Dangerous grounds

When Todd Carmichael is hired to find coffee for the makers of a revolutionary new “Steam Punk” coffee machine, he heads to Guatemala, a country fresh out of revolution. There, he finds the locals armed to the teeth, warning him to avoid the mafia-like kingpin who holds a monopoly on the best coffee in Guatemala. As Carmichael realizes there’s no way around the boss, he is forced to walk straight through sniper crosshairs. He must go into the belly of the beast if he’s going to have any chance of making peace with the godfather, and scoring a killer Guatemalan coffee to bring back to his client.

Todd Carmichael’s company, La Colombe, regularly does business with chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten, one of the top culinary talents in New York City. When Carmichael is suddenly on the verge of losing a deal with Jean-Georges, his single biggest restaurant client, Carmichael heads to Guerrero – the most dangerous region in Mexico ruled by a ruthless drug syndicate known as Los Zetas. Carrying $20,000 in cash to purchase coffee from local farmers, Carmichael seeks out a local vigilante that can guide him to the secret source of a rumored wine-like coffee. But when his vigilante contact ends up allegedly murdered, Carmichael quickly learns he must blend in with the locals to avoid a similar fate. With everything on the line, Carmichael must rely on new Mexican allies to discover the legendary coffee and return home with enough of it to close the deal with Jean-Georges.

Stephen Starr is a restaurateur and head of the Starr Restaurant Organization. On the brink of closing a deal worth a quarter million dollars with Starr’s Buddakan Restaurant in Philadelphia, Todd Carmichael promises Starr his restaurant can be the first to serve coffee from Nepal, the birthplace of Buddha. While rising global temperatures and Nepal’s high altitude make a great combination for world-class coffee, the country’s humidity causes its coffee to mold by the time it arrives in the U.S. Because this mold problem ruins all attempts to import coffee from Nepal, Carmichael heads to the home of Mount Everest with the hopes of finding and bringing the coffee home himself. With communist rebels blocking the roads, he must depend on the help of an ex-Soviet pilot to drop him by an ultralight aircraft into coffee country. Only then can he find his coffee and devise a plan to get it home and seal the deal with Starr.

To save his contract with West Elm stores, Todd Carmichael is tasked with finding a coffee from Thailand and getting it back to the United States in record time. He knows the farm, he knows the coffee, but what he doesn’t know is that getting coffee from Thailand to America will lead him into the most notorious heroin-smuggling region in Southeast Asia – and ultimately at gunpoint in the totalitarian police state of Myanmar! Carmichael must fight through borders, gunmen and a thousand miles of rugged road in an epic attempt to get the coffee home.