When Paula Holliday agrees to act as exhibit manager for a reclusive artist she’s expecting a laidback weekend picking up gardening tips. She doesn’t expect to be knee-deep in horticultural sabotage, beheaded gnomes, homicide, and something called The Javits Curse. Then an overeager attendee is found floating in the river and Paula realizes she accidentally holds a clue to his murder—that’s when the garden gloves come off and this flower show turns into a real Slugfest!

This time out Paula is joined by a colorful cast that includes Rolanda “Fort” Knox, a no-nonsense security guard; Guy Anzalone, Brooklyn's Tumbled Stone King; Jamal Harrington, a high school kid with a black belt and a green thumb; JC Kaufman, a feisty lady who hates leaving home without her weapon of choice; and a slick marketing guy hawking the hottest new product at the show, a foolproof pest repellant that people are dying to get their hands on.

With limited means and her ragtag crew, Paula must solve her toughest mystery yet and root out a killer before she finds herself pushing up daisies!

One hundred percent of the royalties from this new collection of original stories will go directly to the 2011 JAPAN RELIEF FUND administered by the Japan America Society of Southern California. The 2011 Japan Relief Fund was created on March 11, 2011 to aid victims of the Great East Japan Earthquake and resulting tsunami waves. With the funds that have been raised so far, $750,000 has been committed to nonprofit organizations that are on the front lines of relief and recovery work in northeastern Japan.

This collection was born out of the writers' concern for the people in the disaster zone. SHAKEN: STORIES FOR JAPAN is an attempt by writers to pool their talents to help people in need, as musicians and actors so often do.

The book contains original stories by Brett Battles, Cara Black, Vicki Doudera, Dianne Emley, Dale Furutani, Timothy Hallinan, Stefan Hammond, Rosemary Harris, Naomi Hirahara, Wendy Hornsby, Ken Kuhlken, Debbi Mack, Adrian McKinty, I.J. Parker, Gary Phillips, Hank Phillippi Ryan, Jeffrey Siger, Kelli Stanley, C.J. West, and Jeri Westerson. As a group, these authors have won every mystery award there is and sold hundreds of thousand of copies. They're all working at the top of their games in this volume. SHAKEN; STORIES FROM JAPAN is art for heart's sake, and the purchase price will help those who are struggling to repair, or at least soothe, these terrible losses.

Book trailer for PUSHING UP DAISIES on YouTube.

Thirtyish former television exec Paula Holliday relocates from New York City to sleepy Springfield, CT, determined to turn her passion for gardening into a new, less stressful career.

When an eccentric spinster dies, her landmark property is left to the local Historical Society, and Paula sees the garden’s restoration as a way to get her fledgling business off the ground. She’s prepared for everything, but not for the mummified baby she digs up her first day on the job. After a cursory investigation, the local police decide it’s an old secret, not a recent crime, so they drop the matter, but . . . Paula’s not so sure.

Casual snooping turns serious when someone is impaled on a garden tool and one of Paula’s helpers is arrested for the crime. Aided by the still-hot aging rocker who owns the local greasy spoon, a Shakespeare-quoting massage therapist, and a handsome Mexican laborer with a few secrets of his own, Paula unearths more dirt the suburban town has kept buried.

Rounding out the cast, and among the suspects, a randy Congressman and his gin-swigging mother, an amoral newspaper reporter, an octogenarian ladies’ man, childhood sweethearts reunited after 50 years, and a tattooed lady you wouldn’t want to mess with.