Douro Editions "Through reading, we become absent from ourselves and our own lives." Alphonse Karr
Juillet 2021
Except for a few details, Noa's life had always been perfectly ordinary. But when she discovers the existence of the Regulators at the beginning of summer, everything changes. As she gradually learns to tame this new universe, the famous Fire Regulator, whose name makes everyone who has ever had the misfortune to cross his path shudder, tries by all means to eliminate the king of the Regulators in order to take his place.
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June 2021
Tea is drunk without sugar
These chronicles are intended as reflections on our times, where lunches and dinners provide ample opportunity for anecdotes. Slices of life suspended between here and elsewhere...
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Jewelry
As far back as she can remember, Emilie Panisset remembers wanting to make writing her profession, her sole passion, her breathing. So, as is often the case, she allowed herself to pursue studies which, for many of them, were not the ideal path to achieve her desire.
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Home Far from the Sea, Fragments
This sensitive text, The House Far from the Sea, Fragments I, is intended to be intimate, even confidential, in the discontinuity of memories, with the interesting bias of alternating prose and poems. Poetry-journal? Let us specify a timeless reconstruction based on the founding experiences of childhood and youth.
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Violent Earth
After a pandemic wipes out more than half of humanity, John and Marie find themselves outside, naked, destitute. In a devastated France, where there are no more rules,
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RENAISSANCE ET TOUR DU MONDE À MOTO
At the end of 2016, the company my wife and I had run for 28 years went into liquidation. Eleven days later, after a long battle with cancer, she passed away. I left London to raise awareness, bring messages to the world, and share passions.
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The globalization of bottom-up configurations
La mondialisation prise pour objet dans le présent travail est celle des gens ordinaires ; ceux qui s’inscrivent dans des configurations mutantes en passant d’un contexte à un autre et en transitant dans des espaces transfrontaliers générateurs de faits sociaux transnationaux.
Crimes and presumptions
In Canada, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms has just been amended to reverse the presumption of innocence in sexual assault cases, and women control the justice system at every level. It is in this context that a prominent businessman is accused and then defended tooth and nail by a female lawyer...
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Mephisto Cinema
The pretty Abricot, having survived the mad matchmaker's deadly spree, returns to duty and takes her darlings into the world of film, which is putting up a fight: escape, a cavalcade between two cops, a chase across France with the broken-nosed bust of Henri Langlois under her arm...
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C'est dans l'os qu'on trouve la moelle-La fuite d'Éloïse
This story takes place somewhere on one of those paradise islands, made up of white sand beaches, turquoise seas, and verdant forests. Small pieces of land set amidst the oceans, like infinite dots that a painter would have scattered across his canvas to enhance his work.
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Le silence d'aimer
To explore what builds love on the slippery slope of emotions when, after a breakup, it's impossible to forget. "He creates a story, a path of being, in his memory...
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The Evil of Blue
Gabrielle Jarzynski's words (illustrated by Smith Smith) are in color. They are the blue with which evil is made. The evil of loving and the happiness of evil. Do you know pharaoh blue? It's a turquoise blue from ancient Egypt, an eyelid blue that is applied to dreams... Close your eyes and follow Gabrielle in the thick and thin strokes of her ultramarine calligraphy... Come on, this blue sky is delicious, right down to the blue.
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Chaumont in Haute-Marne resembles most small provincial towns: a few picturesque historic sites, the countryside on the outskirts of the city, and a reassuring living environment. When this relative tranquility is shattered after the sordid murder of a young student, a race against time begins, involving a Chaumont police officer and an FBI agent.
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Crazy story
This novel is a love story. To tell us about loving the Other, Régine Laprade tells us a lovely story that Dr. JF Saint-Bauzel, psychiatrist, comments on thus: "Régine did not fall into the trap of cuckoo's nests or into the criticism of the arbitrary system of confinement.
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The Roots of Twilight
De retour, sur les lieux délabrés de sa jeunesse, Paul n’a plus que son frère cadet comme seule famille. Ce dernier n’est plus le même depuis son grave accident et les six mois de coma qui ont suivi. La mort amoncelle un cortège de drames au cœur d’une ville sans identité ravagée par les désastres économiques et tout semble converger vers eux.
May 2021
Adelaide and Victor
In the years 1830-32, the nation remained divided between republicans, royalists, and Napoleonic nostalgics. And above all, whether in Paris, Montmirail, or La Ferté-sous-Jouarre, the country was still not at peace. Moreover, France had to face a terrible cholera epidemic.
