Murder Voila

Murder, Voila! shows just how far Jules has come in the three years since the EMP stranded her in Provence. Limited electricity has come back to the area and phone lines are back up—at least for the sick and elderly. Jules continues to make her living as a private investigator although she still struggles with the language and life is full of rose wines, amazing food and the scent of lavender everywhere. On top of all that, she’s getting married! Just when life seems perfect with her pending nuptials to the Chabanel Chief of Police, his contentious mother comes to town to stop the wedding—and ends up dead. Will Luc be able to see past his mother’s murder and the fact that it appears as if one of Jules’ elderly roommates did the honors?

My name is Jules Hooker. I have lived through a few crappy moments in my life—and with a name like Hooker, you can just imagine—but nothing, nothing, compares to the two intensely and world-shatteringly crappy things that happened to me this last June. Three, I guess, if you count Gilbert. After my boyfriend dumped me on the day I thought he was going to propose, I’d have to say two other really bad things happened last June. The first would have to be the dead body I discovered in the rental house in France where I went to get over being dumped. The second—and very possibly I should have led with this—was the dirty bomb that exploded over the Riviera throwing me and everyone else in France back to the 1950s. So now I’m stranded here—trying to make a living by solving murders the old fashioned way — without help from DNA, databases, CSI crime labs or the police. And I’m doing it in France. Where I do not speak the language. During the apocalypse. Sound like fun?

The Cote d’Azur is a timeless epitome of beauty, from its lush green hills to its azure waters and white sandy beaches. Monaco has always been the jewel right in the center of the Riviera, a sparkling example of incomparable wealth and beauty. But when Laurent and Grace disappear on an antique buying trip to Monaco that should only take a few hours, the police suggest they ran off together. Maggie of course knows that cannot be the case. With only a contrary off-duty detective from Aix who never liked her, Maggie will plumb the underbelly of Monaco's gambling dens to find her loved ones--hopefully, before they disappear forever with Maggie right along with them.

It was a dark and spooky Halloween night in Provence... Maggie and Laurent embark on a chilling adventure when their car breaks down on their way to a village Halloween party. Dressed as French Resistance Fighters, the pair take refuge from the coming storm in an old villa set far back from the road where they meet an old woman who thinks the war is still going on. Believing them to be fellow Resistance fighters like herself, Valène Lavallière reveals her tragic story of forbidden love and a heart-stopping secret from nearly eighty ago. As the storm builds outside, Maggie and Laurent soon realize that not everything they are seeing is the truth and the secrets that the old woman harbors could very well make the morning after this Halloween night one they never live to see.

With the wine harvest behind them, things had just started to calm down for Maggie and Laurent in their French village of Saint-Buvard when a team of food industry entrepreneurs and celebrity judges arrived to put on a contest to decide in a blind taste test which country makes the best chocolate éclairs—the Brits, the Americans, the Germans or the French. When one of the contestants ends up stabbed to death, the suspect is Maggie’s close friend. Maggie will need to find a way past the woman's obvious motive and the damning circumstantial evidence to help her friend—without putting herself or Laurent in the hot seat in the process.

Is there a connection between the cat found napping in the flour barrel of the newest bistro and the dead American chef in the meat freezer? When it comes to Maggie Newberry and the cranky villagers of St-Buvard, how could there not be? Once more back in Provence, Maggie finds her hands full with village politics ratcheting up to nuclear level, her BFF back on her living room couch—this time with a snotty teenager in tow—and a full-blown riot developing over the brand new American-owned bistro. When the fractious American chef ends up dead, Maggie will need to find out who killed her—and fast—before the chef’s killer decides that two dead Americans in the village are better than one.

When her French chef boyfriend inherits an ancient vineyard in Provence, Maggie Newberry leaves Atlanta for the tiny village of St-Buvard and the rich tastes, smells and sights of French country life. But murder has gone long before them and follows close behind.

When the City of Light goes very dark... Claire Baskerville and her expat book club are accustomed to diving into thrilling narratives, but nothing could prepare them for a field trip into the shadowy depths of the Paris catacombs that ends in the murder of one of their members. Once the Parisian police arrest the leader of the book club as their prime suspect, Claire knows she has to do what she can to make sure the police aren’t wrong. In a race against time, Claire will need to navigate the intricate maze of underground tunnels and confront her own fears, even as she grapples with the shocking revelation that the killer is someone she knows well. This tale of murder and betrayal will keep you turning pages late into the night as you explore beneath the streets of Paris into its heart-stopping underworld.