Showing results by narrator "Simon Prebble" in All Categories

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.

Edgar Award Winner, 1981 From a New York Times–bestselling author, a "solid winner in just about any mystery/adventure race" featuring a private eye targeting racetrack corruption (Kirkus Reviews). Dick Francis, Edgar Award–winning master of mystery and suspense, takes you into the thrilling...

Three compelling Sherlock Holmes mysteries in one book, including "The Game of Cat and Mouse": "The interior was dark, and neither of us searched for a lamp or switch. There came a ticking of some clock or another. And the sound of a dripping faucet somewhere in the house was like a hammer to an anvil. Our breaths were loud, but my heart sounded louder to me...."

In this hypnotic novel of psychological suspense, a homeless man is found starved to death in the garage of a ritzy London home. The police chalk it up to an unfortunate accident, but a journalist, Michael Deacon, is intrigued. Amanda Powell, a socialite whose wealthy husband vanished five years...

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.

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?

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?

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.

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?

Jasper Fforde's bestselling Thursday Next series has delighted readers of every genre with its literary derring-do and brilliant flights of fancy. In The Big Over Easy, Fforde takes a break from classic literature and tumbles into the seedy underbelly of nursery crime. Meet Inspector Jack Spratt...

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.

Stephen Hawking’s phenomenal, multimillion-copy bestseller, A Brief History of Time, introduced the ideas of this brilliant theoretical physicist to readers all over the world. Now, in a major publishing event, Hawking returns with a lavishly illustrated sequel that unravels the mysteries of...

It’s the day before Mike Frame’s fiftieth 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. Now Mike is seeing...

Peter Diamond is tasked to run security for a wedding. Seems a bit beneath his extraordinary detective talents, as well as his title as head of Bath's CID, but this isn't your run-of-the-mill ceremony: the bride and groom belong to families on opposite ends of the law - and someone is trying to sabotage the nuptials by taking out a hit on the father of the bride.

Now a Peacock series adaptation starring Oscar winner Eddie Redmayne One of the most celebrated thrillers ever written, The Day of the Jackal is the electrifying story of an anonymous Englishman who, in the spring of 1963, was hired to assassinate General Charles de Gaulle. France was infuriated...

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.

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.