Rose Daughter is a retelling of the fairytale Beauty and the Beast by Robin McKinley, published in 1997. It is the second retelling of the tale that McKinley has written: the first being her 1978 story, Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty & the Beast. An unabridged audio-book recording was released in 2013 by Recorded Books, narrated by Bianca Amato, and is available via Audible.com. Plot summary A merchant loses all his money when his ships are lost at sea, and is forced to move his three daughters to a lonely countryside house called Rose Cottage which was left to his youngest, Beauty, in a will, and thus is not subject to his creditors. The garden of the house is full of strange thorny bushes and vines, which neither of the merchant nor his three daughters can identify. Beauty asks in the town and discovers that they are the roses the cottage are called after and begins to tend them, because she loves gardening and she remembers the smell of her mother's rose perfume. Roses are very rare because only great magic or great love can grow them. The roses bloom under Beauty's care, and the sisters sells wreaths of them in the town. After some time, the merchant hears word that one of his ships might have made it back and journeys to find out if it's true. He asks his daughters what presents they would like him to bring back, and Beauty requests a rose, as her bush has not blossomed that year because it has been so cold and rainy and miserable. The ship had come in, but the creditors had remembered the merchant's old debts and seized upon the goods before he could reach them. A man who had once worked as his clerk and was now employed by a rival had let the merchant stay with him, but his employer found out and demanded that he be turned out. Finding that he was nothing but bad luck in that city, the merchant refused another offer of aid and set out to make his way home on a stout pony allowed to be lent to him, in spite of the fierce winter weather. On the way he gets lost in a snow storm, and ends up at a magnificent castle where he is given food and shelter. As he is leaving he notices a