Posts from the ‘whodunit’ Category

Jean-Pierre Alaux and Noël Balen on Tour: Nightmare in Burgundy

Nightmare in Burgundy Banner

Nightmare in Burgundy

Authors Jean-Pierre ALAUX and Noël BALEN

are featured for the 3rd time on France Book Tours!
After Treachery in Bordeaux, and Grand Cru Heist
meet again the famous wine maker detective with this 3rd volume!

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Jean-Pierre ALAUX and Noël BALEN

on  Tour

April 7-11, 2014

with

Nightmare In Burgundy

(translated by Sally PANE)

Website | Goodreads

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Genre: whodunit/cozy mystery

BISAC cat.: Mystery/Detective

***

e-release: March 18, 2014
ISBN: 978-1939474278

    p-release: July 31, 2014
ISBN: 978-1939474056
141 pages
***

Available  as a Kindle book in March
Paper: pre-order from your local bookstore

***

SYNOPSIS

The 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 spill to sharpen people’s memory? [provided by the publisher]

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Praise for this series

“I love good mysteries. I love good wine.
So imagine my joy at finding a great mystery about wine,
and winemaking, and the whole culture of that fascinating world.
And then I find it’s the first of a series.
I can see myself enjoying many a bottle of wine
while enjoying the adventures of Benjamin Cooker
in this terrific new series.”
— William Martin, New York Times bestselling author
of Back Bay and The Lincoln Letter

The series is being adapted to television in France
and is a huge success in France, Belgium and Switzerland.
Four episodes have currently been on the air.

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Alaux-Balen

©David Nakache

Jean-Pierre Alaux is a magazine, radio and television journalist
when he is not writing novels in southwestern France.
He is a genuine wine and food lover and recently won the Antonin Carême prize for his cookbook La Truffe sur le Soufflé, which he wrote with the chef Alexis Pélissou.
He is the grandson of a winemaker and exhibits a real passion for wine and winemaking. For him, there is no greater common denominator than wine.
He gets a sparkle in his eye when he talks about the Winemaker Detective series, which he coauthors with Noël Balen.
Noël lives in Paris, where he shares his time between writing, making records, and lecturing on music.
He plays bass, is a music critic and has authored a number of books about musicians in addition to his novel and short-story writing.

 ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

Translator Sally Pane studied French at State University of New York Oswego and the Sorbonne before receiving her Masters Degree in French Literature from the University of Colorado where she wrote Camus and the Americas: A Thematic Analysis of Three Works Based on His Journaux de Voyage.  Her career includes more than twenty years of translating and teaching French and Italian at Berlitz and at Colorado University Boulder.  She has worked in scientific, legal and literary translation; her literary translations include Operatic Arias; Singers Edition, and Reality and the Untheorizable by Clément Rosset.  She also served as the interpreter for the government cabinet of Rwanda and translated for Dian Fossey’s Digit Fund. In addition to her passion for French, she has studied Italian at Colorado University, in Rome and in Siena.  She lives in Boulder, Colorado with her husband.
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Sign up to receive their latest news and deals

***

VIRTUAL BOOK TOUR SCHEDULE

Monday, April 7
Review + Giveaway at Words And Peace

Tuesday, April 8
Review + Excerpt+ Giveaway at Mommasez…

Wednesday, April 9
Review + Giveaway at I Am, Indeed
Review + Giveaway at Valli’s Book Den

Friday, April 11
Review at Books Are Cool

Jean-Pierre Alaux and Noël Balen on Tour: Grand Cru Heist

Grand Cru Heist banner

Grand Cru Heist cover

Authors Jean-Pierre ALAUX and Noël BALEN

are back on France Book Tours!
After Treachery in Bordeaux,
meet again the famous wine maker detective with this 2nd volume!

*

Jean-Pierre ALAUX and Noël BALEN

on  Tour

April 1-5, 2014

with their whodunit

Grand Cru Heist

(translated by Anne TRAGER)

Website | Goodreads

***

SYNOPSIS

After Treachery in Bordeauxhere is another Epicurean whodunit in French wine country. Immerse yourself in French countryside and gourmet attitude with our wine-loving amateur sleuths. This time they gumshoe around the Loire Valley before heading back to Bordeaux.

