black flowers white lies by yvonne ventresca

I smell the damp on his clothes from the night he rescued Oscar the kitten from a storm drain and brought him home to stay. I hear him pick my name from the baby book: Ariella, meaning lion, although Mom insists they nickname me Ella. I see him beam during his graduation from veterinary school and feel his hand pat Mom’s pregnant belly. He died before I was born, so I have no memories of him, only stories from Mom that I’ve heard so many times it feels like I was actually there. Despite the lilies left last summer, Dad wasn’t a bouquet kind of guy. Now, the heat is relentless and sweat trickles down my back as I search for the perfect pebble. Usually, the ritual of navigating the same cemetery rows, visiting Thomas Darren Benton, and putting a small rock on his headstone calms me. I always wondered, with an odd mixture of anxiety and hope, if I would run into the other mourner- someone else who honored my father.

Then, in September, the flowers stopped appearing as suddenly as they started. Last August, someone left fresh orange lilies for him throughout the month. No mysterious flowers wilt at his grave as I had feared.

I approach Dad’s tombstone with trepidation, then breathe a sigh of relief. Grab Your copy of Black Flowers, White Lies on: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Indiebound, & Add it to your Goodreads list! Publication Date: Paperback Ma(Hardcover Oct 2016) What if, like Dad, she’s suffering from a mental breakdown? In this second novel from award-winning author Yvonne Ventresca, Ella desperately needs to find answers-no matter how disturbing the truth might be.īlack Flowers, White Lies by Yvonne Ventresca is a 2017 Independent Publisher Book Award Gold Medal Winner! Soon the evidence points to someone new: Ella herself. But as the unexplained events become more frequent and more sinister, she finds herself terrified about who-or what-might harm her. When a handprint much like the one Ella left on her father’s tombstone mysteriously appears on the bathroom mirror, she wonders if Dad is warning her of danger, as he did once before, or if someone’s playing unsettling tricks on her. New facts point to his death in a psychiatric hospital, not a car accident as Mom always claimed. But when Ella learns that her mother may have lied about how Dad died sixteen years ago, it’s clear she’s not the only one with secrets. Since her mother disapproves, she keeps her visits to the cemetery where he’s buried secret. Her father died before she was born, but Ella Benton knows they have a connection that transcends the grave. ~April Henry, New York Times-bestselling author of Girl, Stolen “I raced through Black Flowers, White Lies in a single sitting.

Black flowers white lies by yvonne ventresca