For years, Mario Rossetti has been living a double life. Most people know the affable, handsome Italian from Verona as a member of the Monte Carlo Casino security team and/or a joint owner of olive groves in Tuscany. Few are aware that Mario is a mercenary. Violence, misery and death describe his alter-egos engagements when on missions with European colleagues in Third World countries, mainly in Africa. Their current mission is to assist the return of a former African leader to establish himself as his countrys new leader. Mario was given a small share of the countrys inactive diamond mines as additional compensation. Mario reaches a point when he feels a need to reassess his lifestyle. While on a mission, he begins to question whether he feels more than friendship with Marianne, a Belgian schoolteacher. A change would mean becoming more sedentary. A topsy-turvy romance ensues causing Mario to put wedding plans on hold, leading him to depart on another mission to Africa. Yet, he must reflect ---- Are olive leaves truly beckoning him? Ultimately, it comes down to this --- make love, not war.

“A lovely balance of memoir, travelogue and olive-growing how-to . . . Some of her adventures are quite funny.” —Publishers Weekly In this memoir, the author of The Olive Farm returns to the ten-acre property for which she and her fiancé scraped together their savings to buy—just back from their wedding on a tiny Polynesian island, loaded down with luggage and a large hand-painted didgeridoo. As Carol and Michel settle in as husband and wife, they experience the glamor of southern France at dinner parties in the company of aristocrats and at the world-renowned Cannes film festival, as well as the dirt-caked, sun-baked life of farmers—especially after their gardener heads to Algiers to arrange his youngest son’s wedding. For Carol, though, what matters most is that her longtime dream of motherhood finally promises to come true—and over the course of The Olive Season, she shares the story of her hopes and fears as she anticipates another kind of growth and nurturing. Alternately entertaining and emotionally poignant, this memoir is a rich portrait of love, longing, and the constant uncertainties of the cycle of life.

After catching her celebrity chef fiancé sizzling in the arms of another woman, Lindsey Bakewell left big city Wall Street for small town Beacon Harbor, Michigan to pursue her own passion as a pastry baker—and gets mixed up in someone’s sweet taste of revenge . . . More interested in kneading dough than adding it up, Lindsey’s breakup inspired her to set up the shop she always wanted in a place that always made her happy. She’d spent many childhood summers near this beach community and converting the old run-down lighthouse into a bakery café and home offers a perfect fresh start for Lindsey and her devoted Newfoundland dog, Wellington. But not everyone in town has a sweet tooth. The preservation society won’t have the lighthouse’s history sugar coated by lattes and cakes—and a protest group crashes Lindsey’s Memorial Day opening. Then her ex-fiancé Jeffrey Plank and his girlfriend Mia Long arrive to trash the place. In the ensuing chaos Mia chokes on a donut and dies. An autopsy reveals cyanide in Mia’s bloodstream and Lindsey is the police’s prime suspect. To clear her name, she’s going to need to combine ingredients found in the town’s checkered past to uncover the identity of a desperate killer . . . Includes Delicious Recipes! Advance praise for MURDER AT THE BEACON BAKESHOP “Darci Hannah mixes spicy characters, a sweet bakeshop, and a possibly haunted lighthouse into a charming beachfront Michigan village and serves up a mystery as delectable as the bakeshop’s treats and as twisty as the lighthouse stairs." —Ginger Bolton, author of Boston Scream Murder