Cozy Mystery Garden

Pru Parke always dreamed of living in England. And after the Dallas native follows an impulse and moves to London, she can't imagine ever leaving - though she has yet to find a plum position as a head gardener. Now, as the sublet on her flat nears its end, the threat of forced departure looms.

MOUNTAIN SPRINGS COZY MYSTERY SERIES – Books 1-3 Book 1 – Missing, Presumed Unwed Book 2 – Curses, Fowled Again! Book 3 – Beasties and Butterscotch Pie Introduction Sharon Triplett’s life-change was to retreat to the majestic mountains, settle into her inherited family home with her two kids, plucky pet parakeet, Seymour, and try to recover from the tragic death of her husband, a hotshot, undercover, city detective. It was an elegant plan. It should have worked. But then, astoundingly, Seymour, began eerily communicating to her in her dead husband’s voice and Sharon’s life was...

City girl Poppy desperately wants to pay off her debts, quit her dead-end job, find her father...oh, and keep a plant alive. But she knows that these are just hopeless dreams - until the day a letter arrives. Suddenly, Poppy is on a train heading deep into the English countryside to claim a mysterious inheritance. And the last thing she expects to receive is a cottage garden nursery - complete with romantic climbing roses, scented herbs, a bossy, talkative ginger cat...and a dead body.

Recently divorced and reluctantly retired, Julia Bird has fled London to enjoy idyllic rural life in the Cotswolds. Determined to have the perfect English garden, her first job is to tear down the old shed, where she unearths much more than she’d bargained for: a body, apparently buried for decades. But who could it be, and who killed them? The police draw a blank, and even the gossip-fest that is the local book club can’t remember anyone going missing in the village.

Melissa Craig is thrilled that summer has arrived. She has decided to give up her career as an amateur sleuth and enjoy a quiet life in her beautiful cottage. The only digging in Melissa’s life now happens in her garden. However, when a keen beekeeper is found dead, covered in multiple stings, her new resolve is tested. As she gets to know the family of the dead man, she realizes he was no saint. Could someone have possibly wanted him dead? Could this be a very clever murder?

Texas transplant Pru Parke has put down roots in England, but she never dreamed she'd live in a grand place such as Greenoak. When her former employers offer Pru and her new husband, former Detective Chief Inspector Christopher Pearse, the use of their 19th-century estate while they're away for a year, she jumps at the chance. Sweetening the deal is the prospect of further bonding with her long-lost brother, Simon, who happens to be Greenoak's head gardener. But the majestic manor has at least one skeleton in its closet.

Elliana Allbright's life has blossomed in Poppyville, California, since she opened Scents & Nonsense, a custom-made perfume store. Her skills with aromas and botanical essences - some from her very own garden - seem almost supernatural. Her perfumes can evoke emotions, bring about change, or simply make people happy. Customers are flocking to the store to buy her wares or just to sit in her beautiful garden, sip tea, and enjoy homemade cookies.

To keep her mind off the legal battle over the oceanfront cottage she's trying to buy, Meg Barrett agrees to help her friend inventory and clear out furniture from the massive Montauk estate of wealthy art broker Harrison Falks. But the job takes a terrifying turn when Meg discovers a skeleton in a hidden room in one of the estate's many bungalows. The remains turn out to be those of Harrison's son, who went missing nearly 20 years ago - along with one of his father's Warhol paintings.

In between scouring estate sales for her new interior design business, Cottages by the Sea, Meg Barrett visits the swanky East Hampton home of her old college roommate, Jillian Spenser. But instead of seeing how the other half lives, she learns how the other half dies. Jillian's mother, known as the Queen Mother of the Hamptons, has been murdered. Someone has staged a coup.

Daisy, a widowed mom of two teenagers, is used to feeling protective - so when Iris started dating the wealthy and not-quite-divorced Harvey Fitz, she worried...especially after his bitter ex stormed in and caused a scene at the party Daisy's Tea Garden was catering. Then there was the gossip she overheard about Harvey's grown children being cut out of his will. Daisy didn't want her aunt to wind up with a broken heart - but she never expected Iris to wind up a suspect in Harvey's murder.

