Digging Up a Good Mystery - Part 2

More Gardening & Botanical Series

Julie Wray Herman's new series features Three Dirty Women, a professional landscaping company owned by three women. In the first book, Three Dirty Women and the Garden of Death, the landscapers unearth more than they bargain for when Amilou Whittier finds her philandering husband buried under a client's azaleas. Her friend and partner, Korine McFaile, follows a twisting path to discover who really killed Greg Whittier. This book was nominated for a First Best Mystery Novel Agatha award. In the newly-released second book, Three Dirty Women and the Bitter Brew, Korine McFaile and her partner, Janey Bascom, and Janey's husband, J.J., visit historic Charleston for the twelfth annual Small Landscaper's Convention. Korine is stuck rooming with Dodie Halloran, who seems determined to make Korine's life miserable. When Dodie is murdered, Korine becomes a suspect.

Janis Harrison's series features Bretta Solomon, a recently widowed florist shop owner. In the first book, Roots of Murder, Bretta is asked to investigate the mysterious death of an Amish farmer, one of her flower supplier. In Murder Sets Seed, the next book in this series, Bretta throws herself into the restoration of her home and her upcoming open house when the former owner is found strangled in Bretta's home.

Mary Freeman's series begins with Devil's Trumpet, introducing Rachel O'Connor as the young owner of a landscaping firm. Rachel is hired to restore a once spectacular hotel, owned by Henry Bassinger. The hotel is in a state of disrepair and Rachel is trying to bring it back to its former opulence. Henry, previously broke, suddenly gives her quite a bit of money. When Henry unexpectedly ends up dead, Rachel starts to look into Henry's past to find some answers. In Deadly Nightshade, the second book in the series, Rachel digs up some troubling clues in the murder of a city councilman, but her sleuthing efforts wreak havoc in her town and her family. A botanist hires Rachel to landscape her exquisite estate in Bleeding Heart, the third and latest book. But when the woman is murdered, Rachel must rake through clues to find the culprit.

John Sherwood's series features fifty-ish widow and horticulturist, Celia Grant. The ten book series begins with Green Trigger Fingers. Celia is living alone in the village of Westfield, running a small nursery and hiring out as a part-time gardener on the side. The work is hard, but the life should be peaceful enough. And it is, until a weekend couple from London is found axed to death in a nearby cottage. Everybody, except Celia, thinks the missing no-good son of the local storekeeper did it. Celia fears she knows the answer when she finds that someone has dug up and replanted some irises for no apparent reason. In the second book, A Botanist at Bay, Celia, about to become a grandmother, flies to New Zealand to assist her daughter and, as a favor to her friend the Duchess, to locate Lord Albert Melton. The only clues to his whereabouts are some photos of rare plants and of a redhead in the nude. In The Mantrap Garden, Celia is asked to become a trustee for a famous English garden. However, upon her visit to the garden, she finds a disasterous garden and the suspicious recent death of the garden's owner. Celia takes on the difficult task of transforming a neglected garden into a setting fit for a fabulous party in Flowers of Evil, the fourth book of the series. Not only is the garden in disarray . The family is enduring a major crisis. The books contain interesting botanical footnotes too.

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