The Dark Garden

Are you ready to surrender? When Rowan Cassidy meets Christian Thorne in an exclusive club, he challenges everything she’s ever believed about herself. He then makes an outrageous proposal: give herself over to him completely for thirty days and discover her most secret fantasies and her true nature. Give in to absolute pleasure with Eden Bradley’s romantic, liberating and utterly addictive debut novel.

In this novel, Thea, a troubled young woman, tries to re-establish her identity and figure out her connection to a sad ghost.

In 1862, having completed his medical studies in Europe, Julian Chisholm finds himself in Glasgow, penniless, but determined to return home and offer his skill as a surgeon to the cause of the Con­federacy. Through a cynical, happy-go-lucky gambler he meets lovely Jane Anderson, widow of a Confederate army officer, who needs a husband badly if she is to return to Georgia to fight for her estates. She offers Julian the price of his passage if he will marry her, and he accepts, hoping that marriage will drive away his constantly recurring thoughts of beautiful, shameless Lucy Sprague who had rejected him three years before for an untrustworthy but wealthy Yankee senator. Once in the Confederacy, Julian plunges into the hazardous work of an army field surgeon as he tries to forget both Lucy and Jane, in whom his interest has deepened. On the bloody battlefields of Vicksburg and Chickamauga he performs delicate under-fire operations, oblivious of his personal safety and concerned only with the lives of the wounded under his knife. There are detailed and accurate descriptions of Julian at work, from the scene at the primitive base hospital where he saves an adolescent boy with a dangerous head injury to the night in a sumptuous mansion where he makes medical history when he removes an appendix as a cure for typhlitis. As we follow Julian through rapidly shifting scenes of action, Jane and Lucy again cross his path and disturb his loyalties. How he resolves his personal conflict and makes his final choice between love and duty is the climax of this dramatic story of a doctor in the Civil War.

A girl recovering from Amnesia.

"In Black Garden, Thomas de Waal tells the full story of this tragic quarrel and its aftermath for the first time. He travels the length and breadth of Armenia and Azerbaijan, talking to veterans, refugees and the inhabitants of ruined towns and villages. He recreates the story of the descent into conflict of two former Soviet neighbors, its disastrous consequences and the confused efforts of the "Great Powers" - Russia, France and the United states - to bring peace to the Caucasus."--BOOK JACKET.

A sickly and depressed fourteen-year-old boy with no gleam of hope lives isolated from the outside world along with his mother and father within the walls of a frighteningly dark garden. He is the thirteenth child of the family. All of his older brothers and sisters have died and are buried in the family graveyard at the back of the manor. The day he was born coincided with the beginning of a string of deaths. His brothers and sisters began dying one every year, each under suspicious circumstances before they reached the age of fifteen. By family tradition, fifteen is considered the age of adulthood, and the age at which each child must make the momentous decision to leave the garden permanently or stay and carry on the fam¬¬¬ily name. On the threshold of the age of fifteen, this nameless boy spends his days deep in thought and fearful speculation about his own predicament. He is distrusting of his own mother and father because they demonstrate a certain animosity toward one another and blame each other for the deaths of each one of their children. Prior to the boy's fifteenth birthday, his father secretly invites him to escape together from the garden, and devises a plan in order to achieve this. But the next morning, the boy discovers that his father has disappeared without a trace. From this point on, he and his mother live alone in the manor. The threat of danger has strangely subsided and the boy reaches the age of adulthood, such that he comes to believe that the real killer of his brothers and sisters had been his father all along, since the atmosphere in the manor and garden since his escape has become calm and peaceful. Mother plans to arrange a marriage for her son with a young girl from a nearby garden similar to their own to help carry on the generations. A peculiar old man, who enters the manor through a hidden door in a closet, helps facilitate this arranged marriage. The boy gains a sense of confidence after marriage. He takes on the responsibilities of running the manor. He spends happy days with his wife Eiyla, who teaches him how to do many household tasks. One blissful year passes but Eiyla still does not conceive a child, and then she too subsequently dies. Since the boy had loved her, he becomes despondent in his grief for her. One night as he walks in the garden under the moonlight, the ghosts of his deceased brothers and sisters appear to him. They help him discover the body of his father at the bottom of the dried-up well at the back of the garden. This means his father had not escaped after all, which also means that his father could not have been the killer. The boy feels compelled to get to the bottom of all these mystifying events. His distrust for his mother is compounded by the mysterious death of his father. He must now learn to survive on his own while uncovering the evil inside the garden and find out the reason behind all these suspicious deaths. His discovery opens his eyes to the outside world and propels him forward on what becomes his life's mission.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A modern classic of true crime, set in a most beguiling Southern city—now in a 30th anniversary edition with a new afterword by the author “Elegant and wicked . . . might be the first true-crime book that makes the reader want to book a bed and breakfast for an extended weekend at the scene of the crime.”—The New York Times Book Review Shots rang out in Savannah’s grandest mansion in the misty, early morning hours of May 2, 1981. Was it murder or self-defense? For nearly a decade, the shooting and its aftermath reverberated throughout this hauntingly beautiful city of moss-hung oaks and shaded squares. In this sharply observed, suspenseful, and witty narrative, John Berendt skillfully interweaves a hugely entertaining first-person account of life in this isolated remnant of the Old South with the unpredictable twists and turns of a landmark murder case. It is a spellbinding story peopled by a gallery of remarkable characters: the well-bred society ladies of the Married Woman’s Card Club; the turbulent young gigolo; the hapless recluse who owns a bottle of poison so powerful it could kill every man, woman, and child in Savannah; the aging and profane Southern belle who is the “soul of pampered self-absorption”; the uproariously funny drag queen; the acerbic and arrogant antiques dealer; the sweet-talking, piano-playing con artist; young people dancing the minuet at the black debutante ball; and Minerva, the voodoo priestess who works her magic in the graveyard at midnight. These and other Savannahians act as a Greek chorus, with Berendt revealing the alliances, hostilities, and intrigues that thrive in a town where everyone knows everyone else. Brilliantly conceived and masterfully written, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is a sublime and seductive reading experience.

Two sworn enemies who can't resist each other. Something has to give. The Blakes and the Cavenders have been going at it since 1870 and Vienna Blake keeps up the family tradition, gunning for the Cavenders at every opportunity. All the same, she's shocked when Mason Cavender confronts her in her office and accuses her of murder. Vienna has the stunningly sexual Mason thrown out by security, but she can't rid herself so easily of her powerful, instant attraction to the woman she's been groomed since childhood to destroy. Last in a long line of "Cursed Cavenders," as the media describes them, Mason has just walked away from the small plane crash that killed her brother. Now in charge of her family's crumbling business empire, she suspects sabotage and believes beautiful, ruthless Vienna Blake is responsible. Fearing for her life and grieving for her brother, Mason hires a private investigator to get evidence she can take to the police. She is frustrated when the man finds nothing but makes the bizarre suggestion that she hire a psychic to undo the "curse" on her family. He gives her a name. Phoebe Temple. Phoebe's dreams have always centered on the victims of crimes, and she isn't surprised when the woman steps from her dreams into her life, asking for help. Exposing family secrets always comes at a price. With passion and family honor in the balance, Mason is willing to pay her dues. But can she persuade Vienna to accept a truce before it's too late? Dark Garden brings together two powerful women who must confront the past if they want to seize the future.The third book in the Dark Vista series.