From a masked ball in Venice, to the oilfields of Azerbaijan, and the bullrings of Spain, Stevie Duveen, Risk Assessor for Hazard Ltd, has been offered an assignment she can't refuse ... Death wears a vintage Pucci kaftan as our stylish, shadowy and dangerous agent comes face to face with modern piracy in a bid to stay one step ahead of some of the world's most dangerous men.

Der bekannte Sportmoderator Gerhard Delling präsentiert mit einem Augenzwinkern Wissenswertes und Amüsantes rund um den Ball.
(source: Bol.de)

Grace Tynan hat eigentlich alles, was eine Frau sich nur wünschen kann: Erfolg im Beruf, eine glückliche Ehe und zwei nette Kinder. Spätestens aber als sie im Supermarkt den unwiderstehlichen Drang verspürt, ein Päckchen Frühstücksspeck zu stehlen, um wenigstens einmal etwas Aufregendes zu erleben, wird Grace klar, dass sie ein Problem hat. Eine mögliche Lösung naht in Gestalt von Adam: Australier, 21 Jahre jung, braun gebrannt, gut aussehend ... Der Mann verheisst Aufregung pur!

Kiki vraagt zich af of ze wel bij haar familie thuishoort. Ze lijkt niet op haar ouders, vindt ze, en al helemaal niet op haar grote broer Jelmer, die met zijn probleemgedrag alle aandacht opeist. Op een dag vindt ze in een prullenbak een versnipperde kaart. Als ze de stukken aaneen schuift is één zin nog net leesbaar: Kom je? Ik wacht al zo lang. De afzender is ook onduidelijk staat er soms: JIM? En aan wie is de kaart eigenlijk gericht? Kiki volgt een spoor van duistere vondsten en aanwijzingen. Gaandeweg groeit haar overtuiging: ze wordt gezocht. Door haar enige echte broer. Door Jim. Als ze met haar ouders op vakantie gaat naar het kanaaleiland Sark, zet Kiki haar speurtocht voort. Zal ze Jim daar vinden?

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In his excellent debut, Eglin combines just the right amount of horticultural detail with well-drawn characters and an absorbing plot. While Kate and Alex Sheppard explore the long neglected gardens of the Parsonage, their newly acquired, 19th-century Wiltshire country house, they discover an astonishing plant—a rose bush with blue flowers ("Not lavender or mauve, but an electric sapphire blue"). For help, the couple turn to Lawrence Kingston, a noted rose authority and incidentally a crossword puzzle aficionado, and Christopher Adell, their London legal adviser. In spite of their efforts to research the plant in secret, word of the extraordinary find gets out, and the likable Sheppards are soon mixed up with secret codes and missing journals and threatened by vicious hybridizers from Japan and the United States, as well as local growers and supposed friends. Mysterious deaths, a kidnapping, a chase and various shootings add to the suspense. Apt gardening quotations, from Edmund Spenser to Dale Carnegie, introduce each chapter.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

If you love roses, or gardening, or British mysteries, you will probably love this novel, lush with the lore and lure of all three. Eglin, a Californian and award-winning rose gardener, writes well of what he knows. Unfortunately, he is less skilled in the essentials of fiction writing: plot, dialogue, and characterization add up to not much in this first novel. Kate and Alex buy their dream cottage in Wiltshire, called the Parsonage, with its two-acre walled garden overrun with roses. What they find in a corner is the impossible: a sapphire-blue rose. Although they immediately contact a gardening expert and an attorney, they are plunged into a world of conniving relatives, rose pollination recorded in Enigma code, evil American and sneaky Japanese executives, and the mysterious death of a friend who handled the rose. It's melodramatic and the dialogue is terrible, but the rosarian detail is irresistible. GraceAnne DeCandido
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved