Finished: The Forgotten Garden (Morton). Another good, mystery-weaving story by Kate Morton. The story of Nell, a tiny 4 year old girl who is abandoned on a ship from London to Australia in 1913. When no one shows up to claim her, the little girl is adopted by the harbor master and his wife, and raised as the oldest of their daughters. When she finally learns the truth about her mysterious adoption on her 21st birthday, Nell sets off on a journey to discover who her "real" family was and why they would have put her on a ship by herself to a land unknown. Spanning five generations, from the willful Georgiana Mountrachet, to her equally headstrong daughter, Eliza and Eliza's twin brother, Sammy, to Eliza's delicate, sickly cousin, Rose, and Rose's scheming, horrible mother, Adeline and Rose's perverted, disturbed father, Linus (Georgiana's brother and one of the main reason's Georgiana fled from Blackhurst, the family estate, as a young lady), to Nell's selfish daughter, Lesley, who dumps her own daughter in Nell's lap, to that very granddaughter, Cassandra, who travels to London after Nell's death to uncover the secrets, the book weaves tales back and forth of family, fairy tails, secrets, and the incomparable, maze-access-only "hidden garden". Within the story, we get to read three fairy tails by "the Authoress", Eliza Makepeace, whose rare book was illustrated by artist Nathaniel Walker, the husband of her cousin Rose. We meet Mary, one of the servants of Blackhurst Manor who becomes one of Eliza's closest friends. We find out that the artist Cassandra, now in her mid-thirties, suffered heartbreak 10 years earlier when her young husband and toddler son were killed in an automobile accident when she insisted they run to the store so she could get some painting done. Cassandra rediscovers her own vitality and the hint of a new love interest while uncovering the mystery of her grandmother's parentage and the secrets held in the garden and the ocean cottage protected by the garden. In the end, despite the tragedy that befalls some of the most honorable characters, we finally know who Nell's mother truly was, and all the pieces fit nicely together. Another good Kate Morton book. :-)