A sparkling romantic comedy guaranteed to have you dreaming of the sunny slopes!

“An entertaining, turbocharged race among the high mountain passes of six alpine countries.” —Liesl Schillinger, New York Times Book Review For centuries the Alps have been witness to the march of armies, the flow of pilgrims and Crusaders, the feats of mountaineers, and the dreams of engineers. In The Alps, Stephen O’Shea ("a graceful and passionate writer"—Washington Post) takes readers up and down these majestic mountains. Journeying through their 500-mile arc across France, Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Germany, Austria, and Slovenia, he explores the reality behind historic events and reveals how the Alps have profoundly influenced culture and society.

The Alps are Europe's highest mountain range: their broad arc stretches right across the center of the continent, encompassing a wide range of traditions and cultures. Andrew Beattie explores the turbulent past and vibrant present of this landscape, where early pioneers of tourism, mountaineering, and scientific research, along with the enduring legacies of historical regimes from the Romans to the Nazis, have all left their mark.

A cold-blooded killer lurks in the luxurious winter wonderland of St. Moritz . . . Switzerland, 1924. Lady sleuth Olive Belgrave is set to enjoy a holiday of ice-skating and snowshoeing in the glamorous alpine setting of St. Moritz, but her plans are rudely interrupted when an unfortunate accident takes place. It quickly becomes clear that the tragic event was a carefully concealed murder. Olive isn’t one to shy away from a challenge, and with her sharp intuition and knowledge of the high society set, she uncovers motives among the elite guests. However, this case is one of the most challenging she’s faced. Her suspects include a famous lady mountaineer, an up-and-coming fashion designer, a mousy lady’s maid, and several gentlemen sportsmen who seem to be only interested in tobogganing, ice-climbing, and the new sport of skiing down the mountain slopes. Can Olive find the cunning killer and solve the impossible crime before it’s too late? If you enjoy puzzling mysteries set among the glitz and glamor of the 1920s, you’ll enjoy Murder in the Alps, the latest installment of USA Today bestselling author Sara Rosett’s High Society Lady Detective series.

The unrivalled scenery of the Alps attracts increasing numbers of visitors every year, while for those who seek the more active and dangerous pursuits of climbing and skiing, the region offers unique opportunities. Ronald Clark, a distinguished historian of mountaineering, who knows the Alps from end to end, describes the history of the mountains and their most famous peaks. The heroic story of their exploration, first by scientists, then by such early mountaineers as Whymper, Coolidge, Miss Brevoort and their guides, is related with extensive quotations from letters, diaries and contemporary records. With the mountaineers came the pioneer photographers whose cumbersome but fragile equipment had to be manhandled up ice-slopes and across glaciers to enable them to take their photographs, a procedure which necessitated hours of intricate manoeuvring, in freezing weather, to obtain one successful shot. Other chapters discuss the development of the Alps as a mountain health centre, the coming of roads and railways and the growth of the winter sports industry and Mr Clark warns that the mountains, like a Highland deer forest, can carry only a certain number of living creatures without facing disaster.