The Flower Sisters

About The Flower Sisters

Daisy Flowers is fifteen in 1978 when her free-spirited mother dumps her in Possum Flats, Missouri. It’s a town that sounds like roadkill and, in Daisy’s eyes, is every bit as dead. Sentenced to spend the summer living with her grandmother, the wry and irreverent town mortician, Daisy draws the line at working for the family business, Flowers Funeral Home. Instead, she maneuvers her way into an internship at the local newspaper where, sorting through the basement archives, she learns of a mysterious tragedy from fifty years earlier…

On a sweltering, terrible night in 1928, an explosion at the local dance hall left dozens of young people dead, shocking and scarring a town that still doesn’t know how or why it happened. Listed among the victims is a name that’s surprisingly familiar to Daisy, revealing an irresistible family connection to this long-ago accident.

Obsessed with investigating the horrors and heroes of that night, Daisy soon discovers Possum Flats holds a multitude of secrets for a small town. And hardly anyone who remembers the tragedy is happy to have some teenaged hippie asking questions about it – not the fire-and-brimstone preacher who found his calling that tragic night; not the fed-up police chief; not the mayor’s widow or his mistress; not even Daisy’s own grandmother, a woman who’s never been afraid to raise eyebrows in the past, whether it’s for something she’s worn, sworn, or done for a living.

Some secrets are guarded by the living, while others are kept by the dead, but as buried truths gradually come into the light, they’ll force a reckoning at last.

Inspired by the true story of the Bond Dance Hall explosion, a tragedy that took place in the author’s hometown of West Plains, Missouri on April 13, 1928.

The cause of the blast has never been determined.

About Michelle Collins Anderson

Michelle Collins Anderson was born in St. Louis, Missouri, and grew up on a farm in the Missouri Ozarks — a place and a way of life that has shaped her writing. She graduated summa cum laude from the University of Missouri with a Bachelor of Journalism degree and spent the next fifteen years as a copywriter in advertising and public relations agencies in St. Louis, Palo Alto, Denver and Houston before pursuing a freelance career and teaching at the University of Missouri and Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri. In 2013, she graduated with an MFA in Fiction from Warren Wilson College in Asheville, North Carolina. Michelle and her husband, Clay, have three adult children and live in a 1907 brick row house in St. Louis, Missouri, with two cats and a border collie. THE FLOWER SISTERS is her first novel.

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Anna Bright Is Hiding Something

About Anna Bright Is Hiding Something

The Dropout meets Inventing Anna in this cinematic and page-turning summer read! A ripped-from-the-headlines story set in the glossy offices of Silicon Valley startups and NYC new media, Anna Bright Is Hiding Something explores our fascination with female founders breaking barriers—and sometimes behaving badly in the process.

Anna Bright is committing fraud. But nobody knows it yet. Not the board of her multibillion-dollar company, not her investors, not the public breathlessly anticipating the launch of BrightSpot, and not the media—including Jamie Roman, a hardworking journalist for BusinessBerry. But when Jamie does learn about Anna’s misconduct, she embarks on a bicoastal journey to expose the crimes and make a name for herself as a journalist. It’s not long before Anna learns what the reporter is up to, however—and she’ll do anything to stop Jamie.

Especially now that BrightLife’s IPO is days away.

About Susie Orman Schnall

Susie Orman Schnall is the author of the novels WE CAME HERE TO SHINE, THE SUBWAY GIRLS, THE BALANCE PROJECT, and ON GRACE. She grew up in Los Angeles and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. Her writing has appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Huffington Post, POPSUGAR, Writer’s Digest, and Glamour. Susie has spoken extensively on work-life balance and is the founder of The Balance Project interview series. She lives in Purchase, NY, with her husband and their three sons.

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