The Souffle Also Rises

A laugh-out-loud midlife reinvention caper set in Paris for fans of Elle Cosimano’s Finlay Donovan series and Deanna Raybourn’s Killers of a Certain Age.

It’s 2008 and Lizi just can’t catch a break. On the heels of a nasty divorce and a paltry settlement agreement—barely enough to reload her Starbucks card—Lizi is laid off from her job during the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

Flat broke, Lizi takes a job at Whole Foods where she meets Frankie, a twenty-seven-year-old artist half her age whose overly simplistic worldview is exactly what Lizi needs to get on with her life. But after an unfortunate incident involving her ex-husband, his pregnant girlfriend, and a carton of cage-free eggs, Lizi finds herself, once again, out of a job.

So what does a fifty-four-year-old woman with no money, no job, and no prospects do? She sells all her possessions and goes to Paris in search of her long-lost dream: to write her first novel. But when the airline loses her luggage and offers her a meal voucher for the famed Hotel Jolie, Lizi pounces on the opportunity while unwittingly setting off a chain of events which land her at the center of the notorious Harry Winston jewel heist. And when her young partner-in-crime joins her in Paris, the two must outrun the Serbian mafia while trying not to trip over the dead bodies left in their wake.