Download or read book The Dark Vineyard written by Martin Walker and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-07-26 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The second installment in the delightful, internationally acclaimed series featuring Bruno, Chief of Police: When a bevy of winemakers descend on Saint-Denis the idyllic town finds itself the center of an intense drama, with suspicious fires at the agricultural research station that is working on genetically-modified crops. Two young men—Max, an environmentalist who hopes to make organic wine, and Fernando, the heir to an American wine fortune—become rivals for the affections of Jacqueline, a flirtatious, newly arrived Québécoise student of wine. Events grow ever darker, culminating in two suspicious deaths, and Bruno finds that the problems of the present are never far from those of the past. "Captivating...Sure to appeal to readers with a palate for mysteries with social nuance and understated charm." —The Wall Street Journal "A gentle reminder to slow down and smell the grapes.... [Walker] beguiles the reader." —The New York Tiems Book Review "The real pleasure of the book is the place itself.... As readers are drawn into wine-stomping parties, truffle omelet dinners, and the aged dignity of a French hunting hound, the narrative tension gathers." —Houston Chronicle

Download or read book Mysteries of the French Countryside Bruno Chief of Police The Dark Vineyard Black Diamond written by Martin Walker and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2023-01-17 with total page 740 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From internationally acclaimed author Martin Walker comes the first three books in Mysteries of the French Countryside and an introduction to the world of Bruno, Chief of Police Benoît Courrèges, aka Bruno, is a policeman in St. Denis, a small town in the Périgord region of France. When trouble arises, Bruno is on the case, settling local disputes, tracking down lawbreakers, and solving tantalizing mysteries. From a disturbance in the wine business and threats against the truffle trade to murders of national and even international scale, Bruno deals with it all. In story after story, Walker weaves in familiar characters from past novels, whether they are helping Bruno on a case or helping him prepare a delicious meal. Mystery readers will delight in Bruno’s adventures, and hunger for more! “With Bruno in charge, there’s always time for one of those classic feasts that makes this series such a mouthwatering treat.”—The New York Times Book Review “Whether he’s preparing a gourmet dinner, enjoying a glass of wine, or solving a murder, it’s a pleasure to be in Bruno’s company.”—Publishers Weekly

Download or read book Bruno Chief of Police written by Martin Walker and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2009-03-24 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first installment in the delightful, internationally acclaimed series featuring Chief of Police Bruno. Meet Benoît Courrèges, aka Bruno, a policeman in a small village in the South of France. He’s a former soldier who has embraced the pleasures and slow rhythms of country life. He has a gun but never wears it; he has the power to arrest but never uses it. But then the murder of an elderly North African who fought in the French army changes all that. Now Bruno must balance his beloved routines—living in his restored shepherd’s cottage, shopping at the local market, drinking wine, strolling the countryside—with a politically delicate investigation. He’s paired with a young policewoman from Paris and the two suspect anti-immigrant militants. As they learn more about the dead man’s past, Bruno’s suspicions turn toward a more complex motive. "Enjoyable.... Martin Walker plots with the same finesse with which Bruno can whip up a truffle omelette, and both have a clear appreciation for a life tied to the land." —The Christian Science Monitor "A nice literary pairing with the slow-food movement.... [It is] lovely...to linger at the table." —Entertainment Weekly "A wonderfully crafted novel as satisfying as a French pastry but with none of the guilt or calories." —Tuscon Citizen's Journal

Download or read book The Dark Vineyard written by Martin Walker and published by . This book was released on 2011-08-31 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When a Californian wine mogul arrives in St. Denis with plans to buy half the valley and create a vast vineyard operation, Bruno, Chief of Police, feels his beloved town will be ruined. Then a body turns up in a vat of wine, and it seems someone is determined to stop the operation at any cost. It is up to Bruno to use his skills, tact and local knowledge to discover the truth.

Download or read book Dark Wine at Midnight written by Jenna Barwin and published by . This book was released on 2017-04-18 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dr. Cerissa Patel's a scientist, not a secret agent. But when the Lux order her to spy on the vampires she's trying to help, her duty to obey them leaves her no choice, not with the fate of humanity on the line.Her cover story seems easy as pie: become a vampire's envoy, move to Sierra Escondida, and sign-up investors from among the secret vampire communities to finance her biotech research lab. At least, it looks easy until an assassination attempt leaves the Hill vampires suspicious of her arrival. They don't want her--or her research lab--in their small town.Worse, she must ignore her growing attraction to Henry Bautista, a vampire winemaker with eyes the color of dark bourbon and just as intoxicating--who's hiding his own deep secrets. He's rich, dangerous, and as complex as the wines he makes, and he will do anything to stop her from hurting his town.With him watching her every move, she must uncover who's behind the vampire movement to enslave mortals--before Henry discovers what's hidden beneath her skin...Dark Wine at Midnight is book 1 in the Hill Vampire series.

