Sarah Addison Allen – författare

Welcome to Bascom, North Carolina, where it seems that everyone has a story to tell about the Waverley women. The house that's been in the family for generations, the walled garden that mysteriously blooms year round, the rumours of dangerous loves and tragic passions. Every Waverley woman is somehow touched by magic.Claire has always clung to the Waverleys' roots, tending the enchanted soil in the family garden from which she makes her sought-after delicacies - famed and feared for their curious effects. She has everything she thinks she needs - until one day she waked to find a stranger has moved in next door and a vine of ivy has crept into her garden . . . Claire's carefully tended life is about to run gloriously out of control.

Twenty-seven-year-old Josey is sure of three things: winter in her North Carolina hometown is her favorite season; she's a sorry excuse for a Southern belle; and sweets are best eaten in the privacy of her hidden closet. For while Josey has settled into an uneventful life in her mother's house, her one consolation is the stockpile of sugary treats and paperback romances she escapes to each night . . .Until she finds her closet harboring none other than local waitress Della Lee Baker, a tough-talking, tender-hearted woman who is one part nemesis - and two parts fairy godmother . . .

Emily Benedict came to Mullaby, North Carolina, hoping to solve at least some of the riddles surrounding her mother's life. But the moment Emily enters the house where her mother grew up and meets the grandfather she never knew, she realises that mysteries aren't solved in Mullaby, they're a way of life. Here are rooms where the wallpaper changes to suit your mood. Unexplained lights skip across the yard at midnight. And a neighbour, Julia Winterson, bakes hope in the form of cakes, offering them to satisfy the town's sweet tooth - but also in the hope of rekindling a love she fears might be lost forever. Can a hummingbird cake really bring back a lost love? Is there really a ghost dancing in Emily's backyard? The answers are never what you expect. But in this town of lovable misfits, the unexpected fits right in.

Welcome to Walls of Water, North Carolina, a place where secrets run thicker than the town's famous fog.Once upon a time, Willa Jackson's family owned the beautiful house on the top of the ridge. Now it symbolises her family's ruin and a legacy Willa longs to escape from.Paxton Osgood also yearns to break free, especially from her parents' expectations, and the heartbreak of unrequited love. Desperate for a distraction, she decides to restore the empty mansion to its former glory.But the discovery of a long-buried secret, a friendship that defies time, and a touch of magic, will transform both women's lives in ways they would never have expected.

The first time she saw Lost Lake, it was just a picture on a postcard, but she knew she was seeing her future.That was half a lifetime ago. Now all that's left is a once-charming collection of lakeside cabins succumbing to the Southern Georgia heat and damp, and an assortment of faithful misfits drawn back to Lost Lake year after year by their own secret dreams and desires.It's not quite enough to keep Eby Pim from selling up and calling this her final summer at the lake. Until one last chance at family knocks on her door.Kate spent her best summer at Lost Lake, at the age of twelve, before she learned of loneliness, and heartbreak, and loss. Perhaps, if she returns, her young daughter can cling to her own childhood for just a little longer... and maybe Kate herself can rediscover something that slipped through her fingers so long ago.One by one, people find their way to Lost Lake, looking for something: a second chance, a mystery solved, a heart mended. Can they find what they need before it's too late?In this atmospheric and enchanting novel, Sarah Addison Allen illuminates the secret longings and the everyday magic that wait to be discovered in the unlikeliest of places.

Readers fell in love with Sarah Addison Allen's debut novel, GARDEN SPELLS. Now the tale of the Waverley women is to be revisited with a magical sequel.Autumn has finally arrived in the small town of Bascom, North Carolina, heralded by a strange old man appearing with a beaten-up suitcase. He has stories to tell, stories that could change the lives of the Waverley women forever. But the Waverleys have enough trouble on their hands. Quiet Claire Waverley has started a successful new venture, Waverley's Candies, but it's nothing like she thought it would be, and it's slowly taking over her life. Claire's wild sister Sydney, still trying to leave her past behind, is about to combust with her desire for another new beginning. And Sydney's fifteen-year-old daughter Bay has given her heart away to the wrong boy and can't get it back.From the author of the New York Times bestselling sensation GARDEN SPELLS, FIRST FROST is magical and atmospheric, taking readers back into the lives of the gifted Waverley women - back to their strange garden and temperamental apple tree, back to their house with a personality of its own, back to the men who love them fiercely - proving that a happily-ever-after is never the real ending to a story. It's where the real story begins.