A Larkspur Hollow Garden Club Mystery: Book 6
Publication Date: August 16, 2026
Two hundred and fifty years of history. Twenty minutes nobody can account for.
Larkspur Hollow has been waiting a long time for this spring. The village turns two hundred and fifty years old, and the Garden Club has poured everything it has into an anniversary Flower Show worth the number.
Then Margot Hartwell — the last of the Hartwells, the woman whose money was quietly remaking the valley — walks out to hundreds of people on the green, says something no two witnesses will ever agree on, and dies on the grass in front of all of them.
Six people had a reason. Only one had the twenty minutes.
Retired schoolteacher, master gardener, and reluctant detective Nell Ashworth has worked five of these now. She has never had one where the whole village was watching and nobody saw a thing.
A mystery you solve yourself — with a pencil
Every chapter ends with a word search. Find all fifteen words, and the letters left over spell a clue in Nell’s own words. Write it on your Case Notes. Work it on your Case Tracker. One clue at a time, six suspects become five, then four, then one.
Nothing is hidden from you. Nell never learns anything you don’t learn on the same page. By the last puzzle you will be able to fill in the verdict — who, why, how, and where — and find out whether you beat her to it before you turn the page.
Inside this book
- A complete cozy mystery in 50 short chapters — read one, solve one, put it down
- 48 original word search puzzles, every one hiding a real clue
- A printed Case Tracker and Case Notes pages for working the case
- Six suspects, six motives, six methods, six places — all fairly eliminated
- Large, high-contrast puzzle grids in an easy-to-read typeface
- A spoiler-guarded solution and a complete answer key
- No gore and no bad language — just a fair puzzle and a small town with a long memory
This is the sixth case in Larkspur Hollow, and like every one before it, it stands completely on its own. You can start here.
Sharpen your pencil.
The best way for Larkspur Hollow to celebrate its 250th anniversary is through a massive flower show, but no one counted on an unexpected death.
Author Jody Chaffin serves up the sixth installment in the mystery series with The Bruised Bud. It can easily be enjoyed as a standalone, but reading in sequence provides an opportunity to enjoy the character development.
This series offers an interactive experience for readers by delivering a short one-page chapter followed by a word search. The remaining letters form a clue.
Once all 48 clues are identified, amateur sleuths can check their work and unlock bonus extras on the author’s website. I have discovered the Kindle Scribe works well with this type of book.
Returning characters like Nell Ashworth join with new faces to investigate what really happened to Margot Hartwell.
The Bruised Bud provides an immersive “whodunit” for readers.
Jody Chaffin writes cozy mysteries for readers who like to do more than turn the page, pairing small-town whodunits with word-search puzzles you solve right alongside the characters. When he isn’t hiding a secret in a grid, he’s building software or out playing sports. He lives in Missouri.
His debut series, The Larkspur Hollow Garden Club Mysteries, follows a tight-knit Vermont garden club through small-town secrets with every solution hidden in the puzzle pages for readers to find.
