100 books like Ma Vie à Paris

By Astier de Villate,

Here are 100 books that Ma Vie à Paris fans have personally recommended if you like Ma Vie à Paris. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

Book cover of Life in Paris: Paris Fashion Weeks photographed by Meyabe

Kate van den Boogert Author Of The Paris Flea Market: Les Puces de Paris, Saint-Ouen

From my list on connecting with a few true Paris ‘Makers’.

Why am I passionate about this?

I love Paris. This city endlessly stimulates both my head and my heart. Always in movement, everchanging, it, like all cities, is a living organism, manifesting the spirit of all those who live here, past and present. Through a bunch of different projects and a handful of books, I’ve been trying to map its creative DNA, seeking out and championing the people and places who contribute to forging Paris’s own distinctive identity today. Makers Paris (Prestel) and Makers Paris 2 (Ofr. Éditions) evolved out of more than a decade running slow-travel pioneer Gogo City Guides, and my latest book The Paris Flea Market (Prestel) is a new stop on this journey.

Kate's book list on connecting with a few true Paris ‘Makers’

Kate van den Boogert Why did Kate love this book?

As the much-missed Karl Lagerfeld once said, “Fashion is a train that waits for nobody.” And that train comes whooshing through Paris quite a lot.

This book captures some of the inimitable energy and agitation of Paris Fashion Week, as self-taught photographer Meyabe covers six seasons—men’s, women’s, and couture—over a single year. It includes an introduction by local fashion hero Loïc Prigent and is published by my friends Alex and Marie from Ofr. (who also published Makers Paris #2).

Ofr. is an indie arts bookshop, gallery and publisher, always in the moment, that channels a certain bohemian spirit proper to Paris: “Open, Free and Ready”.

By Meyabe (photographer),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Life in Paris as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.


Book cover of Paris in Our View: Poems Selected by Shakespeare and Company

Kate van den Boogert Author Of The Paris Flea Market: Les Puces de Paris, Saint-Ouen

From my list on connecting with a few true Paris ‘Makers’.

Why am I passionate about this?

I love Paris. This city endlessly stimulates both my head and my heart. Always in movement, everchanging, it, like all cities, is a living organism, manifesting the spirit of all those who live here, past and present. Through a bunch of different projects and a handful of books, I’ve been trying to map its creative DNA, seeking out and championing the people and places who contribute to forging Paris’s own distinctive identity today. Makers Paris (Prestel) and Makers Paris 2 (Ofr. Éditions) evolved out of more than a decade running slow-travel pioneer Gogo City Guides, and my latest book The Paris Flea Market (Prestel) is a new stop on this journey.

Kate's book list on connecting with a few true Paris ‘Makers’

Kate van den Boogert Why did Kate love this book?

The much-loved English bookshop Shakespeare and Company can at times feel like a victim of its own success (every so often I try and imagine solutions as if I were trying to save Venice!), but the place remains a refuge for writers and readers and a true beacon of bohemian values.

In my first Makers book, owner Sylvia remembers her father George describing Paris: “where poetry is part of life; where men are poets and life is a poem.” And now the bookshop has published its own collection of poems about Paris, illustrated with beautiful line drawings by the Italian illustrator Matteo Pericoli.

Alongside verses by Rimbaud, Gregory Corso, or Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Pericoli imagines the views from windows of poets who, at one time or another, made their homes here, like Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas or Charles Baudelaire, or indeed Shakespeare and Company’s own beautiful view across the…

By David Delannet, Krista Halverson, Matteo Pericoli

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Paris in Our View as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.


Book cover of Two Dozen Eggs

Kate van den Boogert Author Of The Paris Flea Market: Les Puces de Paris, Saint-Ouen

From my list on connecting with a few true Paris ‘Makers’.

Why am I passionate about this?

I love Paris. This city endlessly stimulates both my head and my heart. Always in movement, everchanging, it, like all cities, is a living organism, manifesting the spirit of all those who live here, past and present. Through a bunch of different projects and a handful of books, I’ve been trying to map its creative DNA, seeking out and championing the people and places who contribute to forging Paris’s own distinctive identity today. Makers Paris (Prestel) and Makers Paris 2 (Ofr. Éditions) evolved out of more than a decade running slow-travel pioneer Gogo City Guides, and my latest book The Paris Flea Market (Prestel) is a new stop on this journey.

Kate's book list on connecting with a few true Paris ‘Makers’

Kate van den Boogert Why did Kate love this book?

Paris has an incredibly vibrant food scene, and some of that energy is generated by a shapeshifting community of expat chefs and foodies. Hugh Corcoran, a Belfast born writer and cook, spent the most part of the last decade living and working in France, in Paris and beyond.

