Author click here

Gerard de Cortanze is a successful novelist who has had published around sixty books which have been translated into twenty languages, and most of which have been republished in low-cost paperbacks, including: l’Amour dans la ville, Giuliana, Cyclone (winner of the Baie des Anges Prize in 1999), Banditi, Aventino, Indigo. He has also published the autobiographical stories Les enfants s’ennuient le dimanche, Une chambre à Turin (Cazes-Lipp Prize 2002), Spaghetti!, Miss Monde; De Gaulle en maillot de bain; and several essays on Auster, Semprun, Hemingway, Sollers, Le Clézio...; monographs (Antonio Saura, Zao Wou-ki, Richard Texier…); anthologies (Cent ans de littérature espagnole, Une anthologie de la poésie latino-américaine, America libre…); collections of poems (Jours dans l’échancrure de la nuque, La porte de Cordoue, Le mouvement des choses –Charles Vildrac Prize 1999, among others.). He was awarded the Roman Historique Prize in 1998 for Les Vice-rois, and the prestigious prix Renaudot in 2002 for Assam. He regularly contributes to the review Senso and to Magazine littéraire. He also edits Editions Gallimard’s Folio/Biography Collection and is a member of the Belgian Royal Academy of French Language and Literature. He is descended from one of the most illustrious aristocratic families in Piedmont (the Roero Di Cortanze family) through is father, and from Michele Pezze (the resistance fighter and bandit better known as Fra Diavolo) through his mother. He has made Italy, and particularly Piedmont (e.g. his Goût de Turin) the focus of his literary oeuvre, especially in his Vice-rois novel cycle, which currently comprises of four novels telling of two hundred years of his family’s history.

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Robert Surcouf (1773-1827), the ‘king of privateers’ who operated from Saint-Malo in the time of Napoleon I was one of the boldest sailors of all time. In 1794, at the age of 21, he had his baptism of fire at Isle de France (Mauritius) in a skirmish with two British ships. This was Surcouf’s only battle in the service of the French navy. He soon became a privateer (not to be confused with pirates since privateers act only in war time with authorisation from their government).
An intrepid sailor, he harassed merchant navy vessels and British warships in Europe and India. He gained fame and fortune as a privateer. He created incredible strategies which added to his legend: in 1810 he fought in the Battle of Grand Port which was the only French naval victory over the English during Napoleon’s reign. Following his marriage he became the wealthiest ship-owner in Saint-Malo, and he died in 1827. In seven years at sea he had managed to capture forty-four ships.
A number of books have been written about Robert Surcouf. As well as revealing a large number of previously unknown details, Erick Surcouf wanted to bring an original angle to his ancestor’s life-story through the eyes of a fictional character who decides, just before his death, to collect all the witness accounts of this legendary and invincible hero’s life.

About the Author

Erick Surcouf is the great-great-great-great-nephew of Surcouf the Invincible and has inherited his taste for the sea and for adventure. From an early age he has been passionate about the life of a privateer and merchant shipping in his ancestor’s time, as well as the fabulous cargoes they were carrying.
As a private adviser in the field of underwater archaeology, Erich Surcouf has spent thirty years successfully researching sunken ships and their fabulous cargoes all over the world. Today he is known as one of the world’s greatest experts in private underwater archaeology. He has also written La mer en héritage (Arthaud, 1992), Sur la piste des trésors engloutis (éditions du Plaisancier, 1998), and L’or de la mer (with Christian Bex, Le Cherche Midi, 2001).

Target readership: All markets
Selling points: Astounding previously unknown revelations about the life of the great privateer.

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January 2008, x pages
A work on a criminal phenomenon that is underground but still in existence, the mafia.
What are mafia networks? What is in their past? What are they looking to achieve? This book is focused on the Italian and Italian-American mafia, which are still the source of many false myths and legends. Additionally, and uniquely for its genre, it also explores the links formed throughout the 20th century with the world’s other mafias, some of them ancient (Japan’s Yakuza, China’s triads, and Turkey’s Baba), while some have appeared relatively recently (notably the Albanian mafia).
The book describes a hidden history of the twentieth century, a secret and parallel history characterised by bloodshed, but also pressure, corruption, links both secret and beyond suspicion, a world of fear which speaks volumes about our contemporary democracies. And also about these democracies’ future, since the true globalisation of crime predated the globalisation of trade, as can be seen by the success of tax havens. Today this raises a crucial question: in the future, will liberal societies have the means to prevent the domination of crime?
Jacques de Saint Victor is a lawyer and a writer, and regularly contributes to France’s Le Figaro newspaper. He has also taught the history of political thought at degree level. His publications include: LA CHUTE DES ARISTOCRATES (1787-1792) ; MADAME DU BARRY, UN NOM DE SCANDALE ; COUPLE INTERDIT et ROMAN DE L’ITALIE INSOLITE.