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Offset(s)
"Offset [s]", because in these stories, a little something takes us out of reality and everyday life: the bizarre, the strange, a dose of the supernatural, a hint of the imaginary, a few seeds of mystery. A little step aside which can be in turn: nostalgic, (in)time, fantastic or wacky with characters who are searching for themselves,
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Avril 2021
In your dreams
Since childhood, Angela has possessed a very special "gift." As soon as she falls asleep, she wakes up in other people's dreams. As an adult, having become very solitary and wild, she is just beginning to accept this singularity and tries to lead a more or less balanced lifestyle. It is then that she meets Guillaume, a dreamer who, unlike the others, manages to see and speak to her but who will never leave her side at night. This young man is a mystery. He will disrupt her routine and her tranquility, which will annoy her to the highest degree.
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The Blossoming of the Peonies
L’éclosion des pivoines poèmes
Dans la Mythologie grecque, les nymphes se protégeaient des regards indiscrets en couvrant leur nudité de pivoines. Fleurs de pudeur et de honte, elles étaient dotées du pouvoir de guérir toutes sortes de maux, ceux du corps comme ceux de l’âme, et sont toujours utilisées dans les médecines traditionnelles chinoise et japonaise.
A meaning to life, Voltaire, do you hear?
In this story, the author evokes the initiatory journey of a young man in search of his purpose, starting from a prison cell where he was twenty years old. Torn between a deep aspiration to live a high ideal and the vital need to heal the wounds of his childhood, he confides in these sometimes moving pages, the intimate behind-the-scenes of an unusual journey.
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April 2021
Bad bassoon
Le récit raconte comment quelques souvenirs ont modifié le déroulement d’une session de pratique de méditation bouddhiste effectuée au sein d’un groupe dans un temple.
Je suis allé me placer le long du cercueil posé sur des tréteaux devant moi. De l’autre côté, vus de face, à trois mètres de là, la famille et quelques amis étaient présents. Il y avait aussi cette étendue des autres tombes tout autour. J’aurais préféré qu’il n’y en ait aucune, que l’on soit les premiers. Et puis voilà, c’est notre tour d’être ici, nous n’y pensons jamais, ou furtivement, et l’on finit par y être.
Poems of the world
Joël Dranthia est un économiste passionné de voyages. Il est originaire de 3 continents (l’Europe, l’Afrique et l’Amérique centrale), ce qui lui a donné une appétence pour le métissage des cultures. Passionné du Japon, de la Caraïbe et d’Afrique, il s’intéresse aux traits communs entre les cultures à travers la poésie. Outre la photographie, ses autres centres d’intérêt sont l’écriture, le cinéma et la musique. Depuis quelques années il écrit de la poésie, à la recherche de l’humanisme enfoui dans l’âme humaine.
Idols
« Je suis une bouée à la mer qui dérive, qui erre. Je suis ce vieux livre oublié sur une étagère et qui prend la poussière. Cependant, je reste à portée de main pour ceux qui désespèrent. »
C’est un extrait de l’œuvre de Simon, il a écrit ça et beaucoup d’autres choses, mais ses histoires ne proviennent pas toutes du farfelu farfouilli de son imaginative caboche.
En effet, Simon a une muse étrangement particulière : son Eidôlon, son reflet dans le miroir.
April 2021
The Predator's Ecstasy
An incendiary firebrand, when it was first published in 2006, this book was burned. In the truest sense of the word. Reduced to ashes by the flames lit by some spirit troubled by what he had read in it. An evil presence for a woman like Monsieur, the central character of this text. An incarnation of evil so unbearable that only fire could destroy.
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The Waltz of Horrors
Caroline et Patricia se sont rencontrées dans le cadre de cours en ligne sur l’écriture. Patricia n’y trouvant guère son compte a lancé un appel à écrivain/e intéressé/e d’écrire quelque chose à deux. Caroline a répondu et, après quelques échanges, elles ont décidé d’écrire « L’alphabet des horreurs ». Pourquoi pas un alphabet plus positif ? À cause d’une pièce déjà écrite par Patricia, « Jeu d’alphabet ». C’est ainsi, grâce au jeu, que Caroline et Patricia vont se découvrir et, surtout, exprimer des idées, des opinions, dans la bonne humeur.
Le jeu auquel ce sont livrées les auteures se termine par une nouvelle inédite.
Drop-off point
Nourrir la sève d’un combat inutile
A quiconque à des yeux pour lumière
Bâtir des refuges de fortune sur des rocs aériens
Et se découvrir alors dans son plus pur inachèvement
Pour qu’enfin, s’élève notre propre point de chute
Sont les différentes voix de douceur et d’incertitudes
qui se meuvent au sein de ce recueil.
