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The Beekeeper's Ball
Author:
Wiggs, Susan
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Series:
Bella Vista chronicles, #2
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Class:
Fiction
Age: Adult
Language: English
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LC: PS3573.I
Print Run: 65000
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ISBN-13: 9780778314486
LCCN: 2022285414
Imprint: Harlequin MIRA
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Pub Date: 06/24/2014
Availability: Out of Stock Indefinitely
List: $24.95
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Hardcover
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Physical Description:
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360 pages ; 25 cm
H 9.28",
W 6.59",
D 1.16",
1.48 lbs.
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LC Series:
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Bella Vista chronicles
Bella Vista chronicles.
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Brodart Sources:
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Brodart's Blockbuster List
Brodart's Insight Catalog: Adult
Brodart's TOP Adult Titles
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Bibliographies:
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Library Journal Bestsellers
Publishers Weekly Bestsellers
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Awards:
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Booklist Starred Reviews
Publishers Weekly Starred Reviews
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Starred Reviews:
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Booklist
Publishers Weekly
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TIPS Subjects:
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Romance
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BISAC Subjects: |
FICTION / Romance / Contemporary
FICTION / Family Life / Marriage & Divorce
FICTION / Small Town & Rural
FICTION / Women
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LC Subjects:
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Apple growers, Fiction
California, Sonoma Valley
Cooking schools, Fiction
Cuisinières (Personnes), Romans, nouvelles, etc
Domestic fiction
Fiction
Journalists, Fiction
Love stories
Novels
Romance fiction
Sonoma Valley (Calif.), Fiction
Sonoma, Vallée de (Calif.), Romans, nouvelles, etc
Women cooks
Women cooks, Fiction
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SEARS Subjects: |
Cooking, Study and teaching, Fiction
Domestic fiction
Fruit culture, Fiction
Journalists, Fiction
Women cooks, Fiction
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Reading Programs: |
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| Annotations |
| Brodart's TOP Adult Titles | 02/01/2014 |
| Turning her home into a cooking school for up-and-coming culinary students seems like the perfect way for successful chef Isabel Johnson to put the past behind her, but a war-torn journalist with a knack for making people talk is about to put Isabel to the ultimate test. With the Beekeeper's Ball and a wedding on the horizon, journalist Cormac O'Neill soon falls under the spell of a summer far more magical and revealing than he anticipated. Bella Vista chronicles series, 400pp., 65K |
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| Starred Reviews: |
| Booklist | 06/01/2014 |
| The unconscionable incident with Calvin Sharp caused Isabel Johansen to leave culinary school and flee to her family's home, Bella Vista, nestled in the Sonoma wine country. Isabel continues to hone her culinary skills while turning Bella Vista into a destination for food lovers. She even adds a cooking school and is eagerly planning Bella Vista's first major event, her sister Tess' wedding. But Isabel's hard-earned happiness is shattered when Calvin, now a famous TV chef, chooses her town as the venue for his new restaurant. Things get even more hectic and complicated when former war correspondent Cormac O'Neill comes to town, ready to write her grandfather's biography, including his role in the Danish Resistance during WWII. As much as Isabel denies it, she's getting more and more attracted to Cormac, something that's definitely not on her "to do" list. Wiggs' carefully detailed plotlines, one contemporary and one historical, with their candid look at relationships and their long-term effects, are sure to captivate readers. The second of Wiggs' Bella Vista Chronicles, after The Apple Orchard (2013), features a nice bonus: a delightfully unique boy-meets-girl opening. Librarians will want to stay with this entire series. Mosley, Shelley. 352p. AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, c2014. |
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| Publishers Weekly | 06/09/2014 |
