The first time I've read Ms Smith's - 'The Stone Flower Garden'. I've enjoyed it to the point of not wanting to put it down. A romance with a lot of mistery and intrigue, and a lot fo forgiving.
A good blend of first and third person narrative (new to me).
Very entertaining. I shall look for more of her books.

Darl Hardigree carries with her a family secret, a legacy of pain and lies. Her sense of justice wars with her loyalty and love for her grandmother, her family. Her sense of loyalty wars with her love for Eli Wade. This internal battle takes decades to play out, and in the end Darl wins...wins the love and life she was always meant to have.

Deborah Smith paints a beautiful story.

Years ago I read Blue Willow. It has remained at the top of my list as one of my favorite books of all-time. With The Stone Flower Garden, Deborah Smith has added another favorite to my list.

I read this book in conjunction with a clinical research associate training course. It provided an excellent background and filled in the gaps of the often times confusing and vast drug development process. The inclusion of important FDA regulations and a variety of reference sources adds to the continued usefullness the book in the day-to-day life of a CRA. Plus, being bound in a 3-ring binder allows the addition of information, articles from periodicals, seminar handouts, etc. This book helped me during my training and I will refer to it as my career progresses.

The Clinical Research Monitor Handbook, by Deborah Rosenbaum and Fred O. Smith is an excellent resource for monitors, and also for everyone involved in the conduct of a clinical trial! This thorough, well-organized, and easy-to-read book explains just about every aspect of a clinical trial. Topics addressed include FDA regulations, site selection, monitoring, data management, adverse event reporting, and more. Nowhere else can a person find such practical and useful information in one concise format. Anyone who wants to pursue a career in clinical research should have a copy! As a project manager, I have found this book to be extremely useful and highly recommend it. It's an excellent investment and well worth the money.

Being from a small town in Georgia myself, I completely bonded with the characters in both Mossy Creek books. These authors have done a wonderful job continuing these delightful stories and I look forward to reading more.

I have waited for the new mossy creek book very much, but I was a bit dissappointed. It was great meeting the old wonderfully exentric characters of the first book, but the reunion was laced with pain and hurt. The book concentraed around the question who burned Mossy Creek's old high school 20 years ago? The question unearthed secrets from the town's past. Some of the stories were really great like the love story between shy Josie M. and bigfoot, but while the first book was all along touching and fanny and a just a little bit sad, the second one had too much hurt people in it. But still I want to hear about the residence of mossy creek so I will buy the next book, I just hope it will be uplifting as the first.

With the twenty-year reunion at Mossy Creek, Georgia coming soon, Creekites wonder who burned down the town's high school back then that has forced locals to attend nearby rival Bigelow High School? Apparently the arsonist is taunting the Creekites by having sent to the town the ten cent fortune telling machine used during that homecoming day when the fire changed so many lives.

Though not even born yet, wallflower Josie McClure knows the impact of the fire because her mother was the homecoming queen who never celebrated her victory and forced her to compete for the Bigelow High School Homecoming Day Queen, which she humiliatingly lost. Rainey Ann Cecil thinks back to that fatal day in 1981 when she was twelve and with Robert Walker and Hank Blackshear believed they caused the fire. Amos Royden is now the sheriff and would like to solve the case that his now deceased father always felt blemished his law enforcement record. Other are impacted by either the fire or the upcoming reunion. Will the reunion complete the destruction of the Creekites or refurbish the civil pride of being a Creekite?

Written as a series of vignettes tied together through the reunion, the story line is humorous and sad focusing on how a pivotal event can change lives forever. Though an ensemble, the characters come across as genuine leaving readers to understand their pain, loneliness, and their need to belong. Fans will enjoy tremendously REUNION AT MOSSY CREEK and want to read the previous slice of small town southern living, MOSSY CREEK. Both novels colorfully and cleverly illustrate small town southern living.

Harriet Klausner

I enjoy reading Deborah Smith. Her books always seem to pull the heartstrings in a unique and touching way. As an eclectic reader who enjoys many different genres, whenever I see that this author has a new book, I know it will afford me a pleasant change of pace. Her characters are well drawn and always fascinating. If you want a good escape "read"--step into one of Deborah Smith's well written charming stories set in her southern world. Yankees may never be able to truly relate to the world of traditions and family codes that she creates, but it's fun to take an occasional peek.

The Stone Flower Garden: A Novel is a wonderful book by Deborah Smith. The plot of the book is typical Smith: girl and boy meet at a young age...boy and girl get seperated at a young age...and meet again when they are adults and reconnect emotionally and romantically. Sounds simplistic but Smith is, as with TSFG, always able to make you see beyond the prediction by creating appealing characters through impressive writing.

The Stone Flower Garden holds a secret that burns a hole through the innocent love of childhood. A secret of innocence and death, of betrayal and loyalty. A secret that, after a quarter of a century, one family is determined to unearth and another yearns to forget.

