American chef Nell Valenti will have to serve up more than good eats if she
wants to establish a successful cooking school in this charming first installment
in a new cozy mystery series set in Italy.

When Nell is offered a chance to move to Tuscany to help transform an aging villa
into a farm-to-table culinary school, she eagerly accepts. After all, both her job and her
love life in America have been feeling stale. Plus, she’ll get the chance to work under
the acclaimed Italian chef Claudio Orlandini.

But Nell gets more than she bargained for when she arrives. With only a day to go
until the launch dinner for the cooking school, the villa is in shambles, and Chef O is
blissfully oblivious to the work that needs to be done before a group of local dignitaries
arrives, along with a filmmaker sent to showcase and advertise the new school. The
situation only sours when Nell discovers that the filmmaker is an ex-boyfriend–who’s
then found murdered later that night. Even worse, Chef O has disappeared, and
accusations of murder could shut the school down for good.

As tensions reach a boiling point, Nell must throw her chef’s hat into the ring and
investigate the murder herself. Because if she fails to solve the case, her career, or even
her life, could be next on the chopping block.

American chef Nell Valenti’s high hopes for a successful Tuscan farm-to-table cooking school are in danger of withering on the vine in this delectable cozy mystery.

Nell Valenti is settling into her role of transforming the Villa Orlandini into a superb farm-to-table cooking school, and the time has finally come for a full taste test run. But when Chef Orlandini prepares to reveal his top secret marinara recipe for the first time to a group of American gastro-tourists, Nell realizes she might have bitten off more than she can chew.

Nell begins to suspect that one of the tourists is actually a private detective sent to spy on her by her overprotective father, and the fussy foodies are noisy and disrespectful from the very start of the Marinara Mysteriosa workshop. Even worse, when one visitor appears to be poisoned by the famous marinara recipe, Nell will have to work fast to uncover a killer and keep a lid on bad press before her fresh start is spoiled for good.

Nell Valenti is at ease when managing a farm-to-table cooking school in sundappled 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.

Recipe Included