Book excerpt: Shimmering with the incandescence and irresistible magic of the novels of Alice Hoffman, Joanne Harris, and Aimee Bender, Katharina Hagena's smash international bestseller, The Taste of Apple Seeds, is a story of love and loss that will captivate your heart. When Iris unexpectedly inherits her grandmother's house in the country, she also inherits the painful memories that linger there. Should she keep it or sell it? The choice is not easy, for the cottage is a place of enchantment and sensual mystery where currant jam tastes of tears, blue sparks crackle at the touch of fingertips, love makes apple trees bloom—and dark secrets pulsate in the house's nooks and shadows. . . .