Flowers Fiction

The boy who always felt like mine is now the man I can’t have.... Dig a little and you’ll find photos of me in the bathtub with Ezra Stern. Get your mind out of the gutter. We were six months old. Pry and one of us might confess we saved our first kiss for each other. The most clumsy, wet, sloppy...spectacular 30 seconds of my adolescence. Get into our business and you’ll see two families, closer than blood, torn apart in an instant. Twenty years later, my “awkward duckling” best friend from childhood, the boy no one noticed, is a man no one can ignore.

Dammit , just how many toes was she going to have to stomp on before people realized she was a delicate freakn' flower? Naomi doesn't want to follow tradition and settle down with a violence-loving, chest-thumping shapeshifter. She grew up in a household with five testosterone-laden brothers where none of the dishes ever matched, the ugly-as-sin furniture could withstand any catastrophe, and Krazy Glue was bought by the case.

In 1920s Glasgow, Beattie Blaxland falls pregnant to her married lover Henry just before her nineteenth birthday. Abandoned by her family, Beattie and Henry set sail for a new life in Australia. In 2009, London, prima ballerina Lydia Blaxland-Hunter is also discovering that life can also have its ups and downs. Unable to dance again after a fall, Lydia returns home to Australia to recuperate.

London is buzzing with the news that James Winters, the Duke of Wulverton—thought lost at sea a decade ago—survived in the harsh wilderness of the Yukon. Now he's been returned to his family, his responsibilities, and a nightmarish world of artifice and noise. He has three weeks to become a refined, elegant duke for the Queen . . . or doom the entire family to ruin and scandal.

The Tour de Cascade is the brainchild of Charming Books proprietor Violet Waverly's Grandma Daisy. But not everyone in this Niagara Region village supports the race. As if the bike race weren't tiring enough, pesky private investigator Joel Redding is snooping around Charming Books. When Redding perishes in an accident during the race, David discovers that the brake line of the private eye's bike was cut. Worse, Violet tops his list of suspects. As Emerson the tuxedo cat and resident crow Faulkner look on, Charming Books steers Violet to the works of Walt Whitman to solve the crime.

As far as William Easton—the Duke of Blackheath—is concerned, love can go to the devil. Why would a man need passion when he has wealth, a stately home, and work to occupy his mind? But no one warned the duke that a fiery and frustratingly strong-willed activist like Lady Beatrice Haven can also be a stunning dark-haired siren who tempts a man’s mind, body, and soul.

Monica Noble is thrilled to be asked to judge a neighboring village’s flower show, even if she can't tell a begonia from an azalea! Her fellow judge Vicar James Davies inhales deeply from a large bloom and drops dead in the tent. At first everyone thinks he’s had a heart attack, but the doctor on hand is suspicious and calls in the police. A second murder quickly follows, this time of one of the main suspects. Monica must help Chief Inspector Jason Dury to solve the two murders and find the killer—fast, before anyone else pays the ultimate price.

Forrest Winters isn’t just a federal fire marshal; he’s a thorn in Ranger Sierra Betts’ side. The way he swings his big axe, fixes her with his chameleon gray eyes, and talks about his jurisdiction has a way of breaking her concentration. He has a way of showing up everywhere he doesn’t belong, including Greenbrier Ranger Station. And he really needs to quit stealing her bacon bites.

Kizzie McAdams spent her childhood longing to see beyond her secluded Blue Ridge Mountain home, but when her job as a servant in a landowner’s house results in an unplanned pregnancy, the excitement of her new life dissolves into alienation and heartbreak. Her father disowns her, the father of her child gives inconsistent affection and broken promises, and the matriarch of the area is determined to distance Kizzie from her son by any means necessary.

Rushing home to sit by her ailing grandmother's bedside, Violet Waverly is shocked to find Grandma Daisy the picture of perfect health. Violet doesn't need to read between the lines: Her grandma wants Violet back home and working in her magical store, Charming Books. It's where the perfect book tends to fly off the shelf and pick you.... Violet has every intention to hightail it back to Chicago, but then a dead man is discovered clutching a volume of Emily Dickinson's poems from Grandma Daisy's shop.

