0538 - GARDENING CAN BE MURDER How Poisonous Poppies, Sinister Shovels, and Grim Gardens Have Inspired Mystery Writers By Mata McDowell
Course Description
A captivating and delightful book explores the surprising influence that gardens and gardening have had on mystery novels and their authors. With their dangerous plants, sharp tools, concealed nooks, and natural burial sites, gardens serve as the perfect setting for a thrilling murder. However, the crucial role that gardens play in the mystery genre has often been overlooked. Now, Marta McDowell, a skilled writer and gardener with a deep understanding of the genre, highlights how our most celebrated mystery writers
– from Edgar Allan Poe to today’s bestselling authors—have found inspiration in the enchanting yet ominous world of gardens.
Encounter plant-loving detectives and eerie groundskeeper suspects, observe lethal brews served in acts of malice, and explore the gardens – both real and fictional – that have served as backdrops for some of fiction’s most horrific crimes.
As a New York Times bestselling author, McDowell also introduces us to some of today’s leading writers who view gardening as essential to their storytelling, ensuring that horticultural themes will continue to thrive in countless twisting plots to come. Talk will be followed by a Q&A & book signing.
Marta McDowell teaches landscape history and horticulture at the New York Botanical Garden and is a popular lecturer and writer. Her latest book is Gardening Can Be Murder, about the horticultural connections to crime fiction. Timber Press also published Unearthing The Secret Garden, Emily Dickinson’s Gardening Life, The World of Laura Ingalls Wilder, New York Times-bestselling All the Presidents’ Gardens, and Beatrix Potter’s Gardening Life, now in its ninth printing. She was the 2019 recipient of the Garden Club of America’s Sarah Chapman Francis Medal for outstanding literary achievement.
Reduced fee made possible by the Friends of Lifelong Learning, includes breakfast. Books will be available for sale at the event.