Special price reduction on Timeless Tulips, Dark Diamonds- A Ghost Story (.99 ebook)!!
Yes, it’s a ghost story but there’s plenty of history behind that story. I have personal connections to the area of NY state where Annika and Lydia’s tale plays out. And then there are the European connections and research that went into the book.
Several years ago, I got caught up in the story of the tulip. Way back in 1554, an ambassador to Turkey sent some bulbs and seeds back home. These found their way into Vienna and then into the Low Counties. It took the careful work of Carolus Clusius (a botanist at the University of Leiden) to cultivate and catalog those bulbs that would tolerate the local conditions and soon tulips were popular. Newly independent Holland had a unique flower, and it soon became a luxury item. (Slideshow below shows me at the Hortus Bontanicus in Leiden where Clusius once worked his magic.)
More and more fantastic species were developed. The most sought-after tulips actually suffered from a virus that broke the colors into streaks. Eventually, a whole speculative trade came into existence in which people who bought the bulbs never saw them and never possessed them. Tulip fever reached its height in the winter of 1636 when a single bulb might be traded as many as ten times in a day. Then abruptly in February, there came a day when traders just stayed home. The bubble had burst. Fortunes had been made and lost.
Special price reduction on Timeless Tulips, Dark Diamonds- A Ghost Story (.99 ebook)!!
In this chilling ghost story, an act from the distant past is reawakened and afflicts the life of a modern teenage girl.
When Lydia travels to Amsterdam with her parents, bizarre things start to happen. Curtains flutter and unexplained shadows move unnerving her. With Dad interviewing for a job, Lydia is content to dismiss the oddities blaming them on jet lag and her migraine disease. But upon returning home to New York, the experiences intensify.
This is the haunting tale of two girls separated by four hundred years. Lydia is confused and in danger because the ghost of a little Dutch girl, Annika, wants revenge. When Lydia’s life is threatened, she is forced to solve a centuries’ old mystery to uncover the truth about Annika, her story, and how their past and present connect them. Can Lydia learn the truth in time to save herself and help Annika?
ellisnelson 