It’s just an ordinary day for octogenarian sleuth Myrtle Clover - until her yardman discovers a dead body planted in her backyard. This death isn’t cut and dried - the victim was bashed in the head with one of Myrtle’s garden gnomes. Myrtle’s friend Miles recognizes the body and identifies him as Charles Clayborne... reluctantly admitting he’s a cousin. Charles wasn’t the sort of relative you bragged about - he was a garden variety sleaze, which is very likely why he ended up murdered. As Myrtle starts digging up dirt to nip the killings in the bud, someone’s focused on scaring her off the case. Myrtle vows to find the murderer... before she’s pushing up daisies, herself.

Clarence Collin is pushing up daisies—in Abe's bed of zinnias! When the caustic critic of a TV gardening show winds up murdered in Abe's well-groomed backyard, both Abe and his hunky-but-irritating neighbor Gregory might be on the suspect list. Abe starts amateur sleuthing in self-defense...and to spend time with Gregory. When the two green thumbs look into their neighborhood's dirty little secrets, who knows what they'll dig up? A cozy gay mystery 51,000 words

Her spray-tanned, self-absorbed news anchor ex-husband careening back into her life was not on this psychic detective's bingo card. But not only does Griffin Gentry show up unexpectedly at Riley Thorn's door--the real shock is that he's begging for her help. However, Riley's hot private investigator boyfriend Nick Santiago refusing to take the job is...well, less of a surprise. Too bad for Nick that his octogenarian business partner overrules him and decides to take the lead on Griffin's case. And when a dead body makes it clear someone really is out to get Riley's ex, the mile-long suspect list puts all hands on deck at Santiago Investigations. Even the wrinkly, retired ones. It's only a matter of time before Griffin brings danger directly to Riley's doorstep. And with she and Nick busy interviewing suspects, their elderly roommates are wreaking havoc in the surveillance department. Can Riley block out the chaos and focus on her psychic visions long enough to narrow down the list of suspects, or will Griffin Gentry's karma be the downfall of them all?

There is one problem which every killer must face: how to get rid of the body Murderer Dennis Nilsen famously cooked the corpses of his victims and flushed them down the toilet, only to be caught when the sewers blocked up. But his first 12 victims were disposed of in the back garden of his previous home. Fred and Rosemary West buried the bodies of three of their victims in the back garden. Milwaukee cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer began his murderous career scattering human remains in the backyard of his parents' home in Bath, Ohio. Convicted killer Peter Tobin went back on trial after two more bodies were found in the back garden of his former home. And grisly granny Dorothea Puente murdered lodgers at her boarding house in Sacramento, California, dispatching them to the backyard while continuing to cash their Social Security checks. This book explores these and many other cases that suggest that, whatever the motive for murder, the back garden is a convenient place to dump the corpse.

Margaret Roach has been harvesting thirty years of backyard parables-deceptively simple, instructive stories from a life spent digging ever deeper-and has distilled them in this memoir along with her best tips for garden making, discouraging all manner of animal and insect opponents, at-home pickling, and more. After ruminating on the bigger picture in her memoir And I Shall Have Some Peace There, Margaret Roach has returned to the garden, insisting as ever that we must garden with both our head and heart, or as she expresses it, with "horticultural how-to and woo-woo." In The Backyard Parables, Roach uses her fundamental understanding of the natural world, philosophy, and life to explore the ways that gardening saved and instructed her, and meditates on the science and spirituality of nature, reminding her readers and herself to keep on digging.

Even though he knows his best friend Artie is a liar, when the coincidences start to add up, seventh-grader Joshua starts to believe that there might be merit to his friend's idea of a body buried in the neighbor's yard.

Since the discovery of a decaying corpse in their backyard, the members of the Bajaj family have experienced a host of emotions from shock to disgust to exasperation to fury. But when the young CID officer Vasant arrives at the crime scene, he can immediately tell that the Bajaj family may not be as innocent as they seem. However, seeing as Mr Bajaj is the additional secretary to revenue and has a meeting with the prime minister in a couple of hours, Vasant has no option but to speed up his investigation. But he is not worried. The "still alive" corpse has just started talking and Vasant is all ears. Subversive, exciting, and revealing, with a twist you actually won't be ready for, Manjula Padmanathan's Body in the Backyard is as compelling as it is well-written.

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.

Describes a variety of animals and insects that can be found close to home and offers tips on how to observe them.