This lovely book is a collection of vignettes from his travels, simply and honestly written, remembering people he met along the way and the meals they shared. Each story ends with a recipe, including some French classics like roast chicken, gratin dauphinois, or carottes râpées.

If the book’s tone is gentle, it’s actually an urgent call to action, as the epigraph confirms: “Friends and neighbors, wet your mouths, for after death you won’t touch another drop.”

By Hugh Corcoran,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Two Dozen Eggs as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Two Dozen Eggs by Hugh Corcoran is a pocketbook collection of short stories and recipes.

Hugh Corcoran is a cook from Belfast who has spent the most part of the last decade living and working in the Basque Country and France.

This book contains a collection of short stories written over the period of a few months but based on the memories and experiences of those places and his childhood in Ireland.

Two Dozen Eggs features an introduction by Rachel Roddy and is illustrated by Peter Doyle.


Book cover of French Moderne: Cocktails from the Twenties and Thirties with Recipes

Kate van den Boogert Author Of The Paris Flea Market: Les Puces de Paris, Saint-Ouen

From my list on connecting with a few true Paris ‘Makers’.

Why am I passionate about this?

I love Paris. This city endlessly stimulates both my head and my heart. Always in movement, everchanging, it, like all cities, is a living organism, manifesting the spirit of all those who live here, past and present. Through a bunch of different projects and a handful of books, I’ve been trying to map its creative DNA, seeking out and championing the people and places who contribute to forging Paris’s own distinctive identity today. Makers Paris (Prestel) and Makers Paris 2 (Ofr. Éditions) evolved out of more than a decade running slow-travel pioneer Gogo City Guides, and my latest book The Paris Flea Market (Prestel) is a new stop on this journey.

Kate's book list on connecting with a few true Paris ‘Makers’

Kate van den Boogert Why did Kate love this book?

This fascinating book plunges the reader into the avant-garde effervescence of the Roaring Twenties in Paris, presenting serious historical scholarship about the era alongside the author’s own take on classic cocktails like the Sazerac or the Highball. It provides, to quote the author Franck Audoux (in my book Makers Paris), “a kind of cultural snapshot of an era, to show how the cocktail, like jazz or the Charleston, participated in the reconstruction of a new society after the carnage of the First World War”.

One of the founders of the game-changing restaurant Le Châteaubriand, Franck is a pillar of the indie food and drinks scene here. This book is the fertile soil from which his current project, Cravan, grows. Named after Oscar Wilde’s nephew, the poet and boxer Arthur Cravan, Cravan is a contemporary cocktail bar rooted in the “French Modern.” 

By Franck Audoux,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked French Moderne as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Following Prohibition, Paris, much like London, became known for serving up original and innovative mixed drinks. Although cocktails were present in the late nineteenth century, it was the interwar period, and particularly les annees folles that transformed the culture of the cocktail consumption. This fertile time, both intellectually and artistically, was nourished by a growing influx of expatriates from across the Atlantic who made way for an age of experimentation and creation. The new ambassadors of cocktails made alcohols and aperitifs that were specifically French stars of the show. Alongside classic French Vermouth, locally produced spirits including Byrrh, Dubonnet, Suze,…


Book cover of The Kill

Mary Soderstrom Author Of Concrete: From Ancient Origins to a Problematic Future

From my list on to design a workable, walkable, wonderful city.

Why am I passionate about this?

I like to say I'm a born-again pedestrian. After a childhood in car-friendly Southern California, I moved first to the San Francisco Bay Area and then to Montreal. There I discovered the pleasures of living in walkable cities, and over the years I've explored them in a series of books about people, nature, and urban spaces in which the problems of spread-out, concrete-heavy cities take a front-row seat. The impact of the way we've built our cities over the last 100 years is becoming apparent, as carbon dioxide rises, driving climate changes. We must change the way we live, and the books I suggest give some insights about what to do and what not to do.

Mary's book list on to design a workable, walkable, wonderful city

Mary Soderstrom Why did Mary love this book?

Sometimes it's helpful, even encouraging, to discover that problems we face today were faced by people in the past.  Emile Zola wrote a series of novels about Paris in the mid-19th century at a time when the City of Light was being rebuilt along pretty extraordinary lines. At the same time that poor people were being tossed out of their substandard housing, some people were making fortunes speculating in real estate. The Kill focuses on the personal dramas of people on both sides of the equation, with quite a lot of sex thrown in to spice things up.

