Showing results by narrator "Simon Prebble" in All Categories

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.

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 step-daughter Sam know nothing about, lived under another name amidst the turbulence of the revolutionary armed struggle of the 1970s. Now Mike is seeing ghosts: a dead ex-lover and an old friend who wants to reminisce.

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.

In his 11th novel, Tim Powers takes his unique brand of speculative fiction into uncharted territory, instilling the old-fashioned espionage novel with a healthy dose of the supernatural. As a young double agent infiltrating the Soviet spy network in Nazi-occupied Paris, Andrew Hale finds himself caught up in a secret, even more ruthless war. Two decades later, a coded message draws Professor Andrew Hale back into Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

Simon Malmain, the Earl of Falconer and chief enforcer of the Guardians, is transformed into a unicorn by the evil magic of Lord Drayton. Now only a virgin can save him! New York Times best-selling author M. J. Putney has won two RITAs and a Romantic Times Career Achievement Award.

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?

The year is 1714. Daniel Waterhouse has returned to England, where he joins forces with his friend Isaac Newton to hunt down a criminal gang attempting to blow up Natural Philosophers with "Infernal Devices," or time bombs. Unbeknownst to Daniel, however, Newton has an ulterior motive: to wrest the Solomonic Gold from the control of his arch-enemy, the master counterfeiter Jack the Coiner, a.k.a Jack Shaftoe, King of the Vagabonds.

In the fall of 1941, Anglo-American journalist John Russell is still living in Berlin, tied to the increasingly alien city by his love for two Berliners: his 14-year-old son, Paul, and his longtime girlfriend, Effi. Forced to work for both German and American intelligence, he's searching for a way out of Germany. Can he escape and take Effi with him?

Forensic expert Wagner has crafted a volume that stands out from the plethora of recent memoirs of contemporary scientific detectives. By using the immortal and well-known Sherlock Holmes stories as her starting point, Wagner blends familiar examples from Doyle's accounts into a history of the growth of forensic science, pointing out where fiction strayed from fact.

The trials of Dr. Daniel Waterhouse and the Natural Philosophers increase one-hundred fold in an England plagued by the impending war and royal insecurities - as the beautiful and ambitious Eliza plays a most dangerous game as double agent and confidante of enemy kings.

Lady Priscilla Dalloway’s twin brother took a job as trainer to Lord Cromarty - and then promptly disappeared. For Pris, finding her brother means seducing notorious cad Dillon Caxton. Dillon claims to have set aside his devilish ways and forged an impeccable reputation as Keeper of the Register for racehorses. He resists all women, and lets absolutely no one view the information he safeguards. But Lady Priscilla Dalloway is no ordinary temptress and she means to work her way into Dillon’s books. 

Charles Morwellan, eighth Earl of Meredith, knows he must marry, but he plans to do so on his own terms. So, after years of escaping the clutches of would-be wives, it is quite a shock when he is refused by the beautiful Sarah Conningham.

Summer, 1939. British journalist John Russell has just been granted American citizenship in exchange for agreeing to work for American intelligence when his girlfriend, Effi, is arrested by the Gestapo. Russell hoped his new nationality would let him safely stay in Berlin with Effi and his son, but now he's being blackmailed.

In the year 1689, a cabal of Barbary galley slaves, including one “Half-Cocked Jack” Shaftoe, devises a daring plan to win freedom and fortune. A great adventure ensues that will place the intrepid band at odds with the mighty and the mad, with alchemists, Jesuits, great navies, pirate queens, and vengeful despots across vast oceans and around the globe.