The Garden Club Murders

Tish Tarragon’s preparations for Coleton Creek’s annual garden club awards luncheon are threatened when one of the prime contenders is murdered. Literary caterer Letitia ‘Tish’ Tarragon is preparing her English Secret Garden-themed luncheon for Coleton Creek’s annual garden club awards, but when she is taken on a tour of some of the top contenders with the garden club’s president, Jim Ainsley, Tish is surprised at how seriously the residents take the awards – and how desperate they are to win. Wealthy, retired businessman Sloane Shackleford has won the coveted best garden category five years in a row, but he and his Bichon Frise, Biscuit, are universally despised. When Sloane’s bludgeoned body is discovered in his pristine garden, Tish soon learns that he was disliked for reasons that go beyond his green fingers. Have the hotly contested awards brought out a competitive and murderous streak in one of the residents?

Welcome to the Mountain Valley Garden Club! First line of business: find out why one of the garden club's members is murdered at the first garden club meeting of the year. Mountain Valley is a quiet, horse friendly community, with hitching posts throughout the town, and colorful flowers woven in the town's countryside surroundings. One can stop at The Big Bean for a steaming cup of coffee, and swap gardening tips with a neighbor. One may even be sipping a latte, unknowingly chatting with a murderer, or sharing a muffin with the woman who makes it a habit of having affairs with other women's husbands. There is a good looking new police chief in town, and his first major case is to find a killer. Former police chief, Brice Johansson, has shared his suspicions with the new chief, which might be helpful in solving the homicide. Supposedly, Candace Hatcher, the town divorcee, is looking for a new husband. Can she perchance be dating the murderer? Is it even conceivable the murderer is one of the town's prominent senior citizens? Who knows what dark secrets lurk in the small town of Mountain Valley?

Literary chef Tish Tarragon is preparing her English Secret Garden-themed luncheon for Coleton Creek's annual garden club awards, but two days before the event one of the competitors is found dead in his pristine garden. After hearing that he was the favourite to win the top prize this year, Tish can't help being drawn into the investigation...

Picking up from an unfinished manuscript of his late father, Graham Gordon Landrum, Robert Graham Landrum follows the further adventures of the ladies of the Daughters of the American Revolution in the quiet little town of Borderville, Tennessee. When Mrs. Marguerite Claymore, a leading horticulturist, is found bludgeoned to death in her garden, the residents of Borderville are up in arms. A respected member of society noted for her many contributions, Mrs. Claymore seems to have been the least likely candidate for such a terrible crime. It appears that Mrs. Claymore interrupted a thief in the process of looting her house. A teenage boy stands accused of the crime, and his family enlists the spunky octogenarian sleuth Harriet Bushrow to clear his name. Harriet soon finds several people from Mrs. Claymore's past who may have had a reason to do away with the often cantankerous and dictatorial old woman. A string of unsolved robberies may also be connected. In The Garden Club Mystery, Robert Landrum pays a unique tribute to his father by co-creating the magic of the fictional town of Borderville and its much-loved characters.

Who killed Sally Kahn? There hasn't been a murder in 15 years in tranquil, affluent Hardington, Massachusetts. But someone pushed a moderately wealthy 65-year-old widow down her basement stairs, and then tried to make it look like an accident. Two people will work - together and independently - to find the murderer. John Flynn, a retired Boston Police Department detective with an outstanding record, will lead the official investigation. He will solve the murder despite the best efforts of Hardington's police chief, who cannot abide the idea of a murderer on the loose in his bucolic town and so who arrests the first likely suspect. Liz Phillips has a life centered on her garden and her garden club. Sally Kahn was one of her best friends and it is Liz who found the body. But Liz is a lonely woman, her daughter married and living far away, and her husband constantly on the road. Liz will help solve the murder by using intuition, asking questions, and knowing her town. Their quest to find Sally Kahn's killer will lead Liz Phillips and Detective John Flynn into an unfamiliar world of email inboxes and wireless Internet routers, hazardous waste disposal and the economics of tearing down houses to build 'McMansions'. Their search will also take them through an emotional landscape of adultery and the simmering resentment between 'townies' and the new-money affluent.

Committing the perfect crime was just the beginning of their problems. When Paula, Eleanor, Alice and Jean – women of a certain age – plotted to steal the daily cash gate from the Brookfield Fair, they thought they'd split about $125,000. They pulled off the robbery without a hitch, without injuring anyone and without witnesses. But when they counted the money, they found they had nearly half a million dollars, far more than the fair reported stolen. In a matter of hours, the Garden Club Gang would find themselves in a battle of wits with the local and state police, a determined insurance investigator and the criminals looking for their money. Instead of a lark, the four women found themselves in danger, and dependent upon their own resources – and an unexpected ally – to outwit both the law and the crooks determined to find the money and silence those who stole it. The Garden Club Gang offers finely drawn portraits of four women with all-too-credible motives for doing highly unladylike things. If you're expecting a 'cozy', then be prepared for a cozy with quite a kick. The characters are memorable, the action is non-stop and the plot twists until the final page.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A modern classic of true crime, set in a most beguiling Southern city—now in a 30th anniversary edition with a new afterword by the author “Elegant and wicked . . . might be the first true-crime book that makes the reader want to book a bed and breakfast for an extended weekend at the scene of the crime.”—The New York Times Book Review Shots rang out in Savannah’s grandest mansion in the misty, early morning hours of May 2, 1981. Was it murder or self-defense? For nearly a decade, the shooting and its aftermath reverberated throughout this hauntingly beautiful city of moss-hung oaks and shaded squares. In this sharply observed, suspenseful, and witty narrative, John Berendt skillfully interweaves a hugely entertaining first-person account of life in this isolated remnant of the Old South with the unpredictable twists and turns of a landmark murder case. It is a spellbinding story peopled by a gallery of remarkable characters: the well-bred society ladies of the Married Woman’s Card Club; the turbulent young gigolo; the hapless recluse who owns a bottle of poison so powerful it could kill every man, woman, and child in Savannah; the aging and profane Southern belle who is the “soul of pampered self-absorption”; the uproariously funny drag queen; the acerbic and arrogant antiques dealer; the sweet-talking, piano-playing con artist; young people dancing the minuet at the black debutante ball; and Minerva, the voodoo priestess who works her magic in the graveyard at midnight. These and other Savannahians act as a Greek chorus, with Berendt revealing the alliances, hostilities, and intrigues that thrive in a town where everyone knows everyone else. Brilliantly conceived and masterfully written, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is a sublime and seductive reading experience.