Louis' hope was to lure that country into the political and religious orbit of France. Jean-Baptiste Poncet, young apothecary/physician to the pashas of Cairo, is the hero of this romantic epic embroidering upon the known details of that long-forgotten embassy. Selected by the French consul to lead the mission. Poncet travels through the deserts of Egypt and the mountains of Abyssinia to the court of the Negus, thence to Versailles and back again. Along the way he falls madly in love with the consul's daughter, treats the Negus for a mysterious skin ailment, and gains a disastrous audience...

Twenty years have passed since Jean-Baptiste Poncet's daring mission to the remote and exotic court of the King of Abyssinia. We find him now in Isfahan, capital of Persia, practicing medicine in the court of the Shah. In order to rescue his old friend Juremi, imprisoned in the Urals, Poncet travels in disguise to Russia, where he engages in a diplomatic duel of wits with Peter the Great. The friends, reunited, are captured by nomads and sold as slaves in Afghanistan. This is the beginning of Poncet's circuitous return to Isfahan, where his wife and daughter are trapped by a besieging army of...

Brazil Red tells the story of two orphaned children, Just and Colombe, who are dragged off on the French colonizing expeditionthey are meant to learn the native languages and act as interpreters. Everything in this novel is outsized: the setting, a jungle still populated by cannibals; the characters, including Villegagnon, the expedition's eccentric leader, who might be a model for Cyrano or d'Artagnan; and the events, a dress rehearsal for the Wars of Religion ten years in the future. Packed with portraits, landscapes, and action, Brazil Red is a novel about coming of age...

After a brilliant career as a trader, Jacques Coeur was summoned to the court of Charles VII and appointed Master of the Mint in 1436. He rose to become the King of France's visionary First Banker who, with his tours of the Far East, his opposition to the crusades, and his efforts to develop trade, brought France out of the darkness toward the Renaissance and modernity. At the height of his success, his ill-considered infatuation with Agnes Sorel, King Charles VII's favorite mistress, precipitated Coeur's fall from grace.

In Rufin's delectable prose this true story becomes a gripping tale...

A work of suspense and psychological tension set in the world of international humanitarian aid, Checkpoint is the latest bestselling novel by the founder of Doctors Without Borders, Jean-Christophe Rufin.

The four men accompanying Maud on the aid convoy are very different from the cliched image of the humanitarian volunteer. One by one, they reveal the secret wounds that have brought them to this conflict zone and, mile by mile, the true nature of their cargo.

Prize-winning author, Jean-Christophe Rufin offers up a powerful psychological literary thriller that asks vital...