A Bolt from the Blue — Lise McClendon

Paris beckons the Bennett Sisters again... with fine wine, abandoned villas, classic apartments, and hidden secrets

When Francie Bennett goes back to Paris to help untangle an old woman's estate at first she is confined to escorting the grumpy heir to fancy dinners. Not that she's complaining because... well, PARIS. She's up for more though, and the client turns out to be a a Frenchwoman who hates France she is intrigued to say the least.

When Axelle Fourcier left Paris behind after the student riots of 1968, she vowed never to go back. She despises Paris, for reasons she won't relate. She made a life for herself in America as a professor. But now a beloved aunt, age 104, has died and left her an inheritance to be shared with a cousin she never met. A fabulous Belle Époque apartment in Paris filled with pop art from the '50s and '60s is just the start of Axelle's discoveries in Paris. Wrangling with her slick cousin for the proceeds is distasteful but oh so French.

But the road to the inheritance is more than rough. The fancy Parisian apartment is broken into, a friend is murdered, and Axelle's fears that the French state is once again conspiring against her seem very plausible.

For Francie her simple role of companion to Axelle becomes much more as she tries to deal with her cranky client, her own new relationship with Dylan Hardy, plus his nine-year-old daughter. As the estate problems spin out of control they decamp to the Dordogne for help from sister Merle. Intrigue, romance, Paris and the Dordogne, and a soupçon of murder, wrapped in the legal and art world of France bring more than a few 'Bolts from the Blue' to the Bennett Sisters.