Every Friday, the bookseller shares his reading favorites. Today, The Last Tea of Master Sohô, I am Amélie Lenglet and The Mystery of the House of Three Elms.
Written on 05/24/2024
The Health Mag – France 5
The Last Tea of Master Sohô
Cyril Gely
Ed. Arléa, May 2024
July 1853, the American fleet entered Edo Bay. This is the end of Japan’s isolationist policy and the beginning of opening up to the outside world.
Japan leaves behind the tradition of the samurai. However, at the same time, Ibuki, daughter of a Sake producer, has only one dream: to become a samurai. To do this, she will renounce her feminine condition, by cross-dressing, binding her chest and adopting dark clothing reserved for men. Fleeing her destiny as an heiress, she undertakes a long walk across Japan to meet the man she considers a master, Akira Sohô, son of a samurai and true legend.
Their meeting will be much more than a confrontation between master and disciple. One, possessing wisdom, turned to the way of tea, abandoning the violence of the sword, and the other, in the ignorance of youth, faithful to a tradition doomed to disappearance. Everything opposes them but the extremes, it is said, always end up coming together.
I am Amélie Lenglet
Philippe Balland and Jacques Expert
Ed. Calmann-Levy, May 2024
Little Amélie Lenglet was kidnapped at the age of seven. An unresolved case that shocked France. Ten years later, a young girl suddenly reappears. She says she managed to flee her captors after years of confinement. A miracle for his parents, who never lost hope. The investigation allows neither to find the kidnappers nor to establish his real identity. Regardless, for his parents, this is their child. The reunited family tries to reconnect with the happiness of everyday life when a few weeks later a second young girl appears saying: “I am Amélie Lenglet“. And she also gives disturbingly true details about her childhood before her kidnapping. Which of the two is the “real” Amélie? Even the parents do not agree… Lies, secrets and manipulations… One of them Among them is a usurper.
The Mystery of the House of Three Elms
Valentin Musso
Ed. Seuil, May 2024
How do you solve a murder if no one committed it? Commissioner Forestier is urgently called by Yves de Montalabert, an aristocrat who has received threatening letters and fears for his life. The policeman goes to his home, in the heart of the Normandy countryside, to unmask the crow. But to his great surprise he discovers that the count has invited four personalities to join them: a fashionable young journalist, the wife of a rich industrialist, a doctor from the wealthy neighborhoods and a general with the ear of power. Good guests in all respects. At least in appearance… The same evening, the count is brutally murdered in his office, while the door and windows are locked from the inside. What’s more, all the guests have an irrefutable alibi. Faced with the most puzzling of closed-room mysteries, Forestier takes the matter in hand. He doesn’t know that this enigma hides another, even more incredible one…
