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.
* Indie Next List Pick * Indie Bestseller * Sixteen bloodless bodies. Two teenagers. One impossible explanation. In this edge-of-your-seat mystery from #1 New York Times bestselling author Kendare Blake, the truth is as hard to believe as it is to find. Summer 1958. A gruesome killer plagues the Midwest, leaving behind a trail of bodies completely drained of blood. Michael Jensen, an aspiring journalist whose father happens to be the town sheriff, never imagined that the Bloodless Murders would come to his backyard. Not until the night the Carlson family was found murdered in their home. Marie Catherine Hale, a diminutive fifteen-year-old, was discovered at the scene—covered in blood. She is the sole suspect in custody. Michael didn’t think that he would be part of the investigation, but he is pulled in when Marie decides that he is the only one she will confess to. As Marie recounts her version of the story, it falls to Michael to find the truth: What really happened the night that the Carlsons were killed? And how did one girl wind up in the middle of all these bodies?
Lure Them Home When the urge took hold, serial killer Larry Bright brought women back to his home. After raping and murdering his victims, he brutally disposed of their bodies. Sometimes he built a white-hot fire and burned them in his backyard. Other times he dumped them along nearby roads and fields. Rape And Murder Them For years, Bright had trolled the roads and back streets of Illinois for the most helpless, desperate women he could find. Then one woman escaped, and suddenly police were looking for bodies everywhere--trying to find out how many women Bright had really killed and what he had done with their remains. Burn Their Bodies In The Backyard Step by step, an all-out investigation would shock hardened detectives. From interviews with women who survived their encounters with him to the forensic search for bone fragments and pieces of burned, buried flesh, the case against Larry Bright finally closed like a vise--on the man who turned his victims into ashes. With 16 pages of shocking photos!
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.
This cheerful love-your-body picture book for preschoolers is an exuberant read-aloud with bright and friendly illustrations to pore over. From the acclaimed creator of Dancing at the Pity Party and Roaring Softly, this picture book is a pure celebration of all the different human bodies that exist in the world. Highlighting the various skin tones, body shapes, and hair types is just the beginning in this truly inclusive book. With its joyful illustrations and encouraging refrain, it will instill body acceptance and confidence in the youngest of readers. “My body, your body, every different kind of body! All of them are good bodies! BODIES ARE COOL!”
Jamie Mason spins the gripping story of lonely widower and accidental murderer Jason Getty, who lives with the guilt of having buried his victim in his backyard, only to discover two other bodies, a man and a woman, when his garden is dug up by a landscaping firm. The persistent detectives investigating the two murders are at first unaware of the third, but old blood stains soon reveal its existence. Jason is thrown into a macabre plot of trying to cover up his deed while forging a soul-redeeming friendship with Leah, the dead man's fearless widow.Mason is a master of tight plot-weaving and deep empathy for all of her characters, no matter how flawed. The causes and consequences of their crimes are brilliantly illuminated. Readers will fall in love with the book's most loveable character, a heroic dog who is the best detective and truth-seeker of them all.Jamie Mason is the managing editor of the popular authorscoop.com and lives with her family in North Carolina. Three Graves Full is her first novel.
NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS’ CHOICE • Three generations of Taiwanese American women are haunted by the myths of their homeland in this spellbinding, visceral debut about one family’s queer desires, violent impulses, and buried secrets. “Gorgeous and gorgeously grotesque . . . Every line of this sensuous, magical-realist marvel is utterly alive.”—O: The Oprah Magazine FINALIST FOR THE LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD • LONGLISTED FOR THE VCU CABELL FIRST NOVELIST AWARD • LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY O: The Oprah Magazine • NPR • The New York Public Library • Kirkus Reviews One evening, Mother tells Daughter a story about a tiger spirit who lived in a woman’s body. She was called Hu Gu Po, and she hungered to eat children, especially their toes. Soon afterward, Daughter awakes with a tiger tail. And more mysterious events follow: Holes in the backyard spit up letters penned by her grandmother; a visiting aunt arrives with snakes in her belly; a brother tests the possibility of flight. All the while, Daughter is falling for Ben, a neighborhood girl with strange powers of her own. As the two young lovers translate the grandmother’s letters, Daughter begins to understand that each woman in her family embodies a myth—and that she will have to bring her family’s secrets to light in order to change their destiny. With a poetic voice of crackling electricity, K-Ming Chang is an explosive young writer who combines the wit and fabulism of Helen Oyeyemi with the subversive storytelling of Maxine Hong Kingston. Tracing one family’s history from Taiwan to America, from Arkansas to California, Bestiary is a novel of migration, queer lineages, and girlhood. Praise for Bestiary “[A] vivid, fabulist debut . . . the prose is full of imagery. Chang’s wild story of a family’s tenuous grasp on belonging in the U.S. stands out with a deep commitment to exploring discomfort with the body and its transformations.”—Publishers Weekly
Fox Hollow Farm, a lush million-dolar suburban Indianapolis estate, had 18 acres of lawns, a fabulous swimming pool...and thousands of human bones buried in the yard. The piles of dismembered skeletons belonged to young men who has disappeared from the gay bars and cruising sites of this Midwest city. Their killer was Herb Baumeister, a beloved father and successful businessman who led a deadly double life. And until the day his son dug up a buried skull, Herb's pretty wife Julie never dreamed he was Indian's worst serial killer. She didn't know about the bizarre sexual encounters Herb held at the house when she went away with their kids...or about the brutal cravings that led him to kill. In this riveting account, two veteran journalists tell the uncensored story of Herb Baumeister--taking you into a psychopath's dark obsession to meet his victims, to witness the rituals of sex and death he forced his victims to perform, and to find out how this gruesome killing sprees finally--shockingly--came to an end...
In 1960, Billie Valentine is a young housewife living in a sleepy suburb, treading water in a dull marriage and caring for two adopted daughters. Summers spent with the girls at their lakeside camp in Vermont are her one escape - from her husband's demands, from days consumed by household drudgery, and from the nagging suspicion that life was supposed to hold something different. Then a new family moves in across the street. Ted and Eva Wilson have three children and a fourth on the way, and their arrival reignites long-buried feelings in Billie. The affair that follows offers a solace Billie has never known, until her secret is revealed and both families are wrenched apart in the tragic aftermath. In this deeply tender novel, T. Greenwood weaves deftly between the past and present to create a poignant and wonderfully moving story of friendship, the resonance of memories, and the love that keeps us afloat.
An introduction to the roughly 4000 different bee species found in the United States and Canada, dispelling common myths about bees while offering essential tips for telling them apart in the field
