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The Sunflower Forest

Here is a treasure: an adult novel which speaks in the genuine voice of a 17-year old, while delving more deeply into her psyche.

Lesley’s Hungarian mother Mara – charming, childlike, lovable – was traumatized by her adolescent Holocaust experiences. Though her American husband and daughters try to live a normal life in Kansas, Mara holds them thrall to her moods and quirks. Lesley struggles to understand, but dealing with Mara is a severe strain which sets her apart from her peers.

When Mara’s psychosis results in tragedy, Lesley goes to Wales in search of her mother’s remembered joy, a sunflower forest.

Cathi Edgerton

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Meet The Author

Torey Hayden

Invisible Girl UK Cover – Torey Hayden

The Invisible Girl

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In foster care after having experienced violence, neglect and sexual abuse as a young child, Eloise, age 14, has created a fantasy companion for herself, leading to confusion for the social workers trying to help her, because they do not know what is fact and what is fiction.

Then Eloise develops a troubling obsession with another teen.  In a mistaken belief Torey Hayden can help reunite her with this girl, she agrees to work with Torey, who is challenged to meet Eloise’s complex behavioural needs.

Lost Child UK – Torey Hayden
Lost Child USA – Torey Hayden

Lost Child

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In a forgotten corner of Wales, a young girl languishes in a home for troubled children.  Abandoned by her parents, Jessie, aged nine, is at risk of becoming just another lost soul in the foster system. Precocious and bold and convinced she is possessed by the Devil, Jessie is utterly unprepared for the arrival of Torey Hayden.  Armed with patience and compassion, Hayden begins working with Jessie, and then Jessie makes a stunning accusation against one of Hayden’s colleagues.  Hayden’s work doubles.  Now she must not only help Jessie with her troubles but also find out if what the girl alleges is true.

Ziji and the Very Scarey Man
JUST ANOTHER KID Swedish paperback edition

Ziji | and the Very Scarey Man

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This book, written by renowned meditation master Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche and educational psychologist Torey Hayden shows young children how following our breath can calm us down—and how practicing compassion shows us that even Very Scary Men can be frightened sometimes too.

A detailed appendix at the end of the book gives further guidance for parents and teachers.

Innocent Foxes

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“The thing you got to understand about foxes,” Dixie said, “is that they’re innocent of what they’re doing. They got no idea they’re destroying what they love most.”

Abundance, Montana, once a lively mining town in the days of the wild west, is now not much more than a ghost town.  Local girl, Dixie, a struggling single mother who has just lost her baby, tries to make ends meet while her feckless boyfriend Billy drifts from one job to another, always believing his next moneymaking scheme will be the winner.

Above them in the magnificent mountains surrounding Abundance, jaded Hollywood actor Spencer Scott conceals himself from the paparazzi on the ranch that has been his pristine sanctuary until the arrival of his obnoxious, nine-year-old son.

Then Billy puts into motion a plan almost too appalling to contemplate, and from which there is no escape.  As all four are forced to confront the brutal reality of the Montana mountains, so too are they forced to face their damaged lives in this moving new novel of loss and redemption from bestselling author Torey Hayden.

Ziji | The Puppy Who Learned to Meditate

Ziji | The Puppy Who Learned to Meditate

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A very special book for children aged 4 to 8 written by Torey and Tibetan lama and meditation master Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche which, along with the story of Ziji’s adventures, includes an appendix for parents and teachers with suggestions for using meditation with young children.

Ziji is a noisy, bouncy puppy who lives with the Anderson family – Mom, Dad, Jenny and Baby Jack.

He loves to bark and play and – most of all –chase pigeons in the park.

Then one day Ziji sees the new boy from Jenny’s school, Nico, sitting in the park. What is Nico doing? Why does he look so calm and happy? Ziji can’t wait to find out.

When Torey was visiting friends in Wales in 1980, she was sitting in front of the fire in their stone cottage and waiting for the tea to brew when she picked up the local paper and saw an article about a local woman who had been part of the Nazi Lebensborn program in World War II. She wrote her agent that night that she “had been gripped by an idea”. It never left her and four years later, THE SUNFLOWER FOREST was the result.

Torey used the setting around her friends’ cottage as the Welsh location. ‘Mara’, the main character in THE SUNFLOWER FOREST, is not based on a real person but is simply someone Torey created in order to explore the issues of generational trauma. Torey says she isn’t sure whether to be flattered or insulted by the fact that often readers and even reviewers of THE SUNFLOWER FOREST refused to believe Mara was imaginary.

The Sunflower Forest available from Amazon.co.uk

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Overheard in a Dream | The Mechanical Cat

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TOREY says that although the story is entirely fiction, she wrote it to explore her own experiences with creativity. She had a very vivid fantasy life as a young child which started much the way Laura’s did in the scene from the book and it carried on well into her twenties. She says that also, like Laura, she used to “drive people nuts” when she was an adolescent by making up scenarios and characters and “testing” them in real life to see if they were realistic.

Originally THE MECHANICAL CAT was not accepted for publication in English. Now published in the UK titled OVERHEARD IN A DREAM.

In rejecting the novel, her publisher told her this was because the book did not fit into an existing genre. It was actually described as “too novel”. As a consequence, the book haSd its world debut in Sweden, followed a week later by the Italian publication and in Finland. Now published in Japanese, it has gone on to become a best seller in all four countries.

Innocent Foxes

By

“The thing you got to understand about foxes,” Dixie said, “is that they’re innocent of what they’re doing. They got no idea they’re destroying what they love most.”

Abundance, Montana, once a lively mining town in the days of the wild west, is now not much more than a ghost town.  Local girl, Dixie, a struggling single mother who has just lost her baby, tries to make ends meet while her feckless boyfriend Billy drifts from one job to another, always believing his next moneymaking scheme will be the winner.

Above them in the magnificent mountains surrounding Abundance, jaded Hollywood actor Spencer Scott conceals himself from the paparazzi on the ranch that has been his pristine sanctuary until the arrival of his obnoxious, nine-year-old son.

Then Billy puts into motion a plan almost too appalling to contemplate, and from which there is no escape.  As all four are forced to confront the brutal reality of the Montana mountains, so too are they forced to face their damaged lives in this moving new novel of loss and redemption from bestselling author Torey Hayden.