Flowers Fiction

Georgian mansion Wharton Park was a place of childhood solace for Julia Forrester, spending summers in the Norfolk countryside with her beloved grandfather. So after tragedy strikes, she finds herself seeking comfort at Wharton and the allure of its hothouse, once home to exotic flowers from all corners of the globe but now lying abandoned. There she meets the new owner, the charming and magnetic Kit Crawford, whose own past is shrouded in sadness and mystery.

Will love break the spell? After cruelly rejecting Bao, the poor physician's apprentice who loves her, Lan, a wealthy nobleman's daughter, regrets her actions. So when she finds Bao's prized flute floating in his boat near her house, she takes it into her care, not knowing that his soul has been trapped inside it by an evil witch, who cursed Bao, telling him that only love will set him free. Though Bao now despises her, Lan vows to make amends and help break the spell. Together, the two travel across the continent, finding themselves in the presence of greatness.

Flowers, fire and fairy tales are the elements that will forever shape nine-year-old Alice Hart's life in The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, the remarkable debut by Holly Ringland. Alice Hart lives in isolation by the sea, where her mother’s enchanting flowers and their hidden messages shelter her from the dark moods of her father. When tragedy changes her life irrevocably, nine-year-old Alice goes to live with the grandmother she never knew existed, on a native flower farm that gives refuge to women who, like Alice, are lost or broken.

Gertrude, the eldest Killoran sister, has spent a lifetime being underestimated - especially by her own family. She may seem as vulnerable as a kitten, but given the chance, she can be as fierce as a tiger. Her adopted brother, Stephen, has just been snatched back by his true father, and she’ll be damned if she relinquishes the boy to the man reviled throughout London as the Mad Marquess.

Finn Ransome is an expert on Lady Luck, which is why he refuses to take a chance on love. Experience has taught him that he’s happier at a gaming table than around people he will, inevitably, disappoint. However, the clock is ticking on his father’s matrimonial demands. But the only woman to catch his eye is a bluestocking who would never consider a rogue like him. After a disastrous first Season, Tabitha Seaton decided to focus on books instead of ballrooms.

Plant. Water. Fertilize. Grow.

Margot Davies is an aspiring investigative journalist stuck in a rudderless job at a small-time newspaper, until one night she stumbles upon a new development in an unsolved, decades-old case that took place in her very own hometown: the infamous murder of six-year-old January Jacobs. With this new information come to light, Margot quickly becomes obsessed with solving the case. She packs up and heads back to the hometown she left at eight years old, hoping to bring justice to January, who was discovered dead in a ditch only hours after her family awoke to find her gone.

When Noelle walked away from her adult entertainment gig, she never thought she’d return. Not with a comfortable corporate career in her life. Yet shortly after being laid off, she’s back to escorting the region’s wealthiest women…and growing more tired by the night.

Lily Moon, the local miner's daughter, spends her days as a parlour maid for Lord and Lady Bellingham at Oakley Manor, on the outskirts of Nuneaton. She's always been happy with her lot in life, and never expected more. But one day, everything changes when she temporarily becomes lady's maid to the Bellingham's daughter, Arabella, who is pregnant with the illegitimate child of her lover, and about to be unhappily married off to a man double her age.

World-famous fiddle player Barley McFee arrives in blustery Bellewick, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, for a grand homecoming concert organized by jeweler Bernice Brennan. Fiona Knox, owner of the Climbing Rose Flower Shop, is starting to regret volunteering to help with the concert. Bernice is an exacting taskmaster, and Fiona has enough tension dealing with her parents, who have traveled from Tennessee to visit Fi and her younger sister, Isla, and to reveal a secret about Fi's birth.

In these stories, inspired by long-lost photographs, the lives of the people in the frame are imagined and then explored, layer by layer. What must have it like to be them? We share the lives of three sisters, brought up in Penang. We hear of what happened to them, and to their Chinese neighbours caught in the tides of war. We see a group of small boys in a Glasgow slum, their young lives stunted by poverty, and hear how life worked out in contrasting ways for them. We follow a young woman's search for love in the unlikely realm of Egyptian antiquities.

