Evil Under the Tuscan Sun

Nell Valenti is at ease when managing a farm-to-table cooking school in sun-dappled Tuscany but begins to feel the heat when tasked with catching a killer.

When a wealthy New York philanthropist pays top dollar for a private four-day ziti workshop, Nell Valenti wants everyone at the Villa Orlandini Cooking School focused on the task at hand. But complications abound when Nell’s boyfriend, Pete Orlandini, rushes to Rome for an unexpected business trip; Chef Orlandini is more preoccupied with a potential spot on an American cooking show than with preparing for the workshop; and an uninvited woman sneaks into the villa to inspect Pete’s olive grove. The last disturbance proves deadly, and when the woman’s body is found in the grove, Nell must investigate before her hopes for the workshop, like the olives, are crushed.

Nell now has another item on her checklist - look into the stranger’s past while keeping the Orlandinis out of trouble and the wealthy ziti lovers happy. Then Nell discovers that for at least one of the Orlandinis, the murder victim was not such a stranger after all, and that when a detective goes digging in Italy, she’d better be ready for truffle.