By Émile Zola, Brian Nelson (translator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Kill as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'It was the time when the rush for spoils filled a corner of the forest with the yelping of hounds, the cracking of whips, the flaring of torches. The appetites let loose were satisfied at last, shamelessly, amid the sound of crumbling neighbourhoods and fortunes made in six months. The city had become an orgy of gold and women.'

The Kill (La Curee) is the second volume in Zola's great cycle of twenty novels, Les Rougon-Macquart, and the first to establish Paris - the capital of modernity - as the centre of Zola's narrative world. Conceived as a representation of…


Book cover of The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

Mark Rowlands Author Of Philosopher and the Wolf: Lessons from the Wild on Love, Death, and Happiness

From my list on humans and other animals.

Why am I passionate about this?

The most important formative experiences of my life were contained in the years I spent living and traveling with Brenin, a wolfdog. I can safely say that just about every worthwhile idea I have had – I am a professor of philosophy and ideas are supposed to be my thing – stemmed from those years. I have written many books since Brenin died, all of them, in one way or another, concerned with the question of what it is to be human. I am convinced that we can only understand this if we begin with the idea that we are animals and work from there.

Mark's book list on humans and other animals

Mark Rowlands Why did Mark love this book?

Commonly thought to be about death, and our fear thereof, what I find most striking about this book is its piercing and utterly haunting analysis of the role of memories in making us who we are. The most important memories are the ones that are lost, and then return in a new form, deeply woven into our bodies, emotions, and feelings – as blood, as glance and gesture, as Rilke puts it. Rilke was a poet; this was his only excursion into the art form of the novel. So, the book falls apart after a while. But if anyone has written anything better than the first fifty pages or so, I am unacquainted with it.

By Rainer Maria Rilke, Burton Pike (translator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

First published in 1910, Rilke's "Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge" is one the first great modernist novels, the account of poet-aspirant Brigge in his exploration of poetic individuality and his reflections on the experience of time as death approaches. This new translation by Burton Pike is a reaction to overly stylized previous translations, and aims to capture not only the beauty but also the strangeness, the spirit, of Rilke's German.


Book cover of An Island Princess Starts a Scandal

Ali Rosen Author Of Recipe for Second Chances

From my list on romances with complicated heroines.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a contemporary romance author who loves to feature my own messy heroines – mostly because they are the type of women I read! So my favorite books often feature women who are complex and even stereotypically unlikeable. I love seeing my expectations subverted and a more winding, emotional way to a happy ending. 

Ali's book list on romances with complicated heroines

Ali Rosen Why did Ali love this book?

This is historical for people who usually roll their eyes at unrealistic regency historicals.

Our firecracker Manuela wants a debauched summer before she gets married off, and Duchess Cora is who she wants. But besides the sumptuous 1889 Paris setting we get a beautiful love story that fits in its time but also eschews it. I love this whole series and can’t wait for the next one.  

By Adriana Herrera,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked An Island Princess Starts a Scandal as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"Adriana Herrera is once again here to upend any outdated notions of historical romance." —Entertainment Weekly

"Adriana Herrera is a fun, frothy, feminist voice in historical romance." —New York Times bestselling author Sarah MacLean

One last summer. 

For Manuela del Carmen Caceres Galvan, the invitation to show her paintings at the 1889 Exposition Universelle came at the perfect time. Soon to be trapped in a loveless marriage, Manuela has given herself one last summer of freedom—in Paris, with her two best friends. 

One scandalous encounter. 

Cora Kempf Bristol, Duchess of Sundridge, is known for her ruthlessness in business. It's not…


Book cover of Kylie the Crocodile in Paris

Katelyn Aronson Author Of Piglette

From my list on children’s fiction books featuring plenty of French flavor.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am an American children’s author and expat living in France. Holding a bilingual master’s from La Sorbonne University in Paris, I now teach both English and French as foreign languages to children and adults of all ages. A Francophile since my very first French lessons back in high school, I now enjoy French citizenship and am happy to be “living my best life” between my two countries. I am passionate about promoting literacy and the languages I hold dear.

Katelyn's book list on children’s fiction books featuring plenty of French flavor

Katelyn Aronson Why did Katelyn love this book?

I bought this book during a weekend trip to Paris, and it turned out to be my favorite souvenir.

The author and illustrator are a husband and wife team, and they’ve cooked up a lovely character in Kylie, who is based on a real-life crocodile found once upon a time in the canals of Paris!

By Oliver Gee, Lina Nordin Gee (illustrator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Kylie the Crocodile in Paris as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This children's book follows the story of Kylie, a crocodile that lives in the Canal Saint-Martin of Paris. She explores Paris secretly by day, watching people from the safety of storm drains (can you find her on every page?).

At night, she sneaks out of the canal, via the sewers, and into some of the most famous places in Paris like the Louvre Museum and the big department stores.

