The Skeleton Garden Read online

  Pru took a step back as if Evelyn held out a rattlesnake instead of an apron. “No, Evelyn, please—let me dig the leeks.”

  “You’re no gardener today, Pru Parke. Today, you’re a cook.”

  To FLW, a great lover of history

  Acknowledgments

  Weekly feedback, good chocolate, a glass of wine make for a much better story—thanks to my writing group (Kara Pomeroy, Louise Creighton, and Joan Shott) for providing all that and more. I promise to bake another one of Kitty’s apple cakes soon. Thanks, too, to my fine editor, Dana Isaacson, for seeing into the manuscript and knowing what’s missing, and to my agent, Colleen Mohyde of the Doe Coover Agency, for support all along the way.

  I researched The Skeleton Garden by reading through World War II documents at the Hampshire Record Office in Winchester. The handwritten details, including the “ARP Romsey Centre war diaries,” brought those years in the south of England into sharp focus. My reprinted copy of Land Girl: A Manual for Volunteers in the Women’s Land Army (by W. E. Shewell-Cooper, Amberley, 1941) provided wonderful background for this story, as did Ursula Buchan’s fascinating book A Green and Pleasant Land: How England’s Gardeners Fought the Second World War (Hutchinson, 2011).

  PHOTO: MARY M. PALMER

  MARTY WINGATE is a Seattle-based writer and speaker who shares her love of Britain in her two mystery series: the Potting Shed series with Pru Parke, a gardener transplanted from Texas to England, and the Birds of a Feather series, about Julia Lanchester, watcher of birds in fields and woods, who runs a tourist office in a Suffolk village.

  Wingate also writes articles for magazines including Country Gardens and the American Gardener. She is a member of the Royal Horticultural Society, Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and the Crime Writers’ Association. She leads garden tours to England, Scotland, and Ireland, spending free moments deep in research for her books. Or in pubs.

  martywingate.com

  Facebook.com/​MartyWingateauthor

  @martywingate

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