Available Formats
A Memory of Violets
By (Author) Hazel Gaynor
HarperCollins Publishers
HarperCollins
1st January 2025
29th January 2026
United Kingdom
General
Fiction
Modern and contemporary fiction: general and literary
Narrative theme: Coming of age
823.92
Paperback
432
Width 129mm, Height 198mm, Spine 27mm
270g
From the Irish Times and New York Times bestselling author comes a historical novel about an orphaned Victorian flower seller, a lost sister and a hidden diary
1876. Among the depravity of Covent Garden's flower markets, orphaned Irish sisters Flora and Rosie Flynn sell posies of violets and watercress to survive. When they become separated, their lives are set on very different paths
1912. Twenty-one-year-old Tilly Harper leaves her native Lake District to work at one of Londons homes for orphaned and crippled flower girls. Its a fresh start for her, a chance to leave her troubled past behind.
And there, hidden between the pages of a lost notebook, she finds a heartbreaking tale of loss and separation, of a woman desperate to find her long lost sister. And when she sets out to discover what happened, she is lead into unexpected places, including the depths of her own heart
A beautifully imagined novel rich in historic detail and with authentic, engaging characters I loved this book Kate Kerrigan
'Hazel Gaynor's tale of divided sisters conjures a bygone era with a poignancy so exquisite one can almost smell the violets' Kate Beaufoy
Hazel Gaynor is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of A Memory of Violets and The Girl Who Came Home, for which she received the 2015 RNA Historical Novel of the Year award. Her third novel, The Girl from the Savoy, was an Irish Times and Globe & Mail Canada bestseller, and was shortlisted for the BGE Irish Book Awards Popular Fiction Book of the Year. In 2017, she has published The Cottingley Secret and Last Christmas in Paris. Hazel was selected by US Library Journal as one of 'Ten Big Breakout Authors' for 2015 and her work has been translated into several languages. Hazel lives in Ireland with her husband and two children.