Historical fiction fans, please take note: Hazel Gaynor has written another winner! Her first novel, The Girl Who Came Home was a New York Times bestseller and her latest book, A Memory of Violets is fantastic!
I am such a sucker for sister stories, and this one is touching. Tilly Harper, a young woman newly employed at Mr. Shaw's Home for Watercress and Flower Girls, finds the diary of an orphaned flower seller who was separated from her sister in Victorian England and begins a journey to learn the fate of the long lost sisters.
Hazel recently stopped by the office and was chatting about her local library in Ireland and how important it was to her, and we immediately asked her to write a bit about it, and send us pictures. So she did. Cause she's lovely!
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I’m so excited to share with you my forthcoming novel A Memory of Violets, set around the lives of London’s flower sellers in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The novel was inspired by my love of Pygmalion/My Fair Lady and from many years living in London and walking around the atmospheric cobbled streets of Covent Garden.
In my home town of Kilcullen, County Kildare, Ireland, we have a lovely little library that was built in 1925 as the local boy’s school. Julie O’Donoghue has been the librarian here for over thirty years, sharing her passion for books with the local community. My children, aged 7 and 9, love visiting the library and always come home with a huge pile of books. The house is wonderfully peaceful for the next hour! Julie 
does such a great job supporting local writers and helping me source research books for my novels. She also hosted a lovely launch party at the library for my debut novel The Girl Who Came Home.
I believe libraries are incredibly important and was so thrilled and excited to learn that Library Journal has selected me as one of their Ten Big Breakout Authors for 2015. What an honour! 
Finally, I thought you might enjoy this quote from English columnist and writer, Caitlin Moran:
‘A library in the middle of a community is a cross between an emergency exit, a life raft and a festival. They are cathedrals of the mind; hospitals of the soul; theme parks of the imagination.’
Thank you for reading A Memory of Violets. I do hope you enjoy it.
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How sweet is that library?! And you can see Julie in the picture with Hazel, and of course I had to include Hazel's two boys (isn't that picture great?).
Please download an egalley now, or snag a copy when it goes on sale in February.
– Annie