Ring of Flowers: A Novella

Ring of Flowers, a 46-page novella, is a bittersweet love story and a companion piece to the full length novel The Calypso Directive, written by the same author... In 1665, in the Derbyshire village of Eyam, the tailor George Vicars orders a bolt of fabric from London to make a wedding dress for his betrothed daughter, Kathryn. To escape her fate of marrying the town's wealthiest and most odious bachelor, she elopes with her true love, farmhand Paul Foster. Kathryn's departure is fortuitous, because when the fabric is delivered, the parcel is infested with fleas carrying bubonic plague. First bitten and first to die, George Vicars' misfortune becomes the community's death sentence when the town Rector boldly imposes a quarantine on all Eyam residents. Months later, expecting a child, the newlyweds return home to find their world turned upside down. Once inside the township, they are forbidden to leave and Kathryn is forced to give birth in quarantine. Under the shadow plague, and against all odds, Will Foster's paternal ancestor is born . . . with a genetic mutation that will change the world 345 years later. Ring of Flowers, a 46-page novella, is a bittersweet love story and a companion piece to the full length novel The Calypso Directive, written by the same author... In 1665, in the Derbyshire village of Eyam, the tailor George Vicars orders a bolt of fabric from London to make a wedding dress for his betrothed daughter, Kathryn. To escape her fate of marrying the town's wealthiest and most odious bachelor, she elopes with her true love, farmhand Paul Foster. Kathryn's departure is fortuitous, because when the fabric is delivered, the parcel is infested with fleas carrying bubonic plague. First bitten and first to die, George Vicars' misfortune becomes the community's death sentence when the town Rector boldly imposes a quarantine on all Eyam residents. Months later, expecting a child, the newlyweds return home to find their world turned upside down. Once inside the township, they are forbidden to leave and Kathryn is forced to give birth in quarantine. Under the shadow plague, and against all odds, Will Foster's paternal ancestor is born . . . with a genetic mutation that will change the world 345 years later. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade, Yucca, and Good Books imprints, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction—novels, novellas, political and medical thrillers, comedy, satire, historical fiction, romance, erotic and love stories, mystery, classic literature, folklore and mythology, literary classics including Shakespeare, Dumas, Wilde, Cather, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.