Black Lilac

The first novel in the cycle about Varvara Samovarova — a beauty with November snow in her hair, inspired by the work of an investigator.

After a professional defeat and a serious illness, Varvara Sergeevna has to start life from a... clean slate.

On a May night in the city of mists, a mysterious murder occurred involving a young dancer and an older married lady.

This event fundamentally changed the lives of several seemingly unrelated people.

A luxurious wandering gypsy and a beautiful suicide, a courageous retired prosecutor and cowardly doctors, a nighttime variety show, fiery dances, homeless people, stone lions, cherry gossip, and the mystique of the black lilac, metaphorical dreams and a miraculous reality, the mundane and the spiritual — all of this is skillfully intertwined in the novel «Black Lilac», which introduces us to the charming Varvara Samovarova, a former police investigator.

By numerous requests from readers who have come to love Samovarova through the books «The Spider Woman», «Cardboard Walls», and «Dog's Paradise», the novel «Black Lilac», first published in 2018, has been edited and reissued.