Paris, Albin Michel, 168 pages.

The real title of this novel is “L’Évangile selon Véronique”, not “L’Évangile de Véronique” as erroneously printed on the cover.

Note: Awaiting annotation.

Paris, Encre, 233 pages.

Note: Awaiting annotation.

Paris, Encre, 235 pages.

Note: Awaiting annotation.

Paris, Denoël/Gonthier, 286 pages

This 1982 novel tells the story of an Amazon, Thécla, who, after drinking a certain potion, goes through time and encounters great moments in history. For the first time, the myth of immortality is embodied by a woman. This prodigious adventure novel leads us to meet Alexander the Great, to the discovery of America by the Vikings, to the formidable machines designed by Leonardo da Vinci, to the war in Vendée,… up to Nazism and then to May-68.

(4th cover)

Paris, le Livre contemporain.

Of Françoise, Mac Orlan said : “Her style is so colorful that you have to read her books with sunglasses”. What would he have said of Les Bergères de l’Apocalypse prefigured by this book? Because it is indeed about a fight of women, arms in hand: a troop of poor immigrant beggars, prostitutes and thieves who meet in the bottom of the hold of the boat in which they are fleeing poverty to building a better future in the Americas in the early 19th century. And it is not the titles of sarcastic chapters like La joie d’être mère or Le repos du guerrier that will make us doubt the intentions of the author. (Vincent)

Paris, Le livre contemporain – Amiot-Dumond, coll. Visages de l’aventure, 202 pages.

The Ferme Générale (1680 – 1794) was a body of financiers and shareholders who, having bought the office from the King, collected the various taxes in force, with the right to keep half of them. Needless to say, the Farmers were overzealous, and infinite abuses were committed: here we have the ancestor of the international mafias and trusts, depending on which side of the law they are on.

It was against this system and its men that the highwayman Mandrin, France’s Robin-des-bois, rose to fame, ending up roasted alive in a public square in Valence in the early 1750’s. He remained in popular memory for a long time, and there are still recordings of songs celebrating his exploits.

A character, then, befitting the picaresque pen of a Françoise in her thirties, who quenches her thirst for justice and a taste for the epic in the writing of her story.