{"id":6461,"date":"2025-08-04T15:57:20","date_gmt":"2025-08-04T22:57:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=6461"},"modified":"2025-08-04T15:57:20","modified_gmt":"2025-08-04T22:57:20","slug":"ellen-crosby-deeds-left-undone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/ellen-crosby-deeds-left-undone\/","title":{"rendered":"Ellen Crosby: Deeds Left Undone"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wine Country #13<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Winemaker Lucie Montgomery is having a rough harvest season. An employee is seriously injured in a vineyard accident leaving her short-handed. To make things worse, wine manager Frankie\u2019s husband Paul Merchant is found dead at the bottom of his swimming pool, leaving Lucie yet another employee short. Both deaths happen just as all hands are needed to harvest and process delicate Cabernet Sauvignon grapes, a task that can\u2019t be left to the untrained.<\/p>\n

Was Paul\u2019s drowning accidental? Lucie starts to wonder when she realizes that Violet Rossi, Paul\u2019s predecessor as leader of Don\u2019t Pave Paradise, also died under mysterious circumstances. Could someone want the rural roads paved badly enough to kill? And why does the name of socialite Eleanor Blake keep popping up? Is there a connection to her death eighty years ago in a theater fire?<\/p>\n

Lucie unravels the case with help from Thelma Johnson, \u201csassy octogenarian\u201d owner of the General Store, while trying balance work and life with her new husband, Quinn. Since this is the first book I\u2019ve read in this series, I feel like there\u2019s a lot more about these two characters I\u2019d like to know! (Yes, I\u2019ve already added the series to Mount To-Be-Read.) An unusual aspect of Thelma\u2019s character is that she uses a Ouija Board to talk to the dead. We don\u2019t get to see that in this book but it adds a fun woo-woo possibility. I also get the impression that California-born Quinn has been adapting to life in wine-horse-and-hunt Virginia, perhaps not always easily.<\/p>\n

Besides the characters, I really like the vineyard setting. I knew little about wine or winemaking before reading this book and learned a lot along the way. Did you know that Oenology means \u201cthe science and study of wine and winemaking\u201d? That wines contain tannins? I also learned how delicate Cabernet Sauvignon grapes are and how to process them to make wine. In addition to wine, Virginia is horse country, so Lucie also attends a race where she find more clues about the mysterious deaths. The clues are well-paced but an astute reader might piece together the solution before Lucie does. Even so, the ending is satisfying.<\/p>\n

Fun facts: the plot is based on a real-life plan to save rural roads in Loudoun County, VA and the movie theater is based on the real Hollywood Theater in Middleburg, VA which, sadly, no longer exists.<\/p>\n

I recommend this book (and series) to anyone interested in rural Virginia, wine, or horses. You can read this book without reading the rest of the series. Or do what I\u2019m going to do: read this book, then start from the beginning! —\u00a0Cathy Akers-Jordan<\/em><\/p>\n

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Wine Country #13 Winemaker Lucie Montgomery is having a rough harvest season. An employee is seriously injured in a vineyard accident leaving her short-handed. To make things worse, wine manager Frankie\u2019s husband Paul Merchant is found dead at the bottom of his swimming pool, leaving Lucie yet another employee short. Both deaths happen just as … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[78,2140,2139,122,2141,486,361],"class_list":["post-6461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-cathy-akers-jordan","tag-deeds-left-undone","tag-ellen-crosby","tag-horses","tag-rural-virginia","tag-severn-house","tag-wine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6461"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6461\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6463,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6461\/revisions\/6463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}