The daughter of freed slaves, Mariah Arden was born in 1879 in Louisiana and is passing for white. At age 15, she headed for Ohio where she enrolled at Oberlin College and graduated with a degree in botany. While working as a greenhouse manager for the Hotel Del Monte in Monterey, California, her book, "Devil's Garden: An Encyclopaedia of Toxic Plants," was published in 1918. And now, in 1920, she finds herself involved in the investigation of multiple murders in the Monterey Bay area – an...

All creative people can become blocked at one time or another. They may be unable to come up with fresh ideas, get a project off the ground, or finish their projects. They may not even realize that a block exists. "Unblocked" is a guide to identifying several types of creative blocks, removing and handling those blocks, and developing work habits and other practices that prevent those blocks from reoccurring.

Vail Arden is an expert in identifying people based on their face and ears. When she sees a morgue photo next to a drivers license photo, she immediately knows it's not the same person. And her friend, Seattle Detective Souchet Wong, agrees. So why was the man in the morgue drawer positively identified by his wife as the same man in the drivers license photo? Detective Wong is on the case, but Vail has her own suspicions. When she starts looking for answers, she finds herself getting too c...

Nick and Adrienne Arden inherit an old farmhouse in Salem, Massachusetts. It's been in Nick's family for almost 300 years, and his late great-uncle Andrew had been documenting its history. As Nick reviews Andrew's research, including an old map of the property, he finds discrepancies and mysteries. And when a ghost makes an appearance, Nick and Adrienne are desperate to lay it to rest. Told in the present, with a back story told in alternating chapters.

In 1906, Grandma Helny came from a small town in Finland to an American rural community in Rochester, Washington. She brought with her a collection of 48 old recipes, which have been translated into English and assembled into this ebook. You'll find recipes for biscuits, cookies, casseroles, pancakes, breads, soups, drinks, fish, and meat dishes. This little book also includes a short glossary of Swedish and Finnish names for each dish.

Frederica Brahms is an artist who lost her husband to cancer two years ago. She knows she can't magically overcome her grief by moving. But she decides to relocate anyway, to the family home she inherited on the isle of Pendille in Saint-Joachim, a commune of eight islands in the center of the Brière marsh in France. She wants to make a new life for herself and to work on her genealogy too. There is a lot of her family history that consists of contradictory stories that she wants to clarif...

Delusions is the story of Amanda Woods, a twice-diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, pitifully neglected by social services for almost twelve years, and living in a run-down Victorian house in Venice Beach, California. Amanda has long teetered on the edge of reality, plagued by a variety of delusions and hallucinations, including a very hostile one involving her late and negligent mother, Rhoda Pruitt. Amanda calls it her "Rhoda delusion." However, her new case worker has met Rhoda, and she c...

Arden Brahms has a peaceful life as the owner of a wholesale orchid nursery in Pacific Grove, California. But one day, that peace and quiet is broken when a body is found in one of her greenhouses. And, as if that isn't enough, the valuable art collection she inherited from her grandmother is stolen from her home. There are so many possible suspects for the crimes, all her distant relatives, including the murder victim..

Georgina Castle is a successful San Francisco antiques dealer with more than a passing acquaintance with the supernatural. Her fear of again encountering an entity has altered her life and ruined her marriage. But life goes on. One day, while hosting an estate sale for a friend, she purchases a matching pair of early 18th century French mirrors for her collection. She knows that the owner of the mirrors disappeared without a trace many years ago, but she is curious about their earlier orig...

Learn to create and develop fictional characters who are living and breathing people, multi-dimensional and believable, whether based on real people or larger-than-life creations from your very own vivid imagination. Readers want characters who are like real people. Learn how to make your characters come alive. Included are tips for creating family backgrounds and family histories for a character, examples of many character traits, use of dialect and dialogue, sample character sketches, an...

It's 1926, and Irene Arden is happily married and living with her Swedish-Finn husband Karl Mattsson on his family farm in the beautiful, pastoral Independence Valley of western Washington. Irene adapts well to farm life and makes friends in the community. Sounds like paradise, but there is just one catch: Irene must live in the same house as Karl's mother, Agda, a weaver, and self-proclaimed " spider in the attic, weaving my woolly webs." Agda desperately tries to drive away her daughter-...

This ebook is for astrologers who want to study the prediction of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Since such a study requires an understanding of seismic events, the book includes a brief history of earthquakes and predictive techniques; an overview of working with historic data; listings for 3,500+ seismic events through 2020; a glossary of place names; chart data for selected cities and countries; and a short bibliography. This book has been in print and constantly updated since 1994...