Burnt Stand, North Carolina holds many such secrets within its walls of marble. The Hardigree family and their quarry is the center of it all, run now by Swan Samples Hardigree, a lady to the core of her cold heart. Darl Union is Swan's granddaughter and the keeper of her shameful legacy...one that, if made public, would shatter the grand image Swan's own mother first carved out for them.

Drawn into the tangled web of deceit was Eli Wade. His family arrived in Burnt Stand when he was just a boy and he immediately lost his heart to the lonely little girl that Darl was at that time. They shared years of happiness in their own private escape...a lovely stone flower garden situated part-way between their two homes on Hardigree land. That happiness was to be shattered, however, by a secret that would itself be buried within the garden....one that would force Eli and what was left of his family out of town.

Twenty-five years later, all the key players would be drawn back and, one way or another, the truth would come out. But would it be welcomed or destroy just as many lives the second time around?

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Deborah Smith is an amazing author that enables her characters to live in such a way that makes it hard to accept their one-dimensionality. She irrevocably draws the reader in with this dramatic tale of a loyalty so fierce and demanding it destroys everyone it touches.

This book will consume the reader and, at times, leave him or her breathless....with shock, with anticipation or with sympathy. After the last page has been turned, the characters will be missed and Burnt Stand will have burned another hole....into the memory of those who won't want to leave it behind with the closing of the cover.

Alice has never fit in. She was raised by her mother's family, who treated her as a chore, and not a family member. Alice has spent most of her life in and around the water, because that's where she feels most happy and at home. She can't explain why she can spend long periods of time underwater, and why she can swim better and faster than anyone else. She just knows it's what makes her happy.

In one day, the quiet existence she prefers is brought to public attention when she rescues the young daughter of the governor. Suddenly her abilities are questioned...but the publicity also brings her to the attention of the family she never knew she had, her father's family...water people, or what us landers would call them...mermaids.

This is not just a romance, it's a story of learning who you really are and accepting that. There's also a mystery from the past, and lots of old loves to be reunited. For those who have read Deborah Smith's books in the past, you know she always delivers an unbelievably wonderful read. She does not disappoint in this book either. Her writing is lyrical and magical and brings to life the underwater world of the water people. It made me a believer. This is supposed to be the first in the Waterlilies series, and I for one am looking forward to future books hinted at in this story.

I am so impressed with the authors imagination. This book brought the sea and land together in a magical way. The characters were all unique, and wonderful to read about. I have not enjoyed a book this much in a very long time. Reading this book really brightened up a dull winter day. I am very anxious to read book two in the Waterlilies series. Deborah Smith has certainly done an excellent job with Alice At Heart.

This book does a great job of straddling the line between regular fiction and fantasy fiction. You're never quite sure if the characters are what they say they are--descended from mermaids--but they do have some unexplainable talents and it's really fascinating to think of there being a secret society of "Water People" among us. The setting is wonderful and Southern (the Georgia coast) and the three older sisters in the book are like something out of "Designing Women" the way they talk to each other. Plus the main character, Alice, is wonderful and vivid, and the romance with Griffin Randolph is very powerful. I look forward to book two in the series. Also, I read Alice At Heart as an e-book last spring and this paperback edition is different--it has new sections and other things that weren't in the e-book. I love the mythology about Water People in the back of the book.

This is one of Deborah Smith's early works in the style of Harlequin Romance Novels. Her later works, A Place to Call Home, Bear Mountain etc are more mainstream novels. Good Story line. Highly recommend if you like women being swept over their feet, and people never saying what they truly feel due to pride.

Rarely do you find a series or trilogy where each story is strong and moving in it's own right. This book is a keeper. My copy is creased and missing it's cover...well -loved. But I can promise it will never see the inside of a Goodwill donation bag. It's the first book I read by Deborah Smith and it drew me to seek out her other works. Sadly I haven't read anything by Smith to match these stories.

From the back of the book:

A Man of Many Mysteries...

T.S. Audubon was fascinated by the shy Russian woman who accompanied the famous scientist. And he was filled with a reckless desire to release the fragile lady from her keepers! But when Elena Petrovic made her desperate escape, she was terrified to trust the impossibly wealthy Southern aristocrat. Could her handsome, enigmatic white-haired rescuer be the silver fox of her childhood fantasy, the only man who could set loose from a hideous captivity, or did he plan to keep her for himself? In a moment of shocking violence, she struggled to elude him -- then used her astonishing gift to save the man whose courage had uncovered her mystery. Her need to heal, his need to be comforted, forged their spirits in a fiery miracle that transformed fear into desire, and compassion into love. Enchanted by this woman of satin and secrets, Audubon feared he would betray her to save the son he cherished, but if he lived, could he give Elena what she longed for most: her freedom?

Coverage of SGML.Consists of three sections in which the 1st gives the background of SGML and HTML. The 2nd part talks about the languages used in case studies and it talks a bit deeper about those languages. The last part talks about some implementations of those languages.