Wine Country Mysteries series (3 eBooks) - Ellen Crosby

Ellen Crosby is the author of Moscow Nights (Piatkus, UK) and five books in the Virginia wine country series: The Merlot Murders, The Chardonnay Charade, The Bordeaux Betrayal, The Riesling Retribution and The Viognier Vendetta (Scribner, 2010). Most recently The Riesling Retribution was named a fiction finalist for the 2010 Library of Virginia People's Choice Award and is the 2010 US winner of the Gourmand World Cookbook Award for Wine Literature. Before writing fiction, Crosby was a freelance reporter for The Washington Post, Moscow correspondent for ABC Radio News, and an economist at the US Senate. After living overseas for many years, Crosby now resides in Virginia with her family.

Lucie Montgomery's semi-estranged brother, Eli, calls her in France to tell her their father, Leland, has been killed in a hunting accident on the family's five-hundred-acre Virginia vineyard. But the vineyard is now shabby and run-down and her siblings want to sell it. Then Lucie's godfather tells her Leland's death was no accident. With her greedy brother, hell-raising sister, and a seemingly cut-rate vintner hired by Leland just before he died, all the suspects are disturbingly close to home. Unsure whom she can trust, Lucie must uncover the truth-and oversee a successful harvest-to save the vineyard she loves.

Facing a freakish May freeze that threatens her vineyard, Lucie Montgomery is forced to hire a helicopter to fly over the vines warming the arctic air next to the grapes. But her luck in salvaging the harvest runs out when she discovers the body of Georgia Greenwood, a controversial local political candidate, lying near the fields. Georgia's husband Ross–Lucie's friend and doctor–immediately comes under suspicion. As the search for Georgia's killer escalates and grows more puzzling, Lucie crosses swords with her attractive but bull-headed winemaker Quinn Santori and confronts her own unwelcome feelings of jealousy over his new romance and job prospects. Then the suicide of a young vineyard worker appears to wrap up the murder investigation–or does it?

It has been a year since Lucie Montgomery took over running her family vineyard at the foothills of Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains. The Bordeaux Betrayal now sweeps her into a mystery that began more than two centuries ago in France and ends in murder not far from Montgomery Estate Vineyard.
When author and historian Valerie Beauvais turns up dead the night after a verbal brawl with a noted wine critic on the grounds of Mount Vernon, George Washington's home, Lucie is certain Valerie's death is related to something she knew concerning the authenticity of the priceless Washington Bordeaux.
As Lucie and her eccentric winemaker Quinn Santori bring in the last grapes of the season, Quinn's controversial past becomes intertwined with the murder and the rare wine, testing the bonds of their increasingly close relationship. New neighbors challenge Lucie for allowing a century-old hunting club to use her land for foxhunting; Mick Dunne, Lucie's ex-lover, comes back into her life; and her beloved French grandfather makes an unexpected visit that will rekindle painful memories some would prefer to forget.
As Lucie investigates the shadowy history of the Washington wine, she uncovers a web of deceit and betrayal and a long-forgotten scandal that affects not only the international wine world but her own as well.