Mars 2021
"It's an escape for me, an elsewhere. Éric Costan's poetry sometimes oscillates between literature and philosophy, between meditation and crucifixion, between what is known and what refuses to fall under the meaning, and worse, under common sense." Jean-François SAMLONG - Writer
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Filth has always been everywhere, but nowhere more so than in families, to begin with. In which just about everyone who has been involved in it is still involved and makes everyone else involved, eventually. Betraying family, accusing it: guaranteed dereliction. Unless you laugh at it, with a laugh as filthy as family itself. But no one does anymore; respect has won out everywhere. If Jugnon, with In Order of Battle, theater. Theater straight from… The names are few and far between: Müller, Bernhard, of course. More directly: Jarry & Beckett. Jarry, serious, Beckett, farce. In Order of Battle: to be placed in the hands of all old people of all ages. To put an end to their venereal family venerations. Michel Surya
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There are individuals whose capacity for resilience is innate. Magda followed her husband around the world, and a separation abruptly changed the course of her life. A mother of two, she found herself forced to look for a job. She proved herself a skilled businesswoman and became a reference in the world of luxury. After proving herself in Paris, she decided to leave everything behind. She left for Russia as soon as communism fell, opening the first French fine jewelry boutique in Moscow, stocked with prestigious Swiss watch brands. This book is the true story of a woman, a true adventurer, who bravely and stubbornly defied all obstacles.
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After learning of his mother's death under dubious circumstances, a man, obsessed with the idea of being born at midnight, takes a midnight train from Paris-Gare-de-Lyon. A train with no destination, whose only passengers are a mad and aggressive conductor, the ghost of Edith Piaf, and a sad and melancholic clown. The night train seems to traverse time, dreams, and fantasies, as the man relives entire sections of his past. But where is this old steam locomotive taking him?
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Murielle Compère-Demarcy (who also sometimes signs with her writing pseudonym MCDem.) began wanting to publish in 2014 after studying Literature and Philosophy and having worked as a bookseller. She is now a teacher-librarian. Her latest publications: Alchemist of the Pulverized Sun (poem for Antonin Artaud), In the Landes of Hurle-Lyre, The Red Bark followed by Prayer for Notre-Dame de Paris & Hurlement and Voyage Grand-Tournesol at Z4 éditions.
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Cupid departed in the spring. The death of a beautiful story emerges at the season of blossoming. This lyrical poetry unravels the frayed thread of passion, the broken thread of rupture, plucks the precious light of an intimate drama, the passage from sun to night. Love was, the days unraveled it, and Christophe Bregaint narrates this without rage or attack, with subtlety and sensitivity. The sublime suddenly burst into fragments, but the pain surfaces smoothly, sorrow moistens the words without a deluge. Where was the fault? Where was the present already inscribed?
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February 2021
Days of confinement
These few pages recount, day by day, an intimate experience, that of the confinement imposed by the Covid 19 epidemic in March, April, May 2020. I did not want to act as a writer, nor as a diarist, nor as a journalist of the intimate. These are simple chronicles, sometimes funny, sometimes acerbic, sometimes moving, that I posted every day on Facebook. They do not obey any project other than that of finding something to say, while nothing was our daily life. No unity of style or form. That was not my intention. Besides, how can we talk about coherence when what we were experiencing was bordering on the most disheveled absurdity. So I wrote almost for fun, to make my time pass more quickly. DF
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Ça ne fera pas pleurer les anges
Kamel is a very reserved man, certainly, but ambitious. He knows where his path is leading him. A household appliance salesman, his life is all mapped out: a woman he loves, adorable children... But that was before he was kidnapped by a group of unknown men who immediately promised him death... Which he managed to escape. When he left the country to escape the certain death his captors had in store for him in Algiers, he didn't know that in Tripoli, he would be confronted with the same elements, with a few variations... The investigation led by Inspector Ramzi, from the central police station in Tripoli, is not proving to be the easiest, especially since pressure from above constantly urges him to close the case.
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The Adolescent and Other Erotic Stories
Peut-on encore écrire et publier des textes érotiques en 2020 ?
Peut-on, bien modestement, essayer de s’inscrire dans une tradition littéraire qui a, depuis longtemps, ses lettres de noblesse en France ? Il serait facile de répondre oui et pourtant, ces questions peuvent se poser en cette époque de passions tristes ; à l’heure où notre société est laminée par une vague de censure et de puritanisme d’une rare violence, conséquence du politically correct américain. Un coup d’oeil sur les murs de nos villes, de plus en plus réquisitionnés par les néo-féministes, suffit à comprendre que la chasse à l’homme est ouverte, que ses désirs sont de plus en
plus condamnés et repoussés dans le champ de la perversion. En ce sens les nouvelles rassemblées dans cet ouvrage n’échappent pas à une intention polémique. Elles expriment, à travers leurs différents canevas, une révolte contre cet état de choses étouffant.