Widowed matchmaker Millie Fisher is anything but lonely between her mischievous goats, her quilting circle—and her habit of solving the odd murder or two . . . Millie's decidedly not Amish best friend, Lois Henry, is outspoken, colorful, and so hopelessly romantic, she's had four husbands. Millie doesn't judge, and she also doesn't expect to run into Lois's most recent ex, gambler Gerome Moorhead, in small-town Harvest, Ohio. With him is the very young, new Mrs. Moorhead, aka "Honey Bee."

Clara’s magic has always been wild. But it’s never been dangerous. Then a simple touch causes poisonous flowers to bloom in her father’s chest. The only way to heal him is to cast an extremely difficult spell that requires perfect control. And the only person willing to help is her former best friend, Xavier, who’s grown from a sweet, shy child into someone distant and mysterious.

Hidden deep in the forest, schoolgirl Felicity Parker is found carefully laid out on a rock with nothing but a freshly picked bunch of flowers next to her lifeless form. Detective Jenna Alton is called in to investigate the gruesome discovery. With the body found just off a popular hiking route, Jenna believes the killer is a visitor to the town...until a second local girl is discovered.

Twenty-year-old Flora Kerner has arrived in Baden-Baden, the “Summer Capital of Europe.” Having spurned the family seed trade, Flora has instead chosen to accept a floristry apprenticeship in the famed German spa town. She is a quick study in the art of flower arranging, but progress is slower in matters of the heart.

As a master of disguise, Thomasina Wynchester can be a polite young lady - or a bawdy old man. She’ll do whatever it takes to solve the cases her family takes on. But when Tommy’s beautiful new client turns out to be the highborn lady she’s secretly smitten with, more than her mission is at stake....

Juniper St. James has never met her half-sister before, yet she finds herself with an invitation to her lavish New York wedding. With only a handful of stressful weeks to go until the big event, Juniper wants a fake boyfriend, and she wants Julian's help getting his college roommate and hot NFL star, Noah, to play the role. Julian reluctantly goes along with the trade, but spending long, late nights working on his case with Juniper makes him realize how surprisingly well he can tolerate her company. Or more than tolerate.

In the depths of a Beijing winter, during the waning days of Deng Xiaoping's reign, the US ambassador's son is found dead - his body entombed in a frozen lake. Almost simultaneously, American officials find a ship adrift in the storm-churned waters off California. No one is surprised to find the fetid hold crammed with hundreds of undocumented Chinese immigrants - the latest cargo in the Chinese mafia's smuggling trade. What does surprise Assistant US Attorney David Stark is that among the hapless refugees lies the corpse of a Red Prince, a scion of China's political elite.

This collection of 18 short tales, a novelette, and a short novel takes the listener inside the dark imagination of Elizabeth Engstrom, author of acclaimed horror classics like When Darkness Loves Us. In these stories, you will hear about a woman asked to be complicit in her own mother’s death, a grandmother with a macabre hobby, a bizarre, phallic-shaped flower that portends evil for a married couple, a father whose son is caught up in a sinister government experiment. These are weird and unsettling tales that will linger with the listener.

Noah may have a solidified playboy reputation, but he also has a new puppy at home and a single mom for a sister who relies on him to babysit when she's busy saving lives as a doctor. The problem? Football season is quickly approaching, and Noah's worried who will fill his shoes when he's out of town winning games. The solution? Asking Gemma Briggs to move in with him. But what happens when the temporary arrangement becomes something they both want to make permanent?

PI Varg Veum has returned to duty following a stint in rehab, but his new composure and resolution are soon threatened when three complex cases arrive on his desk in quick succession. A man is found dead in an elite swimming pool and a young woman has gone missing. Most chillingly, Varg Veum is asked to investigate the ‘Camilla Case’: an eight-year-old cold case involving the disappearance of a little girl who was never found.