France in the fifties. The teenage orphan Sylvie is put in an institution for "fallen" or endangered girls, subjected to harsh treatment by the bigoted nuns who run the institution like a prison. Sylvie befriends a girl who wants to escape.
A 19 year-old Swiss woman travels to her birthplace—an isolated, barren Berber settlement in the mountainous desert landscape of Algeria—to find her biological mother, whom she has never met. The perilous journey immerses her in a world virtually untouched by contemporary society, one that still clings to tribal mores and strict religious codes of conduct.
Loudun, October 1947. Leon Besnard and Marie celebrate their eighteenth wedding anniversary with friends and Ady, a former German prisoner they have "adopted". A few days later, Leon dies. Louise, a friend of the couple's and probably Leon's mistress claims that, on his deathbed, the deceased told her that Marie was poisoning him. The whole town soon condemns Marie and she is arrested and sent to jail. Did she really kill Léon as well as twelve other members of her family as she finds herself charged with?
Juliette, a mother of wealthy family and a little snobbish, has gradually developed a kind of generalized contempt against his fellows. One day a bunch of little naive thugs manages to remove it. Because it is often obnoxious with his entourage, his family decided not to pay anything for her release. Shocked, Ellie began to join her captors in order to concoct a revenge more expensive. The unsympathetic billionaire turns against her will in a sort of Robin embittered and vengeful wood. Soon, his family is forced to pay more attention to his kidnapping: worrying samples are taken by Juliette, free-spending ...
A wave of carnage is sweeping through Southern France, with locals blaming the return of wolves. However some begin talking of a werewolf, and Police Captain Adamsberg must investigate.
A war of inheritance in the Lanzac family, a rich industrial family from Bordeaux, against a backdrop of family secrets and the unsaid. Elisabeth Lanzac authoritatively leads an important industrial group specializing in wood. Her eldest son, Nicolas, is her named successor, but he dies in a road accident. When the will is read, the family is stunned to learn that he has left his share to Julien, his secret son...
The story of the six barons of the Belgian Empain family. The first was a magnificent character: at a time when elected politicians proclaimed absolute freedom to produce and trade, he became an innovative, empirical and visionary entrepreneur. The latter baron conquered the jewel of the French nuclear industry, the Schneider empire, which put him in the government's sights.
During World War II, a woman aboard a railroad car full of deportees slips French railway worker Julien a note with an address and a simple message: "I am alive, and I love you," and he decides to track down the intended recipients. When he finds the woman's Jewish family, he is inspired to do what he can to protect them from the Nazi atrocities.