| Wiggs's second in her Bella Vista Chronicles series (The Apple Orchard) juggles a modern love story with a heart-pounding chronicle of the Danish resistance in Nazi-occupied Copenhagen, creating a dazzling intergenerational tale of courage and hope. No-frills, 30-year-old Isabelle Johansen is busy organizing the opening of her cooking school, a new beekeeping business, and the wedding of her half-sister, Tess. She's doing all this from her grandparents' mission-style hacienda and farm in Sonoma, but gets thrown off balance by the handsome, globe-trotting journalist Cormac O'Neill. He's arrived to interview Isabelle's grandfather, Magnus, for a biography about his youth thwarting the Nazi occupation, protecting Jewish families, and his ultimate flight to America. The attraction between Isabelle and Cormac is immediate, but Isabelle's cautious heart won't open until she reconciles with the loss of parents she never knew - and confronts a violent lover who broke her trust and confidence. It will be Magnus's story of bravery, along with that of his late Jewish wife, Eva, and her best friend and resistance fighter Annelise-who bears a baby for the childless couple-that will help Isabelle finally face her own fears. Isabelle and Cormac's love story plays out sweetly. What makes this moving narrative so memorable is the fearlessness of families and friends who find strength in each other through the horrors of war and loss. The revelation of Isabelle's new family links with her dead mother and her father preview Wiggs's next installment. (July). 352p. Web-Exclusive Review. PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, c2014. |
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| Journal Reviews |
| Kirkus Reviews | 07/01/2014 |
| When writer Cormac "Mac" O'Neill comes to Bella Vista, Isabel Johansen struggles with her distracting attraction to him while she's planning her sister's wedding and preparing to open a destination cooking school. After nearly losing Bella Vista, the family's idyllic hacienda-style home, and discovering a pile of family secrets--including Tess, a half sister she never knew about who wound up saving the estate--Isabel finally has the resources and support to pursue her dream of opening a cooking school. Completely updating her home to house the school and an elegant events venue, she and Tess have decided to launch the space with Tess' wedding. It's a busy summer, made even more complicated by the arrival of Mac, a nomadic writer hired to write their grandfather Magnus' tragic and triumphant story, which includes his work in the Danish resistance during World War II. Mix in a young, pregnant beekeeper and an arrogant celebrity chef with whom Isabel shares a dark past, and the book has many satisfying elements, as well as the enchanting setting of Bella Vista, which "lived and breathed with the essence of life." This novel is best-selling author Wiggs' follows-up to The Apple Orchard (2013), which told Tess' story, and though it's compelling, it never achieves the same level of pitch-perfect authenticity. Isabel remains a domestic goddess, but her reasons for not letting Mac in for most of the book become less understandable the longer she fervently hangs on to them, and her abrupt about-faces in the book's last scenes on so many aspects of her life make us wonder why they weren't so obvious much sooner. A satisfying, engaging read though lacking Wiggs' typical effortlessness and buoyancy. 400pg. KIRKUS MEDIA LLC, c2014. |
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| Library Journal | 07/01/2014 |
| The second in the "Bella Vista Chronicles" (after The Apple Orchard, 2013) focuses on Isabel Johansen, who was raised by her grandparents after her parents died. After Isabel's one venture into the world ends in violence, she comes home to Archangel, in beautiful Sonoma County, CA. She wants to transform the family home into a destination cooking school, using local foods, including honey from her own hives. Then she mistakes Cormac O'Neill for a beekeeper, and ends up taking the allergic man to the local clinic after he's stung. Isabel doesn't know Mac is there to write her grandfather's biography. It's Magnus Johansen's powerful account of his role in the Danish Resistance that forces Isabel to face her own past. The woman who saw a cooking school as her only dream might finally dare to reach for love. Wiggs successfully combines a contemporary romance and a family saga with a dramatic story of resistance as she alternates Isabel's story with her grandfather's account of his loss of family and fight to save the Jews in his native Denmark. The beauty of Bella Vista stands in sharp contrast to the bleakness of the Danish landscape under the Nazis. VERDICT This novel is highly recommended for those who appreciate women's fiction with a historical backstory. Lesa Holstine, Evansville Vanderburgh P.L., IN. 352p. LIBRARY JOURNAL, c2014. |
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9780778314486,dl.it[0].title
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