Marta McDowell Knihy

A fascinating look at the gardens that helped inspire the settings for Beatrix Potter's stories.

From New York Times bestselling author Marta McDowell, an illustrated exploration of how gardening and plants inspired Emily Dickinson, one of the most beloved poets of all time.

McDowell delves into the professional and gardening life of Frances Hodgson Burnett, the writer who dominated the literary world of her time. A lover of flowers and gardens, Burnett's path to literary triumph was a long one. McDowell reminds us why Burnett's 1911 novel, The secret garden, continues to touch readers after more than a century

All the Presidents' Gardens tells the untold history of the White House Grounds. Starting with the seed-collecting, plant-obsessed George Washington and now revised updated to include the Biden administration, this rich and compelling narrative reveals how the story of the garden is also the story of America.

2017 is the 150th anniversary of Laura Ingalls Wilder's birthday. Her beloved Little House series tells a classic coming-of-age story based on Wilder's own family life and is a reflection of the pioneer spirit of the time. They are also deeply rooted in the natural world.

This fun, engrossing book takes a look at the surprising influence that gardens and gardening have had on mystery novels and their authors. With their deadly plants, razor-sharp shears, shady corners, and ready-made burial sites, gardens make an ideal scene for the perfect murder. But the outsize influence that gardens and gardening have had on the mystery genre has been underappreciated. Now, Marta McDowell, a writer and gardener with a near-encyclopedic knowledge of the genre, illuminates the many ways in which our greatest mystery writers, from Edgar Allen Poe to authors on today’s bestseller lists, have found inspiration in the sinister side of gardens.From the cozy to the hardboiled, the literary to the pulp, and the classic to the contemporary, Gardening Can Be Murder is the first book to explore the mystery genre’s many surprising horticultural connections. Meet plant-obsessed detectives and spooky groundskeeper suspects, witness toxic teas served in foul play, and tour the gardens—both real and imagined—that have been the settings for fiction’s ghastliest misdeeds. A New York Times bestselling author herself, McDowell also introduces us to some of today’s top writers who consider gardening integral to their craft, assuring that horticultural themes will remain a staple of the genre for countless twisting plots to come.