Roses And Daisies And Death Oh My

Nothing ruins a peaceful morning walk like finding a blood-spattered body. And Daisy Greene and Rose Forrest, sisters and co-owners of Champagne Taste, really need a peaceful morning walk. They have enough on their minds already. Christmas is right around the corner, business is brisk, and their little antiques district of Old Towne is being plagued with petty thievery and vandalism. Murder is just not in the game plan. And if finding bodies lying around walking trails isn't enough to destroy a perfectly good day, Daisy's ex-husband, state trooper Bill Greene, shows up to investigate the murder. Nosy by nature anyway, Daisy takes Bill's presence as a challenge to find the murderer. When Daisy and Rose start asking questions things get hairier. Someone begins stalking them. Daisy receives threatening letters and is brutally attacked. Their determination grows when clues lead to a missing priceless diamond and the man Daisy is dating becomes the next victim. With the help of their eccentric mother, Angela, and their hormonally-exuberant dog, Malcolm, they follow the clues to catch a killer.

Twelve-year-old Grace and her mother have always been their own family, traveling from place to place like gypsies. But Grace wants to finally have a home all their own. Just when she thinks she's found it her mother says it's time to move again. Grace summons the courage to tell her mother how she really feels and will always regret that her last words to her were angry ones. After her mother's sudden death, Grace is forced to live with a grandmother she's never met. She can't imagine her mother would want her to stay with this stranger. Then Grace finds clues in a mysterious treasure hunt, just like the ones her mother used to send her on. Maybe it is her mother, showing her the way to her true home. Lyrical, poignant and fresh, The Secret Hum of a Daisy is a beautifully told middle grade tale with a great deal of heart.

Daisy Forest knows a ghost when she sees one. True, she has never actually seen a ghost before, but she swears their transparency is a dead giveaway. Daisy, a volunteer tour guide at the historic Holly Hill Mansion, knows that Sophia Meade Long, the woman who once owned the mansion, has been dead since 1814. So, when a very transparent Sophia steps in front of Daisy's little Prius one night and asks for her help, how could she refuse? Once again Daisy and her sister, Rose, find themselves up to their eyeballs in all sorts of shenanigans — chasing ghosts, holding sÉances, and searching for priceless Revere silver. The sudden reappearance of their reprobate father, Dickie Forest, with a new and unlikely interest in the occult has them puzzled to say the least, and their mother, Angela, behaving at her eccentric best. What seems to be harmless fun takes a deadly turn when Daisy stumbles on the body of the mansion's curator in the wine cellar and Daisy is later attacked after a Gothic evening in the mansion. When the police seemed to be stumped, it's up to Daisy and Rose, with the invaluable help of Angela, to calm the ghost and catch a killer.

suddenly I should have stayed at home, I should have stayed at home, I should have stayed at home, for some time, seconds, hours, I can do nothing, suddenly I stop Violeta is driving along a lonely stretch of late-night motorway, in the midst of a fearsome storm. When her tired eyes close for just a second, her car veers off the road, rolls down a muddy embankment, over and over, and comes to rest on an empty stretch of sodden ground. And as she lies amid the wreckage of her car, suspended between this world and the next, Violeta's life will quite literally flash before her eyes . . . Scenes from her past overlap with what happened right before the accident: her upbringing with her distant, critical mother; her father's mysterious double-life; her troubled relationship with her daughter; her life on the road as she drives between waxing product-selling appointments with breaks at motorway service stations, the abuse from other travellers mocking her size, the alcohol, the risky encounters with lorry drivers on filthy public toilet floors... Violeta Among the Stars weaves memories and feelings as Violeta reflects on her death, her life, her reality and her dreams. An astonishing portrait of a seemingly insignificant life, from one of Portugal's greatest living writers. Translated from the Portuguese by Ángel Gurría-Quintana Ángel Gurría-Quintana is a historian, journalist and literary translator from Spanish and Portuguese. He writes regularly for the books pages of the Financial Times, and his translations include the anthology Other Carnivals: Short Stories from Brazil and The Return, by Dulce Maria Cardoso. With the support of the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union