Joyce and Jim Lavene

Meet Peggy Lee: botanist, detective’s widow, and owner of The Potting Shed, an urban gardener’s paradise in downtown Charlotte. Mild winters keep the store thriving all year round, but at least one person in the city has colder intentions. It’s another busy fall day for Peggy. First she gives a quick café lecture on African violets, then has a minor bike accident involving a good-looking Saturn driver…and finally reaches her shop only to find a dead man sprawled face down across one of her seasonal displays, apparently done to death with a garden shovel. He’s Mark Warner, one of the wealthiest men in town—and also one of the biggest philanderers. The police have a local homeless man pinned for the suspect, but Peggy has her doubts. Soon her efforts to exonerate him have her raking through the evidence and digging up secrets—and somebody’s not happy about it. And then there’s the enormous Great Dane who seems determined to adopt her—and Peggy doesn’t even like dogs. Good thing that Saturn driver is also a veterinarian… Gardening Tips Included!

Pretty Poison

Meet Peggy Lee: botanist, detective’s widow, and owner of The Potting Shed, an urban gardener’s paradise in downtown Charlotte. Mild winters keep the store thriving all year round, but there are plenty of people with colder intentions… What made Peggy’s lifelong friend Park Lamonte drive off a ramp to his death? Park’s aged mother suspects his wife Beth of killing him for the ten-million-dollar insurance policy. The police think so too. But Peggy has a growing suspicion that there’s more to the story. She’s convinced Beth is innocent—even after Park’s mother is also killed, and evidence emerges that seems to point to Beth. Can Peggy maintain her gardening business, teach her botany classes, nurture her relationship with her new man, deal with her unruly Great Dane, and still find time to extract the truth? GARDENING TIPS INCLUDED!

Fruit of the Poisoned Tree

In the latest mystery from the bestselling authors of Looking for Mr. Good Witch, the retired witches of Wilmington, North Carolina, are ready to kick up their heels... With their coven’s spell book still missing, Molly and Elsie—along with their ghostly friend Olivia, her daughter Dorothy, and her boyfriend Brian—are all on edge, especially now that Dorothy’s infamously wicked father is back in the picture. So when they receive an invitation to an exclusive Witches Ball, the ladies jump at the chance to dress up and have some fun. The castle locale is spectacular and the party is hopping, but the festivities come to a swift end when a member of the Grand Council of Witches is murdered. With the whole place on lock down, the coven is determined to find the cunning killer, even with an angry council and a real Spanish Inquisitor breathing down their necks...

Putting on the Witch

Includes gardening tips! No rain means profits are wilting at The Potting Shed, so Peggy Lee joins her mother on a "bone harvest" expedition for the local historical society. But she stumbles upon a perplexing mystery-how a fellow volunteer became a corpse with curiously red lips.

A Corpse for Yew

Meet Peggy Lee: forensic botanist, detective’s widow, and owner of The Potting Shed, an urban gardener’s paradise in downtown Charlotte. While the summer heat is stifling her shop’s business, death is always in season. While attending a funeral in nearby Badin, Peggy learns of more bad news: a diver is found dead while performing routine work on the local dam. Then, days later, a woman is recovered from the swimming pool of a Charlotte home. When the body surfaces, so do the clues—including an unusual plant wound in the victim’s hair. The police call forensic botanist Peggy Lee to the scene, but her findings only raise more questions. What do these two deaths have in common? And how did duckweed end up in a pool? Peggy is happy to lend her green thumb to the investigation, but this may be the one time digging for a killer leaves her empty-handed.

A Peggy Lee Garden Mystery

Perfect Poison

At her glass-blowing apprenticeship, Renaissance reveler Jessie Morton?s crabby boss and his creepy nephew are causing her problems. But when the man playing the Grim Reaper is killed, Jess has to find the lady, lord or serf whodunit.

Ghastly Glass

Long before he became curator of the Duck Historical Museum, Max Caudle discovered its greatest treasure-a wooden chest full of gold. But a thief with his eye on the gold fires a cannonball into the museum, destroying the building-and killing Max. Injured in the explosion, Dae finds her abilities have been amplified, overwhelming her with intense visions every time she touches an object. Now if ex-FBI agent-and burgeoning beau-Kevin Brickman can help Dae decipher her visions, she just might be able to stop the modern-day buccaneer from killing again.

A Touch of Gold

Join the national bestselling authors of the Missing Pieces Mysteries as they conjure up the first supernatural mystery in the Retired Witches series... Once upon a time in Wilmington, North Carolina, three witches ran a curio shop named Smuggler’s Arcane. But as the years passed, their magical powers started to fade—leaving them no choice but to conjure up a retirement package… Before they could blink their eyes or twitch their noses, Molly, Elsie, and Olivia somehow became eligible for AARP. But they can’t fly off to Boca Raton just yet. First they must give up their magic, recruit and train three new witches, and pass on their cherished spellbook. They’ve barely begun to consider potential practitioners when Olivia winds up dead and their spellbook is stolen. To honor their friend and reclaim their spells, Molly and Elsie are about to go wand-to-wand with a dangerous young witch more powerful than the trio was in their prime. And this time they’re going to need more than magic up their sleeves...

Spell Booked

Jessie Morton's latest apprenticeship at the Renaissance Faire is in service to Daisy, the master swordsmith. But when a professional dueler-and Daisy's former flame-is murdered, it's up to Jessie to keep a sharp eye out for the killer.

Deadly Daggers

Everyone’s favorite retired witches from Spell Booked have returned and are diving into troubled waters to find a sinister sea witch… WITCHY WOMAN A sea witch has been leaving bodies in her wake up and down the Carolina coast, baffling authorities who are finding drowning victims with no water in their lungs. The fin-icky female will continue to kill young male witches until she finds her perfect man—the one who survives her mating ritual—so she can live for another hundred years. And now coven hopeful Brian Fuller is about to be ensnared in her net. Retired witches Molly and Elsie, along with the ghost of Olivia and her daughter Dorothy, need all the help they can get to stop the sea witch. Aided by a selkie and a crème puff–craving mermaid, they’re determined to keep Brian out of her murky clutches. But are they all about to get in over their heads?

Joyce and Jim Lavene

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