Showing results by author "Lise McClendon" in All Categories

The next-to-youngest Bennett sister, Francie Bennett (blame it on Paris!) is a hard-charging attorney whose boyfriend Dylan Hardy invites her to join him in Paris to help with a client. When Axelle Fourcier left Paris behind after the student riots of 1968, she vowed never to go back. She made a life for herself in America as a professor. But now, a beloved aunt, aged 104, has died and left her an inheritance to be shared with a cousin she never met.

When Francie Bennett, fourth in the line of lawyer/sisters, comes under suspicion at her law firm, she is mortified to learn she must take a leave of absence. Just a formality, they say, but she is sure this is the end of her law career. Will she sit around her apartment and eat cheese, drink wine, and binge Netflix while it gets worked out? Zut alors! Non! She is off to Paris to help spring a student jailed for serious drug crimes. She stays with her sister Merle and her boyfriend, the debonair policier Pascal, while trying to navigate the murky waters of the French criminal system.

When Merle's husband dies suddenly the will is quite a shock. And so is an intriguing surprise - Harry left her a family home in a tiny French village. She had no idea he owned the house where he was born. Merle sets out to claim her inheritance, adolescent son in tow, and thus begins a sojourn reminiscent of A Year in Provence, or perhaps Under The Tuscan Sun.

Lise McClendon’s second Bennett Sisters mystery chronicles the traditional hunt for priceless European truffles, the unexpected thrill of romance overseas, the ups and downs of sisterly bonding, and murderous intrigue in the heart of France. The Girl in the Empty Dress is a delicate mix of sisterly laughs and international intrigue, sure to delight cozy mystery fans and armchair travelers alike.

Deep in the French countryside - as the country reels through rebellion, beheadings, and starvation - a goat herder named Odette is trying to survive. Just that is on her mind - survival. Since she marched to Versailles with a group of Parisian women to protest the high prices of wheat, her life has spun out of control. She's fled the capital for the countryside. But what will happen to her? Can she stay in the Dordogne, where the kindly farmers have taken pity on her?

Merle Bennett goes back to France - and her Frenchman - in this fifth installment of the Bennett Sisters mysteries. Sure that la belle France will cure all her ills and help her write a novel about the French Revolution, she sets out to prove her theory correct. Pascal, her Frenchman, scoffs at this. As a policeman, he knows France is pretty to look at but not all that pretty under surface. While Merle writes and renovates her stone cottage, Pascal encounters an old enemy, a man he put in prison years before. When Pascal disappears, Merle isn't sure if their relationship is over or something terrible has happened to Pascal.

When her sister volunteers to help renovate the two cottages she owns in France, Merle is happy to have company. The cottages are a disaster–especially one that has mostly been inhabited by rodents for years. But inside the cottage are surprises. A packet of letters dating from World War One intrigue Merle. What happened to this soldier who was writing to his girlfriend back in England? Does his last letter, telling her to forget him, mean something terrible happened to him?

Dead Flat is a mystery in three parts in the Bennett Sisters Mystery Series. Featuring Frenchman, Pascal d'Onscon. Pascal is a wine fraud policeman who is called out of the Dordogne to investigate a bottle scam in Champagne as a favor to his boss. Thus begins a whirlwind August for Pascal and Merle, as he must also rescue his sister from a bad domestic situation, investigate the suspicious death of a vintner, and decide if he will accept a desirable promotion that will take him to headquarters in Paris - and away from his life with Merle Bennett.

Stretched thin between her sisters in the US and her new life in France, Merle Bennett is feeling the strain of obligations. That is even before Pascal's grape harvest goes sideways, her father falls ill, and her older sister shows up in France unexpectedly. Her son Tristan and sister Stasia then inexplicably disappear.

When Elise Bennett, youngest of the five sisters, is invited to spend the long holiday break with her new boyfriend, Conor (from Lost in Lavender) she is thrilled. Who wouldn't be? A remote Welsh manor house, a chance to mix with the clan, long walks on the snowy hillsides - but things are not so simple in the countryside. Not with this family.

