The Darling Dahlias and the Eleven O'Clock Lady

Susan Wittig Albert

Sep 2015 · Recorded Books · Narrated by Peggity Price

About this audiobook

New York Times bestselling author Susan Wittig Albert transports readers to the summer of 1934, when a sensational murder shakes up the small Southern town of Darling, Alabama-and pulls in the ladies of the Darling Dahlias' garden club, who never let the grass grow under their feet when there's a mystery to solve . The eleven o'clock lady has always been one of garden club president Liz Lacy's favorite spring wildflowers. The plant is so named because the white blossoms don't open until the sun shines directly on them and wakes them up. But another Eleven O'Clock Lady is never going to wake up again. Rona Jean Hancock-a telephone switchboard operator who earned her nickname because her shift ended at eleven, when her nightlife was just beginning-has been found strangled with her own silk stocking in a very unladylike position. Gossip sprouts like weeds in a small town, and Rona Jean's somewhat wild reputation is the topic of much speculation regarding who might have killed her. As the Darling Dahlias begin to sort through Rona Jean's private affairs, it appears there may be a connection to some skullduggery at the local Civilian Conservation Corps camp. Working at the camp, garden club vice president Ophelia Snow digs around to expose the truth . before a killer pulls up stakes and gets away with murder.

About the author

Susan Wittig Albert was born in Illinois in 1940. In 1985, she changed careers from working as the vice president and an English professor at Texas State University to becoming a full-time writer. During the mid- to late-1980s, Albert was a ghostwriter for the Nancy Drew mystery series. She wrote the acclaimed "Work of Her Own: How Women Create Success and Fulfillment off the Traditional Career Track" in 1992. Under the pseudonym of Robin Paige, Albert and her husband, Bill Albert, co-authored a twelve-volume mystery series set in late Victorian/Edwardian England. Albert writes the bestselling China Bayles mystery series, which features as its main character a Texas herbalist who had been a criminal attorney in Houston. Albert also writes the Cottage Tales of Beatrix Potter historical fantasy series, which is set in England during the early twentieth century.