Showing results by narrator "Simon Prebble" in All Categories

In this science-fiction classic, a shooting star seen in the skies over Victorian England heralds an alien invasion. The Martians, in need of resources, have been shot from Mars via a huge space gun and have landed in Southern England, where they quickly overwhelm its inhabitants. As the battle for Earth begins, our unnamed narrator struggles to return to his wife amidst the fighting and devastation.

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.

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?

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.

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?

France's top wine expert Benjamin Cooker sets off to enjoy the delights of Vienna, a romantic ride down the Danube, a gourmand's visit to Budapest, and a luxury train through the enchanting Hungarian countryside. All too soon, stolen wallets, disappearing passports, guides who are a bit too obliging, and murder mar the trip. Meanwhile, in Bordeaux, Cooker's handsome assistant Virgile faces an annoying rival and a mildew crisis in the vineyards just as Cooker's lab technician is the victim of a mugging.

Wine expert Benjamin Cooker travels to the French capital, where he is called to help care for some vineyards in Montmartre, a neighborhood full of memories for him. He stops in on an old friend. Arthur Solacroup left the Foreign Legion to open a wine shop good enough to be in the Cooker Guide. But an attempted murder brings the past back into the present. But which past? The winemaker detective and his assistant, Virgile, want to know more, and their investigation leads them from the sands of Djibouti to the vineyards of Côte du Rhône.

One winter day in Paris, renowned wine critic Benjamin Cooker's world gets turned upside down when his car gets highjacked. He loses his treasured tasting notebook and his feeling of safety. To recover, he retreats to the region around Tours, sure that the wine and off-season calm will restore is sense of self. There a flamboyant British dandy, a spectacular blue-eyed blond, a zealous concierge and touchy local police disturb his well-deserved rest.

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.

A business magnate calls on wine expert Benjamin Cooker to kick-start his new wine business in Beaujolais, sparking bitter rivalries. Can the Winemaker Detective and his assistant keep calculating real estate agents, taciturn winegrowers, dubious wine merchants, and suspicious deaths from delaying delivery of the world-famous Beaujolais Nouveau?

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?

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.

In the 1840s, Charles Dickens wrote five short stories with strong social and moral messages. "The Cricket on the Hearth: A Fairy Tale of Home", is the third of these stories. Following the home life of John Peerybingle, the story introduces the many people in John's family and life, along with a cricket that acts as the guardian angel of the family. Like its predecessors, this story also contains heavy social and moral implications.

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.

Martin Simmond’s father tells him, “Never trust a musician when he speaks about love.” The advice comes too late. Martin already loves Dovidl Rapoport, an eerily gifted Polish violin prodigy whose parents left him in the Simmonds’s care before they perished in the Holocaust. For a time the two boys are closer than brothers. But on the day he is to make his official debut, Dovidl disappears. Only 40 years later does Martin get his first clue about what happened to him.

Against a vivid backdrop of history, Danielle Steel tells a compelling story of love and war, acts of faith and acts of betrayal…and of three generations of women as they journey though years of loss and survival, linked by an indomitable devotion that echoes across time. For the Wittgenstein...

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.”

The Hunter from the Woods marks the much-anticipated return of Michael Gallatin, the lycanthropic hero of Robert McCammon’s 1989 classic, The Wolf’s Hour. These all-new, interlinked stories offer a full measure of McCammon’s trademark narrative excitement, and comprise a fascinating composite portrait of a unique fictional creation.

Disaster strikes the vineyards in Alsace. Vintners are tense and old grudges surface. The Winemaker Detective's reputation is on the line as he must find the cause before the late harvest starts. Winter is in the air in Alsace and local customs are sowing trouble, piquing the curiosity of the famous winemaker from Bordeaux, Benjamin Cooker. While the wine expert and his assistant Virgile settle into their hotel in the old city of Colmar, distinguished vineyards are attacked. Is it revenge?