Whoever killed Shiloh Merkin hated her and wanted her dead. Her brother-in-law, Wade, is accused of the murder. An Indian activist and zealous defender of Native Montana lands, despised by Shiloh's New Age women's group, his knife appears to be the murder weapon. But Alix Thorssen, art dealer and forgery expert, knows there is no artistry in slashing a woman's throat, and believes Wade isn't the killer.

Facing a crossroads - both career-wise and personal - Elise, the youngest of the five Bennett Sisters, does what she does best: She runs away to think. This time, she runs to a farm in Provence that produces heaven-scented lavender for oils. The area is famous for the beautiful purple flower, the symbol of this southern region of France. Her sisters are stumped.

In December 1941 an enemy attack launched the United States of America into World War II when the Imperial Army of Japan surprised the Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Americans had been watching the Europeans battle for two years already; hopes were high that the US could remain out. But on December 7 all that changed. Later that week Germany and Italy declared war against the US. For Dorie Lennox, a private detective in Kansas City, like all Americans, the sudden and tragic entry into the war was traumatic. This short story takes place two weeks after Pearl Harbor, as the country ...

Seattle reporter Mimi Raynard is having a bad week. Her ex-husband is now her boss at the TV station and wants her head on a platter. When three prostitutes die of a suspicious heroin overdose Mimi gets the story, but in her nervous enthusiasm, manages to bungle it. The narcotics detective on the case tries to help, but both are outfoxed by the buxom intern. Desperate for a new job, Mimi takes a friend's advice and dresses up as a Russian Mafia madam for a resume tape she has no intention of sending out.

Pascal d'Onscon, once terrorizing wine fraud scammers across southern France, is now pushing papers for the French bureaucracy in the modern Cité du Vin in Bordeaux. But not for long. He dreams of being a vintner, his hands in the dirt, the grape on his tongue, blending his very own creation: a bottle of wine with his own label. His companion, Merle Bennett, the middle of five lawyer sisters, has her own aspirations. Two tiny cottages are begging to be renovated for summer rentals. Will the person camping in the back garden scuttle her plans?

After the climactic events at the end of Château des Corbeaux, there were still a few loose ends. These are tied together in this bonus epilogue, The Tomb. Read on for all the juicy secrets revealed in the ancient sarcophagus found in the ruins of the abbey at the vineyard. This bonus story is for readers who have already read Château des Corbeaux (Castle of Ravens). It will not make sense to you unless you read the full novel first! Readers who would like to join Lise McClendon's mailing list can get this epilogue as part of the program. Visit www.lisemcclendon.com to get more information.

Just because Jonny Knobel hasn't touched the accordion for years means nothing to his father and his beloved polka band. After years in the city, small-town Minnesota whiplashes Jonny until he runs into the college girls doing field work next door. The mysteriously rude Isabel Yancey, the crew chief, arrives with her own fresh heartache. Can two such different people see eye to eye?

It should have been simple, this finding the next-of-kin. But for Officer Cody Byrne, the explosion that injures the Shakespeare professor is more than suspicious. So begins the unraveling of a man's life, a man's secrets, his loves and birthright, as Cody follows his trail to Washington, DC, then London, trying to glean something of his shadowed past from the Renaissance documents he left behind.

Aspiring chef Hannah Wendt has a multitude of talents - prowess in the kitchen and in the bedroom - but also a penchant for disposing of bothersome chefs. Wronged by those who steal her recipes, ridicule her weight, and denigrate her talents, Hannah has turned in her apron as sous chef and food stylist to plow new territory - her overpowering hunger for revenge. Hooked on how tasty payback can be, soon she is bumping off famous chefs who've burned her ego with spectacular culinary flair.

Art expert Alix Thorssen is asked to appraise the charred ruins of a friend's local gallery. The tragedy doubles when artist Ray Thornton's body is found among the debris. The death is ruled a suicide; the fire, arson. Case closed. But not for Alix, who doesn't believe the body was Thornton's.