Bill Peschel conducts an interview with Ellen Crosby, the Virginia writer about “The French Paradox,” the 11th book in her best selling Wine Country mystery series.
Lucie Montgomery’s discovery of her grandfather’s Parisian romance unlocks a series of shocking secrets in the gripping new Wine Country mystery.
In 1949, during her junior year abroad in Paris, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis bought several inexpensive paintings of Marie-Antoinette by a little-known 18th century female artist. She also had a romantic relationship with Virginia vineyard owner Lucie Montgomery’s French grandfather – until recently, a well-kept secret.
Seventy years later, Cricket Delacroix, Lucie’s neighbor and Jackie’s school friend, is donating the now priceless paintings to a Washington, DC museum. And Lucie’s grandfather is flying to Virginia for Cricket’s 90th birthday party, hosted by her daughter Harriet. A washed-up journalist, Harriet is rewriting a manuscript Jackie left behind about Marie-Antoinette and her portraitist. She’s also adding tell-all details about Jackie, sure to make the book a bestseller.
Then on the eve of the party a world-famous landscape designer who also knew Jackie is found dead in Lucie’s vineyard. Did someone make good on the death threats he’d received because of his controversial book on climate change? Or was his murder tied to Jackie, the paintings, and Lucie’s beloved grandfather?
About Ellen Crosby
Ellen Crosby is the author of the Virginia wine country mysteries, two mysteries featuring international photojournalist Sophie Medina, and “Moscow Nights,” a standalone. “Bitter Roots,” the 12th book in the wine country series, will be out 1/29/21 in the UK, 4/5/22 in the US and 3/1/22 as an ebook.
Before writing fiction, Crosby worked as a freelance reporter for The Washington Post, an economist at the U.S. Senate, and Moscow reporter for ABC Radio News. She lives with her husband in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. after spending many years living abroad in England, France, Switzerland, Spain, Italy and the former Soviet Union.
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The Wine Country Series