“It’s a crime of passion,” Anne Trager says about Le French Book.
This small, independent publishing venture dedicated to bringing French-language books to an English-speaking audience also has a thing for food and wine by the looks of the catalog.
Top draws for wine, food and France lovers are the Winemaker Detective series, an immersion in French countryside and gourmet attitude with two amateur sleuths gumshoeing around French wine country, and the Gourmet Crimes series, a deliciously authentic culinary mystery series.
“It’s true,” Trager says, “I have a weakness for France’s unique mixture of pleasure seeking and creativity. Well, and for the wine. I also have great admiration for the way the French can enjoy a meal for hours and at the end still be talking about food.” Since 2012, Trager has been seeking out gems to translate and publish in English.
Gourmet Crimes
This new series is set in France offering a well-balanced blend of gastronomy and suspense with mouth-watering excursions into the regions of France.
Author Noël Balen, who also pens the made-for-TV Winemaker Detective Series, has teamed up with Vanessa Barrot and created a new female sleuth for this series, which combines local reality and fiction, historical fact and culinary anecdotes, recipes and local products, providing armchair travel, culinary delight, and mystery.
The first title in the series is Minced, Marinated, and Murdered. A routine assignment in Lyon, France’s traditional capital of gourmet food, turns bitter for food writer Laure Grenadier when a beloved chef is found murdered. A wave of panic follows with a second death, and Laure sets out to find the truth. As she reviews the city’s traditional bistros, interviews the town’s best chefs and local food producers, and shares stories and culinary lore with her photographer Paco Alvarez, she uncovers secrets and rivalries. But will she find the murderer before the city loses more of its master chefs?
Laure’s passion for food and deep knowledge of culinary history combine with a reporter’s natural curiosity and a particular Parisian chic, turning her into a natural sleuth in a city where food is so much more than a meal. Paco’s photographer’s eye brings the details to life, while murder and mayhem spice up the mix.
In this fun, satisfying, mouth-watering French mystery novel, authors Noël Balen and Vanessa Barrot whisk readers to France for a troubling mystery, local culinary anecdotes, recipes, home-grown products, and very human feelings.
The Good Life France calls it an “enthralling murder mystery” and “would challenge anyone not to want to visit Lyon and its restaurants after reading it.”
Noël Balen, writer and musician, has over thirty mysteries to his name. His co-author and wife Vanessa Barrot is a corporate lawyer who comes from a family of Parisian restaurant owners.
The Winemaker Detective Series
Noël Balen also writes this wine-country mystery series, this time with Jean-Pierre Alaux. The Wine Industry Network Advisor calls it “decadent, delicious, and delightful.”
The series delves into the underworld of a global luxury industry, where there’s money, deceit, death, crime, inheritance, jealousy—all the ingredients needed to distill a fine detective series! That and a decent dose of Epicurean enjoyment of fine food and beverage. It follows master winemaker Benjamin Cooker and his sidekick Virgile Lanssien in their adventures solving mysteries in vineyards throughout France and beyond. Each book is a homage to wine and winemakers.
Le French Book has other mysteries and thrillers as well, all by French authors, all translated into English, and all available worldwide. Check out their site: www.lefrenchbook.com.
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