Janvier 2021
The longer your life will be
The Longer Your Life gives voice to the political memory, often unofficial, of ordinary people, nevertheless convinced patriots, during the reign of Hassan II, by bringing to the forefront the story of the repatriation of the body of a Moroccan immigrant, recounted by his brother who remained in the country.
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Sept Goûts d'Amour
"Passion devours everything and opens new horizons. It also brings the chilly out of the shadows to allow them to face, without fear, the burning sun." Could we find common ground between a priest who fell in love with a Zola novel, a soldier in love during the First World War, an unlucky cyclist on the side of a road, a photographer lost near the Calanques de Piana, a young thug hiding with his girlfriend, a megalomaniac night owl, and even a piano that feels exiled on a train platform?
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L'Île de Soranil
The year was around 2350. The Earth had changed after the "catastrophe," yet remained the same. It was the end of the technological era. A kind of mutant, though still human, had appeared within a regressive humanity. Alexander, a solitary herbalist, fleeing his contemporaries who, like him, were survivors of this upheaval, one day encountered the unexpected in the form of a child, a shepherd with extraordinary abilities; an encounter that would brutally change his destiny.
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Publications 2020
Si je t’écris ce soir de Vienne, j’aimerais bien que tu comprennes… chantait Barbara. Chez la chanteuse de Minuit, les zinzins, souvent, rappellent les lettres. C’est peut-être cet esprit particulier, intime, de la correspondance qui aura touché Louise et Dorine. Lettre ou bien chanson, les deux se frôlent pour approfondir la portée d’un message – qui chante sa peine se console.
Le Nouveau Monde
Alain is a young journalist, always eager for a scoop, curious and attentive. As he walked up Avenue Victor Hugo, he told himself he still had time to take a few steps around the neighborhood before returning to the editorial office. The little florist was cleaning her vases... the sun was already burning, a beautiful day when... a man walks forward in front of him. They exchange glances. Nothing will ever be the same again. But who is this man who is going to turn his life upside down?
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My head is spinning
In this book, you will find an echo of your own feelings and experiences, a few notes of lightness, a hint of poetic references, and a lot of authenticity and innocence. This collection is constructed as an initiatory journey, at once personal, philosophical, and universal. Through different types of poetic narratives (free verse, fixed forms, dream narratives, etc.)
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Nine Months of Hell
The narrator is going through a midlife crisis during a late pregnancy. During these nine months, she will encounter ups and downs that will lead her to undertake a deep work of introspection. She will have the opportunity to reflect on herself, but also on the members of her family, her history and her difficulties in accepting who she is and her life choices; all this, in a society that often seems hostile to her.
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The stainless steel sink
Leave for later those accumulated dishes that wake you up every morning with the sound of scraping metal, dreams collapsing in the stainless steel sink.
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Frequency Modulation Murders
In the euphoria of the development of free radio in the 1980s, a thirty-year-old man persists in submitting an application for an FM radio station, on behalf of the community he wishes to represent, in Paris. Between a passionate love affair, internal conflicts, before and after obtaining the broadcasting license, suspicions of collusion involving members and officials of the regulatory authority with well-known figures, the fine bloodhounds of the judicial police at 36 Quai des Orfèvres, then the DGSE
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On the Other Side
An amateur but experienced sailor takes charge of a solo delivery of a sailboat to the United States, departing from Brittany. He decides to recount, in a personal logbook, how this experience unfolded and the circumstances under which he chose to make this crossing. He thus delivers a triple voyage.
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Turn the page
Le temps s’accélère, les années s’entrechoquent, se bousculent. Le besoin de se retourner sur mon passé s’est imposé naturellement. Il ne s’agit point de dresser un bilan, ou même un état exhaustif de soixante et quelques années, mais simplement de me raconter, de me retourner sur ce passé pour mieux l’appréhender. Cette vie, que j’ai menée en évitant certains écueils, en affrontant les méandres de l’existence, se poursuit au gré des événements, des rencontres, des émotions, qui jalonnent ma route.
Thirst for Freedom
Jacques Whitehead, a British MI6 agent nearing the end of his career, has lived in Los Angeles for 30 years. He has just written a novel about his friend Adrien Mesquita, a famous former journalist and novelist. He met the main characters, first in Algeria at the end of 1978, one of his first missions abroad, following the death of President Houari Boumediene, then in Europe, where he met the others, all those who had played an important role in this story.
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Thirst for Freedom
Jacques Whitehead, a British MI6 special agent nearing the end of his career, had been living in Los Angeles for 30 years. He had recently completed a book about part of the life story of his friend Adriano Mesquita, a former journalist and famous writer. He had met the main characters in the story, first in Algeria, in late 1978, during one of his first missions abroad, shortly after the death of President Houari Boumediene, and later in Europe, where he met and interviewed the others.
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