Flowers Fiction

Charlie Gordon knows that he isn't very bright. At 32, he mops floors in a bakery and earns just enough to get by. Three evenings a week, he studies at a center for mentally challenged adults. But all of this is about to change for Charlie. As part of a daring experiment, doctors are going to perform surgery on Charlie's brain. They hope the operation and special medication will increase his intelligence, just as it has for the laboratory mouse, Algernon.

The Blue Flower is set in the age of Goethe, in the small towns and great universities of late 18th-century Germany. It tells the true story of Friedrich von Hardenberg, a passionate, impetuous student of philosophy who will later gain fame as the romantic poet Novalis. Fritz seeks his father's permission to wed his "heart's heart," his "spirit's guide" - a plain, simple child named Sophievon Kühn. It is an attachment that shocks his family and friends.

At 26, Bushrod Carter is already an old soldier, a veteran of all his regiment's campaigns since Shiloh. Now, on an Indian summer afternoon in 1864, Bushrod finds himself in the line of battle once again, on a plain below the obscure village of Franklin, Tennessee. The dark flower of his destiny is opening in the twilight, just as it has on other fields, and Bushrod must pass once again under its shadow if he is to see tomorrow.

Nine-year-old Violet loves spending time in her Aunt Abigail's flower shop in their small British town. And she's so excited to stay overnight with her Aunt Abigail for the first time! But when Aunt Abigail has to leave to deal with an emergency, Violet and her friends, twins Jack and Zack, start poking around - and discover that her aunt owns an ancient magical flower book and uses her flower magic to make people happy! Violet wants to do that, too. Her first mission: making a match between two of her teachers. Unfortunately, it all goes wrong!

At birth, Violet and Rose Flowers were identical, save for a tiny bluish-purple mark gracing Violet’s slender neck. By nineteen, their temperaments distinguish them, as different as the flowers their mother named them for—Violet, wild and outgoing, and Rose, solitary and reserved. Still, they are each other’s world. Then, on a sweltering, terrible August night in 1928, an explosion rocks Lamb’s Dance Hall in Possum Flats, Missouri, engulfing it in flames, leaving one twin among the dozens dead, and her sister’s life forever changed.

They were a perfect and beautiful family - until a heartbreaking tragedy shattered their happiness. Now, for the sake of an inheritance that will ensure their future, the children must be hidden away out of sight, as if they never existed. They are kept in the attic of their grandmother’s labyrinthine mansion, isolated and alone. As the visits from their seemingly unconcerned mother slowly dwindle, the four children grow ever closer and depend upon one another to survive both this cramped world and their cruel grandmother.

Twenty-four years after losing her daughter in a tragic accident, Carol Denman has finally made peace with Katie's father. But releasing her ex-husband from blame and facing how deeply she held herself responsible were only the first steps in Carol's journey toward peace. Carol is determined to mend her broken relationship with her mother. But she soon discovers she isn't the only one who has been hanging on to bitterness. A road trip to face the past leads Carol's mother, Judith, to unearth the seeds of past mistakes and deep resentments in ways neither of them would expect.

Everyone from Wakarusa, Indiana, remembers the infamous case of January Jacobs, who was discovered in a ditch hours after her family awoke to find her gone. Margot Davies was six at the time, the same age as January—and they were next-door neighbors. In the twenty years since, Margot has grown up, moved away, and become a big-city journalist. But she’s always been haunted by the feeling that it could’ve been her. And the worst part is, January’s killer has never been brought to justice.

When widowed Millie Fisher moves back to her childhood home of Harvest, Ohio, she notices one thing right away - the young Amish are bungling their courtships and marrying the wrong people! A quiltmaker by trade, Millie has nevertheless stitched together a few lives in her time, with truly romantic results. Her first mission? Her own niece, widowed gardener Edith Hochstetler, recently engaged to rude, greedy Zeke Miller. Anyone can see he's not right for such a gentle young woman - except Edith herself.

Still new to her duties as Lady Vorkosigan, Ekaterin is working together with expatriate scientist Enrique Borgos on a radical scheme to recover the lands of the Vashnoi exclusion zone, lingering radioactive legacy of the Cetagandan invasion of the planet Barrayar. When Enrique's experimental bioengineered creatures go missing, the pair discover that the zone still conceals deadly old secrets.