Download or read book Black Diamond written by Martin Walker and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-08-30 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The third installment in thed elightful, internationally acclaimed series featuring Chief of Police Bruno. Something dangerous is afoot in St. Denis. In the space of a few weeks, the normally sleepy village sees attacks on Vietnamese vendors, arson at a local Asian restaurant, subpar truffles from China smuggled into outgoing shipments at a nearby market—all of it threatening the Dordogne’s truffle trade, worth millions of dollars each year, and all of it spelling trouble for Benoît “Bruno” Courrèges, master chef, devoted oenophile, and, most important, beloved chief of police. When one of his hunting partners, a noted truffle expert, is murdered, Bruno’s investigation into the murky events unfolding around St. Denis becomes infinitely more complicated. His friend wasn’t just a connoisseur of French delicacies, he was a former high-profile intelligence agent—and someone wanted him dead. As the strange crimes continue, Bruno’s detective work takes him from sunlit markets to dim cafés, from luxurious feasts to tense negotiations—from all of the paradisial pleasures of the region to its shadowy underworld—and reunites him with a lost love, an ambitious policewoman also assigned to the case. Filled with an abundance of food and wine (including, bien sûr, many, many truffles) and a soupçon of romance, Black Diamond is a deliciously entertaining concoction that delivers all the complexity and delights of the Dordogne itself.

Download or read book Dark Vineyard written by Martin Walker and published by HarperCollins Canada. This book was released on 2010-09-05 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When a Californian wine mogul arrives in St. Denis with plans to buy half the valley and create a vast vineyard operation, Bruno, Chief of Police, feels his beloved town will be ruined. Then a body turns up in a vat of wine, and it seems someone is determined to stop the operation at any cost. It is up to Bruno to use his skills, tact and local knowledge to discover the truth.

Download or read book Tangled Vines written by Frances Dinkelspiel and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2015-10-06 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On October 12, 2005, a massive fire broke out in the Wines Central wine warehouse in Vallejo, California. Within hours, the flames had destroyed 4.5 million bottles of California's finest wine worth more than $250 million, making it the largest destruction of wine in history. The fire had been deliberately set by a passionate oenophile named Mark Anderson, a skilled con man and thief with storage space at the warehouse who needed to cover his tracks. With a propane torch and a bucket of gasoline-soaked rags, Anderson annihilated entire California vineyard libraries as well as bottles of some of the most sought-after wines in the world. Among the priceless bottles destroyed were 175 bottles of Port and Angelica from one of the oldest vineyards in California made by Frances Dinkelspiel's great-great grandfather, Isaias Hellman, in 1875. Sadly, Mark Anderson was not the first to harm the industry. The history of the California wine trade, dating back to the 19th Century, is a story of vineyards with dark and bloody pasts, tales of rich men, strangling monopolies, the brutal enslavement of vineyard workers and murder. Five of the wine trade murders were associated with Isaias Hellman's vineyard in Rancho Cucamonga beginning with the killing of John Rains who owned the land at the time. He was shot several times, dragged from a wagon and left off the main road for the coyotes to feed on. In her new book, Frances Dinkelspiel looks beneath the casually elegant veneer of California's wine regions to find the obsession, greed and violence lying in wait. Few people sipping a fine California Cabernet can even guess at the Tangled Vines where its life began.

Download or read book Solomon s Vineyard written by Jonathan Latimer and published by Murder Room. This book was released on 2013-04-14 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'From the way her buttocks looked under the black silk dress, I knew she'd be good in bed' So begins the most hardboiled of Latimer's novels, whose notoriety meant that it was only published in unexpurgated form in the States in 1982, 40 years after its original publication. In this classic noir novel, St Louis private eye Karl Craven, who likes his steak rare, his liquor hard and his women fallen, arrives at the small town of Paulton to protect his wealthy client's daughter from a religious cult. He soon finds himself involved with various unsavoury characters, as well as a femme fatale named Princess, and proves more than a match for the worst of them.