Elliana Allbright is happy running her perfume shop, Scents & Nonsense, in the charming town of Poppyville, California. Ellie and her women's business group, the Greenstockings, are helping to open a new museum about local history, and while sorting through the collection of artifacts, they discover a time capsule from the days of the Gold Rush. Among the contents is a strange botanical manuscript, recognized by local history professor Eureka Sanford as extremely rare and valuable. When the professor is found dead in the museum, Ellie has no choice but to sniff out the murderer.

As the Great War continues to take its toll, headstrong 21-year-old Emily Bryce is determined to contribute to the war effort. She is convinced by a cheeky and handsome Australian pilot that she can do more, and it is not long before she falls in love with him and accepts his proposal of marriage. When he is sent back to the front, Emily volunteers as a “land girl,” tending to the neglected grounds of a large Devonshire estate. It’s here that Emily discovers the long-forgotten journals of a medicine woman who devoted her life to her herbal garden.

The faculty of Willow Creek High School are having a get-together after the spring concert with refreshments provided, courtesy of Daisy's Tea Garden. Oolong tea and chocolate biscuits are just what the staff needs to help them unwind from Althea Higgins's demanding curriculum. Her lessons on such controversial subjects as school uniforms and under qualified substitute teachers are earning her an F from her colleagues. But a failing grade was preferable to Althea falling victim to foul play.

The first Sag Harbor Antiquarian Book and Ephemera Fair is right around the corner, and interior designer Meg Barrett has her hands full decorating rooms at the Bibliophile Bed & Breakfast for wealthy rare book collector Franklin Hollingsworth. Rumor has it Hollingsworth is in possession of an unpublished manuscript written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. When the Fitzgerald manuscript's authenticator is found dead at the bottom of a cliff, Meg suspects a killer is on the loose.

Spring has come at last with cheerful daffodils and plump crocus blooms, and Poppy is hoping that the new season will magically resurrect the cottage garden nursery she's inherited. But with her stock failing to grow and a mysterious "peeping Tom" stalking the village, she's got her gardening gloves full...and that's even before her visit to the local doctor ends with her stumbling on a dead body! Then, her friend and neighbour - crime author Nick Forrest - suddenly finds himself the top suspect, and a missing garden gnome is the only lead in the case.

Since childhood, Courtney has loved fairies. After her mother died when Courtney was 10, she lost touch with that feeling of magic. A year ago, at age 29, she rediscovered it when she left her father's landscaping business to spread her wings and start a fairy garden business and teashop in beautiful Carmel, California. At Open Your Imagination, she teaches garden design and sells everything from fairy figurines to tinkling wind chimes. Now she's starting a book club tea.

Montauk's first annual Designer Showhouse was meant to be a collaborative event, so decorator Meg Barrett can only despair at the group of cutthroat designers scheming to sabotage each other on the project, not to mention the oddball collection of ghost hunters slinking around to investigate a supposedly haunted cottage. But when one of the owners of the showhouse is found murdered on the rocky beach below, Meg suddenly finds herself clashing with local police because of evidence that points to her as a prime suspect.

Daisy's worried one of her employees at Daisy's Tea Garden may be in a spot of trouble. Lately Karina's been loading up on soup and second-day baked goods at the end of her shift - and while the shop's scrumptious treats may be hard to resist, Daisy suspects there's more going on, especially since Karina has been seen hanging out in a rundown part of Willow Creek. Planning her own daughter's wedding is enough to keep her busy, but Daisy can't help feeling a protective maternal instinct - and an instinct to investigate.

When decorator Meg Barrett travels to a remote mansion to help select period pieces for a new 1930s-style television mystery series, she's chilled to learn that the manor was once a mental asylum and the site of a mysterious decades-old murder. And when a fierce blizzard knocks out the power and strands Meg and her cohorts in the home's rickety old elevator, they emerge to discover that another person has been murdered—in the same macabre manner as the original victim.

Emma Hooper thought coming home to small-town life and the family farm would give her a chance to rest and recover from a traumatic accident. But that was before she started seeing ghosts. It was before Grandma Hooper started singing on the roof, and it was way, way before anybody spotted a ghost in a 19th-century cavalry uniform coming out of an outhouse. Can Emma learn to handle her newfound ability to see spirits, while figuring out a confusing relationship with the handsome local doctor? All while solving the ghastly murder of Preacher Jacob?