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. From the Loire Valley to Bordeaux, in between a glass of Vouvray and a bottle of Saint-Émilion, the Winemaker Detective and his assistant Virgile turn PI to solve two murders and very peculiar heist. Who stole those bottles of grand cru classé? Take this Epicurean journey through France to solve the whodunit. [provided by the publisher]

Genre: whodunit/cozy mystery

BISAC cat.: Mystery/Detective

***

 e-release: January 30, 2014
ISBN: 978-1939474087

    p-release: June 24, 2014
ISBN: 978-1939474049
150 pages
***

Kindle link: http://amzn.to/1ctJ8Jm
Paper: pre-order from your local bookstore

***

Praise for this series

“I love good mysteries. I love good wine.
So imagine my joy at finding a great mystery about wine,
and winemaking, and the whole culture of that fascinating world.
And then I find it’s the first of a series.
I can see myself enjoying many a bottle of wine
while enjoying the adventures of Benjamin Cooker
in this terrific new series.”
— William Martin, New York Times bestselling author
of Back Bay and The Lincoln Letter

***

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Alaux-Balen

©David Nakache

Jean-Pierre Alaux is a magazine, radio and television journalist
when he is not writing novels in southwestern France.
He is a genuine wine and food lover and recently won the Antonin Carême prize for his cookbook La Truffe sur le Soufflé, which he wrote with the chef Alexis Pélissou.
He is the grandson of a winemaker and exhibits a real passion for wine and winemaking. For him, there is no greater common denominator than wine.
He gets a sparkle in his eye when he talks about the Winemaker Detective series, which he coauthors with Noël Balen.
Noël lives in Paris, where he shares his time between writing, making records, and lecturing on music.
He plays bass, is a music critic and has authored a number of books about musicians in addition to his novel and short-story writing.

ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

The translator, Anne Trager loves France so much she has lived there for over a half a century and just can’t seem to leave. What keeps her there is a uniquely French mix of pleasure seeking and creativity. Well, that and the wine. In 2011, she woke up one morning and said, “I just can’t stand it anymore. There are way too many good books being written in France not reaching a broader audience.” That’s when she founded Le French Book to translate some of those books into English. The company’s motto is “If we love it, we translate it,” and Anne loves crime fiction, mysteries and detective novels.
***
Follow Le French Book on Twitter @lefrenchbook | on Facebook
Sign up to receive their latest news and deals

***

VIRTUAL BOOK TOUR SCHEDULE

Tuesday, April 1
Review + Giveaway at Mommasez…

Wednesday, April 2
Review  at Books Are Cool

Thursday, April 3
Review + Excerpt + Giveaway at I Am, Indeed
Review + Giveaway at Queen Of All She Reads

Friday, April 4
Review + Excerpt + Giveaway at Bookalicious

Saturday, April 5
Review + Giveaway at Valli’s Book Den

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First Chapter First Paragraph — Treachery in Bordeaux

first paragraphEvery Tuesday,
Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea posts the first paragraph of her current read.
Anyone can join in.
Click on the logo to link your post.

I will share here the first paragraph of a book
in the Completed Tours category.

Treachery in Bordeaux
140 pages,

ISBN-13: 978-1939474025
Published  on October 9, 2012, by Le French Book, Inc.
First published in French (Fayard, 2004)

Buying links:

For your Amazon Kindle
For your Barnes & Noble Nook
For your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch
For your Kobo

***

The morning was cool and radiant. A west wind had swept the clouds far inland to the gentle hills beyond the city of Bordeaux. Benjamin Cooker gave two whistles, one short, the other drawn out, and Bacchus appeared from the high grass in the riverbank. He had that impertinent look that Irish setters get when you remind them that they are dogs. Cooker liked this clever and deceptively disciplined attitude. He would never roam his childhood landscapes with an animal that was too docile. The Médoc was still wild, despite its well-ordered garden veneer, and it would always be that way. In the distance, a few low wisps of fog were finishing their lazy dance along the Gironde estuary. it was nearly eleven and time to go home..

Le French Book website | The virtual book tour | My review

WHAT DO YOU THINK?
WOULD YOU KEEP READING?