Showing results by narrator "Simon Prebble" in All Categories

A small town holds fiercely on to its secrets. In the heart of Gascony, a fire ravages the warehouse of one of Armagnac's top estates, killing the master distiller. Wine expert Benjamin Cooker is called in to estimate the value of the losses. But Cooker and his assistant, Virgile, want to know more. How did the old alembic explode? Was it really an accident? Why is the estate owner, Baron de Castayrac, penniless? How legal are his dealings?

When world-renowned wine expert Benjamin Cooker's elderly father needs him most, the erudite consultant and his dashing assistant Virgile Lanssien are called away to Burgundy to orchestrate the harvest. More than just picking grapes, the Winemaker Detective must keep a delicate balance between an old-time vintner and his heir as a catastrophic hailstorm endangers some of France's most celebrated wines. Adding insult to injury, the brutal and mysterious murder of a grape picker sends shock waves through the winemaking world.

The year is 548, and Empress Theodora is dead of disease. Such is the belief of everyone in Constantinople, capital of the Roman Empire - everyone except Emperor Justinian, who orders John, his Lord Chamberlain, to find her murderer or suffer the consequences. There is no sign of foul play, but many of the aristocrats at the imperial court had good reason to want Theodora dead.

The average individual is far more likely to die in a car accident than from a communicable disease...yet we are still much more fearful of the epidemic. Even at our most level-headed, the thought of an epidemic can inspire terror. As Philip Alcabes persuasively argues in Dread, our anxieties about epidemics are created not so much by the germ or microbe in question - or the actual risks of contagion - but by the unknown, the undesirable, and the misunderstood.

It’s the day before Mike Frame’s 50th birthday, and his quiet, provincial life is suddenly falling apart. But perhaps it doesn’t matter because it’s not his life in the first place. He has a past that his partner, Miranda, and stepdaughter, Sam, know nothing about. Now Mike is seeing ghosts - a dead ex-lover, and an old friend who wants to reminisce. Mike can no longer ignore the contradiction between who he is and who he once was.

After Treachery in Bordeaux, and Grand Cru Heist, our Winemaker Detective leaves his native Bordeaux to go to Burgundy for a dream wine tasting trip to France's other key wine-making region. Between Beaune, Dijon and Nuits-Saint-Georges, it turns into a troubling nightmare when he stumbles upon a mystery revolving around messages from another era. What do they mean? What dark secrets from the deep past are haunting the Clos de Vougeot? Does blood need to be shed to sharpen people's memory?

Fine wines, dirty secrets. It's summer in Bordeaux. There's a heat wave, the vineyards are suffering, vintners are on edge, and wine expert Benjamin Cooker's daughter is visiting. A tragic car accident draws the winemaker detective and his assistant, Virgile, into a case where the stakes are very personal.

The heirs to one of the oldest Cognac estates in France face a hostile takeover by foreign investors. Renowned wine expert Benjamin Cooker is called in to audit the books. In what he thought was a sleepy provincial town, he is stonewalled, crosses paths with his first love, and stands up to high-level state officials keen on controlling the buyout. Meanwhile irresistible Virgile mingles with the local population until a drowning changes the stakes.

A serial killer is on the loose in Bordeaux. A local chief detective calls wine expert Benjamin Cooker to the crime scene of a brutal murder. The killer has left a strange calling card: 12 wine glasses lined up in a semi-circle with the first one filled with wine. Cooker is charged with the task of identifying the fabulous grand cru and is astonished by what he learns. A second victim is found, with two glasses filled. Is the killer intentionally leaving clues about his victims and his motives?

Dirty Laundry in Paradise. For a moment, my estimation of the good Mr. Brae had increased somewhat, as I gathered he didn’t want one of his servants taking the blame for a deed the poor soul hadn’t perpetrated. I glanced at Holmes to determine his take on the situation, but I wasn’t surprised that he had taken little notice of Mr. Brae. “Would you pass the milk, Watson?” Ignoring the man completely as one could ignore a bumbling buffoon, as Holmes had dubbed him after our previous encounter. Dutifully, I passed him the cream which he slowly poured into his tea.

Three compelling Sherlock Holmes mysteries in one book. Story one: "The Mystery of the Poisoned Tomb" Story two: "The Case of the Cracked Mirror" Story three: "The Mystery of the Faceless Bride" Set in the late 19th century, no fictional character is more renowned for his powers of thought and observation than Sherlock Holmes.

E.E. King delivers a collection of short stories that are original, funny, and always thought provoking. From a hilarious tale of an animal activist who can't get anything right to a man tasked with writing a guidebook for heaven. These tales will delight you.

The Feathernail and Other Gifts (or The Adventures of Emily Finfeather), is a tale of altruism and magic for mature children and immature adults. Emily Finfeather is an orphan who lives with her angry and silent grandmother in a dark, windy, old house. On a field trip to the zoo, Emily is locked inside the aviary by evil classmates. What she discovers there will change the shape of reality forever.

In January 532, mobs rule Constantinople, capital of the Roman Empire. Against a murderous backdrop lit by raging fires, John, chamberlain to Emperor Justinian, must find those seeking to use the Nika riots to dethrone the emperor.

Jackson is always eager to visit his aunt Sarah at her anthropological digs. This time she's in England, at Stonehenge, and Jackson's particularly excited to see the massive and mysterious stone formations in person. But then he sees a young man viciously attacked and witnesses a similar savage attack on his beloved aunt Sarah. A beast no one has ever seen before is on the prowl and Jackson must rush to stop it before it can kill again. Can he solve the mystery of the inhuman monster that is stalking the countryside - before it's too late?

On the seventy-fifth anniversary of Kristallnacht comes this untold story of a teenager whose act of defiance would have dire international consequences. On the morning of November 7, 1938, a seventeen-year-old Jewish refugee, Herschel Grynszpan, walked into the German embassy in Paris and in an act of desperation assassinated Ernst vom Rath, a low-level Nazi diplomat. He did it, he said, out “of love for my parents and for my people.”

Dirk Snigby is just your average ad man that happens to be working for the Prince of Darkness. Lucifer is tired of the overcrowding and wants a better pitch for heaven to relieve his work load. In this short story Dirk sets out to write a Zagat style guide to the afterlife.

In 1956, 23-year-old Colin Clark began work as a lowly assistant on the set of The Prince and the Showgirl, the film that united Sir Laurence Olivier with Marilyn Monroe. The blonde bombshell and the legendary actor were ill suited from the start. Monroe, on honeymoon with her new husband, the celebrated playwright Arthur Miller, was insecure, often late, and heavily medicated on pills. Clark was perceptive in his assessment of what seemed to be going wrong in Monroe's life and became her confidant and ally.

An absolute delight of a debut novel by William Kuhn - author of Reading Jackie: Her Autobiography in Books - Mrs Queen Takes the Train wittily imagines the kerfuffle that transpires when a bored Queen Elizabeth strolls out of the palace in search of a little fun, leaving behind a desperate team of courtiers who must find the missing Windsor before a national scandal erupts.

Pop diva Clarion Calhoun has packed the house with her celebrity appearance in Bath’s Theatre Royal production of I Am a Camera. But within moments of her much-anticipated onstage appearance, she’s pulled out of character as she screams and claws at her face. When tainted stage makeup is found to have caused the disfiguring burn, fingers point to her makeup artist. Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond investigates when the makeup artist is found dead, pushed from a catwalk far above the stage.