Download or read book The Dark Vineyard written by Martin J. Walker and published by Knopf Publishing Group. This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The riveting sequel to Walker's internationally acclaimed "Bruno, Chief of Police," in which the Dordogne's great pleasures--wine, romance, and intrigue--threaten Bruno's beloved village of Saint-Denis.

Download or read book The Devil s Cave written by Martin Walker and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2013-07-09 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Another delightful installment in the internationally acclaimed series: It's spring in St. Denis. The village choir is preparing for its Easter concert, the wildflowers are blooming, and among the lazy whorls of the river a dead woman is found floating in a boat. This means another case for Bruno, the town’s cherished chief of police. With the discovery of sinister markings and black candles near the body, it seems to Bruno that the occult might be involved. And as questions mount—most notably about a troubling real estate proposal in the region and the sudden reappearance of an elderly countess—Bruno and his colleagues are drawn ever closer to a climactic showdown in the Gouffre de Colombac: the place locals call the Devil’s Cave.

Download or read book A Vineyard in Napa written by Doug Shafer and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2012-11-12 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the age of 47, when he a successful publishing executive and living with his wife and four children in an affluent Chicago suburb, John Shafer made the surprise announcement that he had purchased a vineyard in the Napa Valley. In 1973, he moved his family to California and, with no knowledge of winemaking, began the journey that would lead him, thirty years later, to own and operate what distinguished wine critic Robert M. Parker, Jr. called “one of the world’s greatest wineries.” This book, narrated by Shafer’s son Doug, is a personal account of how his father turned his midlife dream into a remarkable success story. Set against the backdrop of Napa Valley’s transformation from a rural backwater in the 1970s through its emergence today as one of the top wine regions in the world, the book begins with the winery’s shaky start and takes the reader through the father and son’s ongoing battles against killer bugs, cellar disasters, local politics, changing consumer tastes, and the volatility of nature itself. Doug Shafer tells the story of his own education, as well as Shafer Vineyards’ innovative efforts to be environmentally sustainable, its role in spearheading the designation of a Stags Leap American Viticultural Area, and how the wine industry has changed in the contemporary era of custom-crushing and hobbyist winery investors.

Download or read book Vineyard Shadows written by Philip R. Craig and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2001 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: J.W. Jackson abandoned Boston for the tranquil pleasures of Martha's Vineyard, hoping to leave the violence of the big city behind. But when the past comes looking for him in the guise of two brutal thugs, the former cop knows it is time to put down his fishing pole and start opening doors he'd hoped were closed forever. And when the man the hoodlums were searching for -- a face from Jackson's yesterday -- turns up seeking help, J.W. realizes that personal revenge should be the least of his concerns. Because the shadows darkening the island are longer and deadlier than he ever imagined. And if he can't stem the dark tide lapping at the shores of his beloved Vineyard, the new life he loves and everyone in it will be changed forever.

Download or read book The Vineyards in Alameda County written by California. Board of State Viticultural Commissioners and published by . This book was released on 1893 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Shadows in the Vineyard written by Maximillian Potter and published by Twelve. This book was released on 2014-07-29 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Journalist Maximillian Potter uncovers a fascinating plot to destroy the vines of La Romance-Conti, Burgundy's finest and most expensive wine. In January 2010, Aubert de Villaine, the famed proprietor of the Domaine de la Romance-Conti, the tiny, storied vineyard that produces the most expensive, exquisite wines in the world, received an anonymous note threatening the destruction of his priceless vines by poison—a crime that in the world of high-end wine is akin to murder—unless he paid a one million euro ransom. Villaine believed it to be a sick joke, but that proved a fatal miscalculation and the crime shocked this fabled region of France. The sinister story that Vanity Fair journalist Maximillian Potter uncovered would lead to a sting operation by some of France's top detectives, the primary suspect's suicide, and a dramatic investigation. This botanical crime threatened to destroy the fiercely traditional culture surrounding the world's greatest wine. Shadows in the Vineyard takes us deep into a captivating world full of fascinating characters, small-town French politics, an unforgettable narrative, and a local culture defined by the twinned veins of excess and vitality and the deep reverent attention to the land that runs through it.

Download or read book The Dark Vineyard written by and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Palmento written by Robert V. Camuto and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2010-09-01 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inspired by a deep passion for wine, an Italian heritage, and a desire for a land somewhat wilder than his home in southern France, Robert V. Camuto set out to explore Sicily's emerging wine scene. What he discovered during more than a year of traveling the region, however, was far more than a fascinating wine frontier.