Bloom and Doom by Gita Appleyard

In a sunny Australian garden, beauty blooms, gossip grows, and trouble has a way of taking root.

Margaret Vale knows every garden on Camellia Lane has its secrets. Some are harmless: neglected roses, borrowed cuttings, whispered disagreements over fences. Others are harder to ignore.

When a proposed development threatens the neighbourhood, Margaret finds herself drawn into a tangle of suspicious behaviour, damaged plants, old grudges, and neighbours who know more than they admit.

With her beloved camellias at risk, a quiet man beside her, and trouble spreading through the lane, Margaret must work out who can be trusted before the place she fought to keep is changed forever.

Warm, witty, and gently twisty, Bloom and Doom is a cosy Australian mystery novella full of garden gossip, neighbourly suspicion, second chances, and a little dirt under the fingernails.