Flowers Fiction

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.

Today is the day that I, Luciano Fjorborn, First Paladin of Berella, go out into Yurnip County to push back the forces of darkness with a few vigorous thrusts of my mighty lance! Who’s Berella? Why, she’s the goddess of love, tenderness, and hot rumpy-pumpy, of course! As her loyal servant, it is my mission to go out of my cloister and show the world Berella’s divine love. Repeatedly. And in multiple positions! But it’s a cruel world out there, especially for a Paladin who doesn’t believe in violence.

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!

Ever since her mother fell victim to the Lonely Death, Azalea has tried to find a cure in the fabled petals of the moonflowers growing in her garden. Her attempts at conquering death are derailed when a secret is unearthed—one that forces her into captivity at the hands of the large, arrogant, and frustratingly handsome Fae Commander of the wicked Black King.

Life is the teacher. Death is the lesson. An undying cultivator is the result. Su Fang’s path of cultivation is a journey of countless deaths. As each new life pulls back the veil that covers the Nine Rivers Continent, he discovers both hidden truths and the chains that bind him.

The Flowers of Buffoonery opens in a seaside sanitarium where Yozo Oba—the narrator of No Longer Human at a younger age—is being kept after a failed suicide attempt. While he is convalescing, his friends and family visit him, and other patients and nurses drift in and out of his room. Against this dispiriting backdrop, everyone tries to maintain a lighthearted, even clownish atmosphere: playing cards, smoking cigarettes, vying for attention, cracking jokes, and trying to make each other laugh.

Ruby Powell is the epitome of perfect. She’s beautiful, prominent, and wealthy. She lives in her dream home in the most affluent neighborhood in Dallas. She's a doting mother, a devoted wife, and a respected member of her community. She takes pride in serving as the president of both her son’s elementary school PTA and her daughter’s high school soccer Booster Club. Her kids adore her, and her husband is still her best friend after eighteen years of marriage.

Property developer Vivien Young thought she’d finally rebuilt her life. After a messy divorce, she’s returned to her childhood sanctuary, the grand Georgian home she now shares with her ageing father. Landing the contract to redevelop the Valley Park housing estate feels like the icing on the cake – a chance to prove she can succeed and keep her floundering business afloat.

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.

Fiona Clayburn is one lucky girl. Not only does she have a job she loves, working with fine art at Gallery Roche, but she's also managed to catch the eye of one of the most desired bachelors around—Giles, son of the Earl of Bancroft—and they're madly in love. Well, that's what everyone thinks, anyway. Little do they know it's all but a ruse to help the pair achieve their individual dreams and goals. After all, Fiona couldn't have possibly melted the Icy Scion's heart...right?

Scandal hits the staid publishing house of Barnabas when one of the directors is found dead in the strong-room. Suspicion immediately falls on his wife's lover, the junior partner in the firm. But how does an unpublished Restoration comedy come to feature in the tragedy? And what of the odd disappearance of another director twenty years before?

Bella Reed has worked at The Highland Flower Shop ever since she left college and now her Aunt Jane has handed the keys and the lease over to her. With the business under her reign, Bella is ready to hit the ground running—until she's dealt a massive blow. They're being evicted. When dashing businessman Maverick McIntyre turns up in Fort William, Bella discovers the reason they're being kicked out. He has no intention of honouring a ridiculous deal his father made many years ago.

Alice Comstock has always been a dutiful wife and an attentive mother, a perfectionist presiding over a flawless home. She’s reliably been her family’s center, the caretaker and problem-solver, until an illness requires her children to assume responsibility for their mother. For Adam, Alice’s youngest, a return home to California sparks a memory of his younger self. Alternating between the present and flashbacks to Adam’s college years, "There Are Flowers in Ohio" explores how the paths not taken shape all of our lives.

When Galen flees his home and travels to Lunar's Reach, he does what he needs to survive. But trading his body for food is always a risky undertaking. After he's found injured in an alleyway, his new friends take him to Moon Flower apothecary, where the madam in charge offers him the proposition of a lifetime.

Mary Bloomfield has no illusions. Her chances for matrimony have long since passed. Still, her circumstances are pleasant enough, especially now that she has found purpose in assisting her father with his medical practice in England's beautiful Lake District. Even without love, it's a peaceful life. That is until Adam Edgerton returns to the sleepy district. This decorated war hero did not arrive home to acclaim and rest, but to a new battle against the repercussions of an insidious disease.

Sensual, macabre, joyous and liberating, The Flowers of Evil, or Les Fleurs du Mal, is a beautifully debauched reflection on dreams, sin, life, and death. With subjects ranging from travel to drugs, sex to faith, sleep to contemplation, Baudelaire finds new beauty in the most sinister and corrupt of situations. His morbid and nightmarish Romanticism was completely unique: cynical and bleak, but also inspiring. The book was highly controversial upon its release and Napoleon III’s government prosecuted Baudelaire for "an insult to public decency".

Sierra Ravenswood is the new part-time employee of the Flower House, a flower shop in Aerieville, Tennessee. Things take a decidedly negative turn when a customer drops dead in the middle of her new bouquet-arranging workshop at the store. The town is on edge, and Sierra knows that murder is something that an upbeat attitude and a bouquet of sweet-smelling roses can't fix. She's determined to figure out whodunit, before anyone else in town meets an untimely reason for needing funeral flowers.

When her last two plays are dismal failures and her relationship with her temperamental mentor falls apart, writer Bree O’Brien abandons Chicago and the regional theater where she hoped to make a name for herself to return home. Opening Flowers on Main promises to bring her a new challenge and a new kind of fulfillment. But not all is peaceful and serene in Chesapeake Shores, with her estranged mother on the scene and her ex-lover on the warpath.

The blossom is out in the little Cornish harbour town of St Felix. But Poppy Carmichael's spirits aren't lifted by the pretty West Country spring. Inheriting her grandmother's flower shop has forced her to return to Cornwall, a place that holds too many memories. Poppy is determined to do her best for the sake of her adored grandmother, but she struggles with the responsibility of the more-shabby-than-chic shop.

In a quiet village surrounded by ancient woods and the imposing Italian Alps, a man is found naked with his eyes gouged out. It is the first in a string of gruesome murders. Superintendent Teresa Battaglia, a detective with a background in criminal profiling, is called to investigate. Battaglia is in her mid-60s, her rank and expertise hard-won from decades of battling for respect in the male-dominated Italian police force. Soon she finds that buried deep in these mountains are whispers of a dark and dangerous history, possibly tied to a group of eight-year-old children.