Written and illustrated by Paris couple Oliver and Lina Gee, you'll surely delight in Paris as seen from the eyes of a crocodile. Don't miss the informative and fun Paris facts…


Book cover of A Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition

Kathy Borrus Author Of Five Hundred Buildings of Paris

From my list on capturing the magic and history of Paris.

Why am I passionate about this?

I lived in Paris for six months when I researched and wrote my first Paris book, One Thousand Buildings of Paris, walking every quarter of Paris including some rather dicey areas. I discovered most Parisians don’t wander very far from their own neighborhoods, and casual tourists tend to stay in the center. The first time my boyfriend and I went to Paris together, I planned daily excursions to all the neighborhoods where he had never been. We became flaneurs (wanderers) at outdoor markets, small museums, parks, and we ventured into unknown spaces. There is always something fascinating to discover in Paris and new ways to gain a sense of history. 

Kathy's book list on capturing the magic and history of Paris

Kathy Borrus Why did Kathy love this book?

One of the photographs in my book, One Thousand Buildings of Paris, was the first apartment that Hemingway and his wife, Hadley, shared when they moved to Paris.

Hemingway’s description of the apartment and the period is illuminating and introduces the reader to the famous and infamous and the life they led after the end of WWI and during the Roaring 20s when Paris was the center of artistic life.

Hemingway also reveals his likes and dislikes and his writing life there, and, notwithstanding their friendship, his jealousy of F. Scott Fitzgerald. I’m not a great fan of Hemingway’s writing. I actually prefer Fitzgerald and especially The Great Gatsby, but I digress. 

A Moveable Feast reveals Paris as indeed a moveable feast to savor.

By Ernest Hemingway,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked A Moveable Feast as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Published posthumously in 1964, A Moveable Feast remains one of Ernest Hemingway's most beloved works. Since Hemingway's personal papers were released in 1979, scholars have examined and debated the changes made to the text before publication. Now this new special restored edition presents the original manuscript as the author prepared it to be published.

Featuring a personal foreword by Patrick Hemingway, Ernest's sole surviving son, and an introduction by the editor and grandson of the author, Sean Hemingway, this new edition also includes a number of unfinished, never-before-published Paris sketches revealing experiences that Hemingway had with his son Jack and…


Book cover of Murder on the Night Train to Paris

Lynn Ferguson Author Of Notes From The Valley

From my list on cozy mystery audiobooks with serial killers.

Why am I passionate about this?

The greatest mystery I face in life is, how is it that when I've just packed the dishwasher, I have to pack it yet again? But I love stories. There’s nothing more healing than a well-told story with characters and jokes and twists and turns. Each of these books contains some form of fictionalized domestic world where murders happen, but marriages and babies and falling in love do, too. We live in a time when the world is hard to navigate. All of these writers bring a mystery, the best of company, and the idea that even in the darkest of times, everything can turn out quite spiffingly.

Lynn's book list on cozy mystery audiobooks with serial killers

Lynn Ferguson Why did Lynn love this book?

Who doesn't want to be Posey Parker? She’s smart, she eats loads, and never gets tubby. She’s always gorgeous, though she’s not at all arrogant about it. Give Posey a compliment or a sandwich; she’ll take the sandwich every time.

On the negative side, she lives in the 1920s with the world still reeling from the first world war, and women’s rights decidedly sketchy. Also, she’s trapped on the Night Train to Paris with a sense of impending doom. (I totally identify with that, having traveled on the Glasgow to London sleeper.)

L.B. Hatheway has crafted a book that offers the best kind of mystery and a great understanding of the time's history, and Clare Wille voices it flawlessly. 

By L.B. Hathaway,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Murder on the Night Train to Paris as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

What if the City of Light holds nothing but darkness?

January, 1926

Invited aboard the glamourous Night Train to Paris, and tasked with investigating the disappearance of her best friend, Dolly Cardigeon, Posie Parker suddenly finds herself right in the middle of a murder!

Controversial society beauty, Lady Caroline Greenlow, is on her way to Paris Fashion Week. She always has a habit of rubbing people up the wrong way, but things take a dreadful turn when she is poisoned at dinner, and then another murder occurs soon after.

Just who exactly are their fellow passengers? Why is the Night…


Book cover of Life in Paris: Paris Fashion Weeks photographed by Meyabe
Book cover of Paris in Our View: Poems Selected by Shakespeare and Company
Book cover of Two Dozen Eggs

Share your top 3 reads of 2024!

And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.

1,175

readers submitted
so far, will you?

5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in Paris, presidential biography, and France?

Paris 390 books
France 941 books