Florist Fiona Knox’s life isn’t smelling so sweet these days. Her fiancé left her for their cake decorator. Then, her flower shop wilted after a chain florist opened next door. So when her godfather leaves her a cottage in Scotland, Fiona jumps on the next plane to Edinburgh. But when Ian’s elderly caretaker Hamish MacGregor shows her to the cottage upon her arrival, she finds the once resplendent grounds of Duncreigan in a dreadful shambles - with a dead body in the garden. Minutes into her arrival, Fiona is already being questioned by the handsome Chief Inspector Neil Craig and getting her passport seized.

One day while a prince was riding through a meadow he came across an old woman trapped in a ditch. The prince rescued the old woman and assisted her out of the ditch, safely. In return, the old woman told the prince about the most beautiful woman in the world and where to find her. The prince decided to take her advice and journey to find this beautiful woman. After several years of traveling the prince finally finds the beautiful woman, but now it is up to him to save her from her kidnapper and return her home safely.

For the first time ever, 75 beloved songs from Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and The Children's Corner are collected in this charming treasury, sure to be cherished by generations of children as well as the millions of adults who grew up with Mister Rogers. The audiobook includes the iconic song "Won't You Be My Neighbor", music and lyrics by Fred Rogers.

Willa Noble knew it was bad luck when it was pouring rain on the day of her ever-important job interview at the Dickinson home in Amherst, Massachusetts. When she arrived late, disheveled with her skirts sodden and filthy, she'd lost all hope of being hired for the position. As the housekeeper politely told her they'd be in touch, Willa started toward the door of the stately home only to be called back by the soft but strong voice of Emily Dickinson. What begins as tenuous employment turns to friendship as the reclusive poet takes Willa under her wing.

For 16 years, Kitrin has longed for freedom from her parents' secluded manor. However, one day, her emotions trigger flowers to bloom, roots to grasp, and trees to bend. Unable to control her unexplained abilities, she finds an anchor in a young man with sad eyes and his own secrets. Palace outcast and nephew of the king, Prince Bryce lives under the shadow of his father's execution for treason. To escape the toxic court, he takes comfort in the company of the kindhearted Kitrin. However, he soon realizes the girl he loves is someone his family wants dead.

Accidentally compromised Prudence Merriweather marries the handsome lord of her dreams. But three years later, their marriage is unconsummated, and Lady Prue wants her husband to fall desperately in love with her. If only wishes were that simple. One wicked dare might be just what she needs to turn her marriage around, from misery to blissful happiness. Soon, Prue has launched a seduction campaign against her earl's icy heart, using a library of scandalous erotic literature as her guide!

Life at St. Agatha's School for Girls is anything but a fairy tale. With ratty blankets and a torturous device called the box, it's not hard to understand Eliza's desperation to escape. When the timing is right, Eliza manages to run away with her best friend, Millie, heading through the Louisiana swamps to the town on the other side. But the swamps may be even more dangerous than the orphanage. Silver and black fairies invite the girls to experience a world where they can have it all, but Eliza doesn't trust the sparkling beauty.

In his 16th Matthew Scudder novel, All the Flowers Are Dying, New York Times best-selling author Lawrence Block takes the series to a new level of suspense and a new depth of characterization. Block puts Scudder, and the listener, at the very edge of the abyss.

Millie is happy that her childhood friend, Uriah Schrock, has returned to Harvest after decades away. He was sweet on Millie in their school days, but she only had eyes for her future husband. Now, there's a new spark between them, so Millie is concerned when Uriah doesn't show up at the Harvest concert series - or for his job as the Village square's groundskeeper. Perhaps Millie has been involved in too many murder investigations, but she has a sinking feeling. And when she and her best friend, Lois, find Uriah with the police, it seems she's right....