Maximillian Potter was not an oenophile, or even a wine drinker, when he went to Burgundy for Vanity Fair to cover the attempted poisoning of vines at the globally venerated vineyards of the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti in a precious area of Burgundy called Le Côte D'Or. It's a good true crime story with a clever perp and cleverer cops, and Potter paces it well. But, the real story in his new book, Shadows in the Vineyard: The True Story of the Plot to Poison the World's Greatest Wine, is about his immersion into the rarified world of extravagantly expensive wines, the people who make them and the terroir, that mystical fusion of soil and microclimate, that gives a wine its character and quality. Through Potter's fresh eyes, we meet Aubert de Villaine, the charming, dedicated Grand Patron and proprietor of the famed Domaine, and his not-always-charming partners and extended family. And we learn the history of Burgundian wines and vineyards. If only the audio came with a sample to sip and sigh over. Donald Corren reads well but could have used another week at Berlitz.

HUNGERS AND VOWS
A true Parisienne, 20-year-old Lisette and her adoring husband, André, relocate to the Provençal village of Roussillon to care for his aging grandfather, Pascal. Lisette struggles with small-town life, missing the Paris cafés but, even more, the art galleries she had yearned to work in. But Pascal, a former salesman of Provençal ochre pigments, had his own life in art. He had befriended Pissarro and Cézanne, trading frames for paintings and collecting unique memories. As Lisette grows to love Pascal, she begins a list of "hungers and vows," her must-do life list. Susan Vreeland, whose spécialité is twining her novels around art and artists, sets Lisette's List, performed with Gallic finesse by Kim Bubbs, in the years just before and after WWII. André enlists early and is lost early. He hid Pascal's paintings from the Germans before he left and finding them becomes Lisette's quest—a quest that leads her to new love, forgiveness and the deepest regard for great art.

TOP PICK IN AUDIO
Chief Inspector Armand Gamache has retired from the Sûreté du Québec to the healing peace and happy quiet of Three Pines, but, as he knows so well, danger, darkness and murder are never far off. When his dear friend—and now famed painter—Clara Morrow tells him that her husband, Peter, has not returned as promised on the one-year anniversary of their separation, he and Jean-Guy Beauvoir, his former second-in command, know they must help. The Long Way Home, Louise Penny's 10th Gamache novel, follows their search—deep into Clara and Peter's past and into the mystery of what makes one artist great, another mediocre and another envious enough to kill. This is Penny-perfect: A crime with tantalizing twists, superbly drawn characters, keenly conjured settings and, now, she lets us hear the muffled heartbeat of artistic expression. With Ralph Cosham's consummate narration, the whole is far more than the sum of its parts.

 

This article was originally published in the October 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Penny (How the Light Gets In) again engages her wonderfully drawn characters in a psychological mystery. Ralph Cosham returns as narrator, mesmerizing listeners as he spins Penny's tale of the search for local man Peter Morrow. Armand Gamache, now a contentedly retired member of the Three Pines community, is drawn into the mystery by Peter's wife, Clara, when Peter does not reappear as promised after a one-year separation. Penny's gift of incorporating spirituality, philosophy, occasional glimpses of magical realism, and, above all, fine character development into an intriguing psychological mystery results in a breathtaking conclusion. Don't be surprised if you really catch your breath and shed a tear or two. VERDICT A marvelous entry in a continually amazing series. Recommended to those who enjoy the character development, intricate plotting, and psychological elements in novels by Charles Todd, Craig Johnson, and Colin Dexter. ["Each inhabitant of Three Pines is a distinct individual, and the humor that lights the dark places of the investigation is firmly rooted in their long friendships, or, in some cases, frenemyships," read the starred review of the Minotaur: St. Martin's hc, LJ 7/14.]—Sandra C. Clariday, Tennessee Wesleyan Coll., Athens

Officially retired, former chief of homicide Armand Gamache is at his beloved Quebec village of Three Pines, healing in mind and body after his ordeal in 2013's How the Light Gets In, when a neighbor, celebrated artist Clara Morrow, asks him to find her estranged husband. Peter Morrow, also an artist, had departed Three Pines the previous year, promising to return on a specific day to discuss the status of their marriage. He didn't make it and Clara is concerned. So is Gamache, who, as Penny has it, sees the shadow of murder even on sunny days. Thus begins a long, long journey during which Gamache, his loyal former assistant and now son-in-law, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, Clara, and some of the other delightfully eccentric villagers have an assortment of adventures. Cosham, who has been this series' narrator for a while, has a comforting, avuncular British accent. To this he smoothly blends in a French influence that becomes more apparent in his pronunciation of Canadian names, places, and Quebecois dialogue. Cosham voices Gamache with a wary, almost fearful caution as he approaches the new case, but as the search for the missing painter goes from Toronto to Paris to a desolate spot on the St. Lawrence River, his voice grows stronger as his energy level rises. Jean-Guy, too, sounds more assertive and alive. Cosham's vocal interpretations are mainly subtle—Clara, for example, doesn't sound very different from Gamache's wife, Raine-Marie—but his version of the village's eccentric old poet, Ruth, has a distinctive sharpness not unlike that of the latter day Katharine Hepburn. A Minotaur hardcover.(Sept.)