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Is America about to go through a crisis comparable to that of 1929? Will American finances be directed from Beijing? Is the USA under threat from the growth of ethnic minorities, particularly Hispanics? Finally, can this country rise to the challenges of the 21st century after disastrous Bush years?

In this book, the author, who is closely linked to the democrats, blows away all the established thinking, and unveils half-buried secrets. She focuses on Barack Obama, who combines the qualities of a Kennedy with his gift for original thought. (If Hillary Clinton manages to get back on her feet, she will equally become a central character in this anecdote-filled book packed with hitherto unpublished accounts by people involved.)

Audrey Claire also draws out the precursors to this new way of thinking (JFK, Martin Luther King etc). This new message, calling for the breaking down of conventional divisions, will – according to the author – also have an impact in Europe, as Obama himself has explained. Effectively, while some speak of an America under siege from terrorism and immigrants (on the Right) or of a diminished middle class crushed by shortages and by globalisation (on the Left), Obama for his part is calling for a Manhattan Project for clean energy sources.

Paris, 1957. An unknown 21 year-old from Oran has succeeded the recently deceased Christian Dior has head of the world's most famous fashion house. All at once, fame and success come to this child with the golden touch. France, America, the whole world are beginning a lasting love affair with him. From the Trapeze dress to Van Gogh waistcoats, he makes a splash. His collections delight, and his designs are much emulated. His work wins every possible accolade and is exhibited in museums while he is still alive.

He has a great feeling for his era. His clothes have accompanied or preceded the revolution in attitudes that has characterised it. Sailors' jackets, safari jackets, smoking jackets and trouser-suits have clothed the new lifestyles. He elevates prêt-à-porter to the level of haute couture. For him, fashion is no longer just an aesthetic affair; it has become a social phenomenon. It is a pursuit that is no longer the reserve of the elite, it is everybody's business. His creations are for the street and inspired by the street – but always aiming for excellence.

At the same time, he works to free himself, and to liberate those he clothes. After a century of quasi-Victorian fashions, he sewed a seed of madness in fashion, contemporary to the pill, new laws on divorce and abortion, and the feminist struggle. But he is not a theoretician. He prefers to create. Some would even say that he has invented the contemporary woman. But he has not limited his liberation of attitude to women. He founded his own fashion house with his partner Pierre Bergé. He shocked Paris by posing nude in adverts for a perfume. He went all out. For him, Rive Gauche is not only a place or a perfume; it is a state of mind. On the other hand, he regrets the passing of that certain elegance of the world he helped destroy. He deplores the excess and vulgarity his own advances have led to. Refinement has lost out in favour of the mass produced lines to which he was the precursor. French fashion, of which he was the last king, is losing its pre-eminence. He has retreated to his ivory tower, critical, and often despairing. Chronos, the god of time, devoured his children. Saint Laurent ended by tearing his up. It is said he is narcissistic, it is said he hates himself. Perhaps both are true. Perhaps fashion was not fulfilling enough for him. Perhaps he aimed higher, and his artistic temperament made him unhappy. And it is beyond doubt that the wounds that have little by little poisoned him can be sought in a sheltered childhood, full of sunshine, but solitary.

The book is made up of thirteen chapters (The City with a Child Prince, My feathered thing, Rive Gauche Business, Phantoms' Milk, the Women's School, Homo Saint Laurentimus, Mass Designer, the Algerian Parisian, A Style to Survive, Absences and Retreats, Old Like my Dresses, Dad, Mum, the Soldiers and me, Three Black Dresses), split into four parts (Triumphs, the Social Aesthetic, Life is Hard, The Soul of the Past), following his life and dissecting his personality. The reader is taken deeper and deeper in to the heart of a man who was unlucky to live in a world where what made him happy was dying. The Sixties marked Europe, and the world as a result, with a split that was as stealthy as it was formidable. As with all children, Saint Laurent played at breaking his toys: the time he turned around and the civilisation he lived in have disappeared, leaving behind his shattered talent in its ruins.

