The Riesling Retribution

Listeners may wish to sip a glass of Riesling while they listen to this, as the mellow feeling produced by the wine will nicely complement the narrator's drawling voice. When a tornado rips through Lucie Montgomery's vineyard in Atoka, Virginia, it leaves an unearthed grave in its wake. This sets tongues wagging, and Lucie becomes determined to protect her father's name. Narrator Christine Marshall's voicing of Lucie is clear and consistent. While she is less successful with a couple of the supporting characters, she does a great job with the young male undergraduate student, the old village gossip, and Lucie' s brother when he has imbibed a little too much. These last two are particularly amusing. A.E.B. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

September 1, 2009
This 2002 first novel in Kenyon's (www.sherrilynkenyon.com) "New York Times" and "USA Today" best-selling "Dark-Hunter" serieswhose later entries are also available from Macmillan Audio and BBC Audiobooks Americafeatures Julian of Macedon, trapped within a book for two millennia and sex slave to whomever summons him. The reading by Christine Louise Marshall, who voices "The New Yorker" online, is competent: her Greek accent is more Eastern European than Mediterranean, and she tends to overemote, but she successfully conveys Julian's pain and desperation, also elevating secondary characters to three dimensions through accent and pacing. Not Kenyon's best but a welcome addition to the Dark-Hunter mythos in audio that will delight series fans as well as explain much to series novices.Jodi L. Israel, MLS, Salt Lake City

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 4, 2009
When Lucie Montgomery stumbles across a skull in her vineyard—just after the tornado that almost kills her—little does she suspect the skeletons in the family closet to which the discovery will lead in Crosby's sprightly fourth Virginia wine country mystery (after 2008's The Bordeaux Betrayal
). But who can blame the amateur detective for being a bit off her game, with the hurricane of headaches already buffeting Montgomery Estate Vineyard? Hot-tempered winemaker Quinn Santori and handsome new manager Chance Miller (Lucie is attracted to both) are at each other's throats—and hundreds of Civil War buffs are due in days to re-enact the 1861 Battle of Ball's Bluff. Expect plenty of fireworks as Lucie pursues her own investigation into the old, but no longer cold, homicide and a fast-paced sprint to what proves a rather slapdash finish. Until then, however, Crosby serves up a wine cooler that goes down easy even if it's hardly vintage.