Burning Blossom is the second book in The Vaughan Chronicles series. It chronicles the second of seven lives of Magnolia Vaughan. We meet up with Magnolia again as she and Alexander Charles are locked into the darkness, forcing Alexander to become fully awoken and fully aware during this life as Bessie tries to break the bond between them. Bessie continues to become darker as her envy and wickedness begins to take hold of her, warming her blood within the deep purple fire causing her to change into her true Onca state as she continues to visit the lowest paralleled realm of purgatory, where Alexander sent Bessie's sister, Karent, when she tried to kill Magnolia in an earlier lifecycle. As Magnolia continues to surface, Alexander will be forced to protect her against the madman feigning for her hypnotizing essence and star-shined blood and keep her alive long enough to live within the expected balance as she fights him the entire way at every turn. Magnolia will also be forced to come to grips with her destined path as she tries to let go of Justus as she saves his life, and the enticing secrets she has been keeping from a very suspicious Alexander as he tries to find out the truth about Stagger, which will make him become unhinged. Kerrigan, Magnolia’s assistant will become her closest confidant as she begins to realize exactly who she is working for. As the Blossom try to protect the Queen, Alexander will begin to pressure her to commit further than she is willing to allow. Will the blossomed pair have what it takes to toe the line or will this madman’s insanity succeed at finally getting even? Their future gets threatened as the force may just be too much for them to endure as the Blossom begins to beckon and burn brighter than anticipated.

The director of the famed Bodleian Libraries at Oxford narrates the global history of the willful destruction—and surprising survival—of recorded knowledge over the past three millennia. Libraries and archives have been attacked since ancient times but have been especially threatened in the modern era. Today the knowledge they safeguard faces purposeful destruction and willful neglect; deprived of funding, libraries are fighting for their very existence. Burning the Books recounts the history that brought us to this point. Richard Ovenden describes the deliberate destruction of knowledge held in libraries and archives from ancient Alexandria to contemporary Sarajevo, from smashed Assyrian tablets in Iraq to the destroyed immigration documents of the UK Windrush generation. He examines both the motivations for these acts—political, religious, and cultural—and the broader themes that shape this history. He also looks at attempts to prevent and mitigate attacks on knowledge, exploring the efforts of librarians and archivists to preserve information, often risking their own lives in the process. More than simply repositories for knowledge, libraries and archives inspire and inform citizens. In preserving notions of statehood recorded in such historical documents as the Declaration of Independence, libraries support the state itself. By preserving records of citizenship and records of the rights of citizens as enshrined in legal documents such as the Magna Carta and the decisions of the US Supreme Court, they support the rule of law. In Burning the Books, Ovenden takes a polemical stance on the social and political importance of the conservation and protection of knowledge, challenging governments in particular, but also society as a whole, to improve public policy and funding for these essential institutions.