In March 2003, Castro's regime took advantage of the Iraq War focusing the attention of the world's media on the Middle East to launch a series of raids, not just in Havana, but all over the island. They were the most significant ones since 1965. In all, 75 people were arrested and more than 1,500 years worth of prison sentences were handed out. Those imprisoned included economists, librarians, and also one Juan Valero, a freelance journalist. Put in solitary confinement, then transferred to the notorious Boniato Prison, he continued his struggle against the authorities. But in spite of his age and international pressure, Castro still seemed as alert and irritable as always. Only his death could perhaps save Juan Valero from otherwise inevitable ruin and eh turns on the radio every morning hoping finally to hear the Lider Maximo's death announced. But there is never anything, and instead as the weeks and months pass it is the musicians who set the rhythm of his life and the lives of the Cubans who are passing away one by one: Compay Segundo, Célia Cruz, Ibrahim Ferrer, and Ruben Gonzalès…

The story begins in 2003 and ends on 1st August 2006, the day when Fidel Castro loosened his grip on power for the first time in nearly 50 years. It provides a snapshot of everyday life and politics in Havana on the eve of its leader's passing.

Through the intertwined destinies of Castro and Juan Valero – struggling not only against one another but also each individually against his own doubts and self-examination – Castro is Dead reads like the twilight of a revolution gone wrong.

Paris, Spring 2010. Tom Albrecht, 38, a journalist and photographer for the American 24-hour news channel Fly News on assignment in Iraq, a country still torn apart by an unending civil war. It is his way of escaping the pain of his recent separation from Louise, his wife of 15 years. Just a few days in, the bus filled with foreign journalists on which he is travelling is attacked.

More than two months later he wakes up in Professor Ledor's neurosurgical unit at the Val de grace military hospital. He is the only survivor of the attack… but there are big gaps in his memory. The only support he has on his sickbed is from Jamie, his junior who behaves as though he were his senior, who is making an exceptional television programme for the public broadcaster La Seconde. Tom is included in this series in The Final Journey in which, for the first time, the cameras watch live as a man lies dying.

Tom is troubled as he returns to consciousness: the face of one of the nurses caring for him seems familiar. But who is she? Putting back together the remaining pieces of his tattered past, he manages to link a name to those eyes, and that characteristic beauty spot on the cheekbone: Alessia d'Alessandro, his childhood sweetheart, who mysteriously abandoned him before Louise provided a shoulder to cry on. What is she doing there? Why this sudden re-entry into his life? What strange game is she playing, bursting into his troubled life, like a ghost? From hotels to airports, what is this 'monopoly' of memory and past love that she is inviting him into? But in the shadows of his mind, what has happened to Louise, his ex-wife who has not visited once since his 'accident'? Why is his life, why is the reality around him so strange? Where are these terrible headaches coming from?

From Paris to New York, from New York to Rome, there are questions which will lead to dozens of others, questions to which he will gradually realise that it would be better not to answer, to let himself be cradled by the magic of a love cut short, and finally put right. These questions are linked to one that we all ask ourselves: how far would I go to get back the love of my life, which I had already lost once through a lack of courage, through fatalism, or through negligence? Because as Tom, an American in love with the French language, says, « Amour is one of those few words in French that is masculine in the singular, but feminine in the plural. For example, you speak of a love starting in the masculine, but of loves ending in the feminine. But such variations cannot be right. For me, even in the singular, particularly in the singular, love is a woman…just one woman. »

The market: Love is a woman is aimed at all readers (especially women) who, in their millions, have been captivated by the novels of Marc Levy, Guillaumo Musso and Douglas Kennedy. A mixture of suspense and romance, this veritable « thriller of a great love unachieved » mixes the rhythm of an American-style page turner with the subtlety of feeling of a European novel. It is a bridge between two worlds, between two of the pleasures of reading.