If your wannabe music star fiancé just left you for the wedding cake decorator, your flower shop folded, and your godfather left you a garden in Scotland, what would you do? Asking for a friend. Okay, the friend is me. Not that you didn’t already know that. To say the last few months in my life have been a rough patch would be an understatement, a gross understatement. My good-for-nothing fiancé did leave me for our wedding cake decorator, I lost my beloved flower shop to competition, and my caring godfather, Ian MacCallister, died while serving the British Army in Afghanistan.

So that, all that, was how I ended up on a plane flying over the Atlantic Ocean with a man snoring in my shoulder. I shifted in my seat and the man’s head lulled to the other side of his headrest. I held my breath, but he didn’t make a sound. Free from the man’s snores, I saw the coastline of Great Britain come into view. I had made this trip many times to visit my godfather in Duncreigan, the cottage, grounds, and garden that I had now inherited on the west coast of Scotland. I had been shocked when Uncle Ian’s solicitor called to tell me that I would be the one who would inherit Duncreigan. I knew that Uncle Ian had no family, but my father had been like a brother to him. Everyone expected my father would inherit, but it was me.

I stared down at the green landscape. I guessed we were flying over England or maybe Wales at that point. It wouldn’t be too long before we landed, and I could begin my life over. That’s what coming to Scotland felt like, starting my life new. My life back in Tennessee was in shambles. It was the perfect time to begin again. The only thing that would have made it better would have been my godfather being there when I landed. My chest constricted just thinking about him. My mind drifted off to memories of Duncreigan and of my godfather’s beautiful garden, which had been in his family for centuries. A thick stonewall surrounded the garden, and every flower I could imagine grew there. In the middle of the beautiful flowers, an ancient standing stone sat with a bright yellow rose wrapped around it. Uncle Ian told me when I was a child that the rose was special, but I didn’t know why. I wondered if now I would learn. . .

The flight attendant came over the PA system, “The captain has turn on the fasten seatbelt sign as we prepare to land. Please return to your seats and put your tray tables up to the upright position. Thank you.”

I felt the plane begin its descent and watched in fascination as the city of Edinburgh, Scotland drew closer and closer. . .

You can read more about Fiona in Flowers and Foul Play, the first book in the NEW “Magic Garden” mystery series.

Fiona Knox lost her fiancé and her flower shop—but when she flies to Scotland to inherit her godfather’s cottage and possibly magical walled garden, she may lose her life as well when she’s swept into a murder investigation.

Florist Fiona Knox’s life isn’t smelling so sweet these days. Her fiancé left her for their cake decorator. Then, her flower shop wilted after a chain florist opened next door. So when her godfather, Ian MacCallister, leaves her a cottage in Scotland, Fiona jumps on the next plane to Edinburgh. Ian, after all, is the one who taught her to love flowers. But when Ian’s elderly caretaker Hamish MacGregor shows her to the cottage upon her arrival, she finds the once resplendent grounds of Duncreigan in a dreadful shambles—with a dead body in the garden.

Minutes into her arrival, Fiona is already being questioned by the handsome Chief Inspector Neil Craig and getting her passport seized. But it’s Craig’s fixation on Uncle Ian’s loyal caretaker, Hamish, as a prime suspect, that really makes her worried. As Fiona strolls the town, she quickly realizes there are a whole bouquet of suspects much more likely to have killed Alastair Croft, the dead lawyer who seems to have had more enemies than friends.

Now it’s up to Fiona to clear Hamish’s name before it’s too late in Flowers and Foul Play, USA Today bestselling author Amanda Flower’s spellbinding first Magic Garden mystery.

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About the author
Amanda Flower, a USA Today bestselling and Agatha Award-winning mystery author, started her writing career in elementary school when she read a story she wrote to her sixth grade class and had the class in stitches with her description of being stuck on the top of a Ferris wheel. She knew at that moment she’d found her calling of making people laugh with her words. In addition to being an author, Amanda is librarian in Northeast Ohio. Flowers and Foul Play is the first novel in her Magic Garden Mystery Series set in Scotland.

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