Title: Bloom Of Betrayal
Description: **Not every legacy grows from honest soil...**

Laura Evans traded Boston’s relentless restaurant hours for a quiet café manager position in Silver Springs, Vermont—finally time to read, walk, and maybe buy a plant. 

Then an anonymous envelope arrives: a vintage photograph of the town’s beloved rose garden, one man's face circled, another crossed out. The cryptic message reads: ‘This is the bloom that wasn’t.’

When Laura and her coworker Eli unearth a rusted box while dividing an iris plant, it vanishes overnight, and Eli’s community garden plot faces seizure over fabricated violations. 

Someone desperately wants the past buried. 

But Laura notices what others miss: stolen archives, forged evidence, a twenty-year-old lie. As the rose garden’s anniversary celebration approaches, she must untangle a horticultural mystery where legacy, loyalty, and truth compete for sunlight.

*In Silver Springs, even roses have secrets. Will Laura risk her peaceful new life to expose them?*
Subjects: Roses, Horticulture, Community gardens, Intergenerational relations, Secrets, Lies, Fiction, mystery & detective, women sleuths, Friendship, Jane Austen, Mystery and detective stories, Cozy Mystery, Short stories
Places: United States, Vermont (USA), New England Region, Jamaica Plain (Boston, Mass.), Boston (Mass.), Texas (United States)
Time periods: Present Day, 21st century