Hoping for a fresh start in Tuscany, Italy, farm-to-table cooking school owner Nell Valenti finds her new business in danger when a visitor is poisoned by the top secret marina recipe of a famous chef.
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Hoping for a fresh start in Tuscany, Italy, farm-to-table cooking school owner Nell Valenti finds her new business in danger when a visitor is poisoned by the top secret marina recipe of a famous chef.
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Fine. Mass market (rack) paperback. Glued binding. 304 p. A Tuscan Cooking School Mystery, 2. In Stock. 100% Money Back Guarantee. Brand New, Perfect Condition, allow 4-14 business days for standard shipping. To Alaska, Hawaii, U.S. protectorate, P.O. box, and APO/FPO addresses allow 4-28 business days for Standard shipping. No expedited shipping. All orders placed with expedited shipping will be cancelled. Over 3, 000, 000 happy customers.
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Seller's Description:
New. Mass market (rack) paperback. Glued binding. 304 p. A Tuscan Cooking School Mystery, 2. In Stock. 100% Money Back Guarantee. Brand New, Perfect Condition, allow 4-14 business days for standard shipping. To Alaska, Hawaii, U.S. protectorate, P.O. box, and APO/FPO addresses allow 4-28 business days for Standard shipping. No expedited shipping. All orders placed with expedited shipping will be cancelled. Over 3, 000, 000 happy customers.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
Fair. An acceptable and readable copy. All pages are intact, and the spine and cover are also intact. This item may have light highlighting, writing or underlining through out the book, curled corners, missing dust jacket and or stickers.
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New in new dust jacket. New, Publisher overstock, may have small remainder mark. Excellent condition, never read, purchased from publisher as excess inventory.
Plans are coming together at Villa Orlandini to open the farm-to-table cooking school. Their first weeklong class will bring a group of gastro-tourists from America to learn all about making marinara sauce and will include Chef Orlandini revealing his mystery ingredient in his famous marinara recipe. They hit a few bumps in the road with their plans as they work through the logistics of keeping their guests involved and happy. Nell has an inkling that one member of the group is a private detective sent by her father. Another member of the group is rude and is only there because his wife dragged him along. She is excited to be there and is determined not to let her husband ruin her trip. The rest of the group all have their flaws and are pretty disrespectful. When one of the group is rushed to the hospital and dies Nell realizes there is a killer in their midst. A murder is bad, but someone dying the first week they are open could seal the fate of the school forever. Nell knows she needs to find the killer and save the school but she could end up the killer's next victim if she isn't careful.
All the people we met at Villa Orlandini in the first book are back. Nell and Pete are getting closer. Chef O. is excited to teach but quickly becomes infatuated with one of his new students which causes some turmoil in the kitchen. The new characters all seem to have something to hide. The murder happens later in the story but the victim was not a surprise. I wanted to reach into the book and kill him myself. The language was still of bit of a problem but Nell is learning more Italian and is finding ways to communicate with people at the villa. It was still necessary to bring in a translator after the murder and Pete translated other times. The translations for us readers still messed with the flow of the story for me.
The murder mystery was very well-plotted and I was surprised with all the connections that were revealed. That being said I had a certain character in my sights almost immediately after the murder because I quickly eliminated the other suspects. I just needed the motive to connect my thinking and that wasn't revealed until the end. I was a little put off by Nell's investigation this time. Her snooping and theories were a little over the top at times.
I do enjoy Ms. Cole's right style. She really knows how to set the scene and bring it to life, Every room at the villa was easily visualized. There was a huge flower delivery too and I could almost smell them from the descriptions. The author delivered up plenty of humor throughout the entire story. The Bari sisters are absolutely priceless.
All the talk of marinara did tempt my tastebuds. Thankfully we eat Italian inspired food often around here.
Crime of the Ancient Marinara was a nice little escape to Tuscany. The characters were entertaining and the mystery very interesting. The ending did leave me wanting to know what was going to happen next at Villa Orlandin, so I am looking forward to the next book in this series.