Nic wants nothing more than to move on—from her sister’s disappearance and the state it’s left her in. But then one day, Jules’s sister, Jenna Connor, walks into her life and offers Nic something she hasn’t felt in a long time: hope. What follows is a gripping tale of two sisters who will do anything to find their missing halves, even if it means destroying everything they’ve ever known.

Dr. Allison Hall is staring down the prospect of her first Christmas in a new town and her first without her son, who is spending the holiday with her ex. As the new doc on the block, she's on duty for the Christmas shift and glad of it. When one of her favorite patients lands back in the hospital, and it looks like this might be his last Christmas, she hopes she can help connect him to his estranged daughter. Dante Price thinks Allison should mind her own business. He's a nurse - and admittedly a bit of a Christmas Scrooge.

Bailey King is living the sweet life as assistant chocolatier in New York City. But then her grandmother calls with news that her grandfather's heart condition has worsened. Bailey rushes to Harvest, Ohio, where her grandparents still run Swissmen Sweets, an Amish candy shop. She finds her grandfather is doing better than she feared. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for a local Englisch developer, whom Bailey finds dead in the candy shop kitchen - with Jebediah King's chocolate knife buried in his chest.

Virgil Flowers kicked around for a while before joining the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. First it was the army and the military police, then the police in St. Paul, and finally Lucas Davenport brought him into the BCA, promising him, "We'll only give you the hard stuff." He's been doing the hard stuff for three years now, but never anything like this.

Violette Toussaint is the caretaker at a cemetery in a small town in Bourgogne. Casual mourners, regular visitors, and sundry colleagues - gravediggers, groundskeepers, and a priest - visit her to warm themselves in her lodge, where laughter, companionship, and occasional tears mix with the coffee she offers them. Her life is lived to the rhythms of their funny, moving confidences. But her routine is disrupted by the arrival of the local police chief, who insists on scattering the ashes of his recently deceased mother on the gravesite of a complete stranger.

Miss Maryann FitzWilliam is too witty and bookish for her own good. No gentleman of the ton will marry her, so her parents arrange for her to wed a man old enough to be her father. But Maryann is ready to use those wits to turn herself into a sinful wallflower. When the scandal sheet reports a sighting of Nicolas Ives climbing out the chamber windows of a house party, Maryann does the unthinkable. She anonymously claims that the bedchamber belonged to none other than Miss FitzWilliam, tarnishing her own reputation - and chances of the dastardly union her family secured for her.

A Midlife Bloom of Magic, Murder, and Mayhem! Faith Bracken thought the biggest challenge in her fifties would be hot flashes — not discovering she’s a witch from a powerful magical family. But when she returns to her charmingly odd hometown of Abracadabra, Indiana, to start a flower farm, her life takes an unexpected twist. Turns out, the “magic factory” on her family’s land doesn’t make magician’s props — it’s the real deal. And so is the magic Faith never knew she had. Just as she’s getting settled, Faith’s peaceful plans wilt when her childhood friend is accused of...

Flowers is only in his late 30's, but he's been around the block a few times, and he doesn't think much can surprise him anymore. He's wrong. It's a hot, humid summer night in Minnesota, and Flowers is in bed with one of his ex-wives (the second one , if you're keeping count ) when the phone rings. It's Lucas Davenport. There's a body in Stillwater, two shots to the head, found near a veterans' memorial. And the victim has a lemon in his mouth.

Miss Katherine Danvers has always been a wallflower. But now with her family on the brink of financial ruin, she finds herself a desperate wallflower. To save her family, she'll do anything. Luckily, she has the perfect plan.... She'll impress the ton by simply announcing she is engaged to the reclusive and mysterious Duke of Thornton, Alexander Masters, and secure strong matches for her sisters. No one has heard from the duke in years. Surely he'll never find out before her sisters' weddings and she can go back to her own quiet life.

Lily is haunted by memories of who she once was, and of a person, long gone, who defined her existence. She has nothing but time now, as she recounts the tale of Snow Flower and asks the gods for forgiveness.