Buy all 4 books of the Waxwood Series for less than $5 here!
“This is historical fiction at its best” – Whispering Stories Book Blog
How many myths and half-truths does it take to destroy a family?
Larissa, the family matriarch, whose obsession with Nob Hill’s rigid social proprieties hides shameful secrets of the family’s past.
Jake, the son, and heir, whose search for a father figure leads him down the dark path of sin and redemption.
Vivian, the daughter, whose “Dagger Girl” probings lead to her undoing and her rebirth.
Book 1: The Specter – In 1892 San Francisco, Nob Hill’s finest gather to mourn the death of Penelope Alderdice. When an uninvited guest shows up claiming to have known Mrs. Alderdice under another name, the Alderdices are shocked. Is it possible she had another identity beyond the generous philanthropist and celebrated socialite? Her granddaughter Vivian must journey back to Waxwood to find out.
Book 2: False Fathers – Jake has none of the virtues of the Gilded Age masculine ideal. Where he should be aggressive, he is contemplative. Where he should be ambitious, he is wayward. Where he should be money-driven, he is artistic. Jake must decide his future during his family’s summer trip to Waxwood. While there, he befriends a man who becomes a father figure, promising to mold him into the Teddy Roosevelt ideal, shaping him into the man he’s meant to be.
Book 3: Pathfinding Women – At the close of the nineteenth century, Vivian Alderdice is twenty-six and unmarried with no prospective suitors. Her brother’s tragic plight the year before left her and her mother on shaky ground with Nob Hill’s blue bloods. The only way they can re-establish their social position is to win the heart of Monte Leblanc, a wealthy Canadian looking to become a member of the exclusive Washington Street society. But a young man on the train tells Vivian things about her grandmother that shake her to the core. Even as she is pursued by the debonair Monte Leblanc, Vivian can’t avoid ghosts from the past who send her on a journey she is reluctant to take.
Book 4: Dandelions – For Vivian Alderdice, the 20th century begins with a new start. Now a working girl and progressive reformer, she has forsaken the Gilded Age opulence of Nob Hill for the humbler surroundings of Waxwood’s commercial district.
Harland Stevens, the man who ruined her brother two years before, appears like another specter in Vivian’s life and, in spite of herself, Vivian is compelled to help him escape from a hell of his own.
Read this family saga set during San Francisco’s Gilded Age by the author of LESSONS FROM MY MOTHER’S LIFE, the #1 bestselling debut on Amazon’s Historical Short Story charts!
Buy all 4 books of the Waxwood Series for less than $5 here!
The Specter (Book 1):
Photo Credit: Portrait of Sonya Knips, Gustav Klimt, 1898, oil on canvas, Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna, Austria: Aavindraa/Wikimedia Commons/PD Old 100
False Fathers (Book 2):
Photo Credit: Karl Joseph Burkmuller, Franz Xaver Winterhalter, 1830, oil on canvas, Miguelemejia/Wikimedia Commons/PD Art (PD old 100)
Pathfinding Women (Book 3):
Photo Credit: Painting of three women in white, long-sleeved dresses, Charles Perugini, 1839-1918, oil on canvas: Needpix.com /CC0
Dandelions (Book 4):
Photo Credit: Couple painting, Dionisios Kalivokas, 1858, canvas and oil, Corfu National Gallery, Greece: File upload bot (Magnus Manske)/Wikimedia Commons/PD Art (PD old 70)
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