"The Chilterns are at their best in May and The Old Forge Cafe is flourishing, which makes Charlie think about furniture that lives up to the standards her menu sets. Which is what persuades her to take on a job for a wealthy local businessman who suspects his daughter has fallen for a man who is not only a gold-digger but also a murderer.
To Charlie's surprise, she knows him - he's the Maitre d' at the Michelin-starred restaurant at the other end of the village. Does his charm conceal a killer?"
"Charlie Hunter does not like Christmas, especially the lead into it -- cooking endless servings of Christmas dinner. So when she is asked by Graeme Strickland, Michelin-starred chef, egomaniac and friend, to help out in a hotel restaurant in Edinburgh’s New Town, for a fortnight, she accepts with alacrity. The Head Chef, David Jenkins, is a very old friend of Strickland’s, and the job entails covering temporarily for a sous chef position, while Strickland provides cover for Charlie, gratis, in the Old Forge Café.
She is scheduled to be there for a fortnight. But Charlie arrives in Edinburgh just in time to discover David Jenkins being stretchered out. An autopsy reveals the Chef has been poisoned with mushrooms. Was it an accident or a murder attempt? It looks like Charlie may be doing a rather different job…"
"Chef Charlie Hunter is just trying for mindfulness and a work/life balance, if such a thing is ever possible in the context of a busy professional kitchen. She's found herself a great podcast that's going to help her get there. Until she finds that her online self-help guru has feet of clay – feet which are much closer to her restaurant than seems possible.
Even more disruptive is the attack on a well known writer in Charlie's quiet Chilterns village of Hampden Green, and the arrest of the village's own celebrity shock jock. Charlie finds herself dealing with more than she can cope with, and never sure where the next attack will come from. Then mere backstabbing turns to murder…"
"When famous TV chef Matteo McLeish turns up at the Old Forge Café and offers chef Charlie Hunter a place in his kitchen for the duration of Hampden Green’s local opera festival, she thinks it’s because he rates her cooking skills. In fact it’s because he’s heard she’s good in a crisis. The wholesome star of Nonna’s Kitchen is being blackmailed by one of his team.
Tempted by an improbably large pay cheque and the boost to to her CV, Charlie accepts his offer. Does the threat lie close to home, or back in Italy with Matteo’s culinary roots? And can Charlie find the blackmailer before she’s swept up in an avalanche of death and scandal?"
"Chef Charlie Hunter's arrival in the beautiful Chilterns is the fulfillment of a long-held dream: to open her own restaurant in an idyllic countryside location. The Old Forge sits on the village green (complete with duck pond and flint-faced houses) and seems just the place for the high-quality cooking she wants to be known for.
But instead of rural peace and a chance to lick her wounds, Charlie finds something ugly stirring under the chocolate box perfection. When a prominent local builder is found dead in suspicious circumstances, Charlie the outsider becomes a suspect. And the only way to clear her name seems to be to find out who the real killer is.
Luckily she has allies: her student waitress, a kitchen porter making up in muscles what he lacks in brain and a briskly efficient clairvoyant. Using all the craft Charlie's learned in kitchens—discipline, timing, preparation, and grim determination—she will be as relentless in her quest to bring a murderer to justice as she is in creating the perfect meal."
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