When retired schoolteacher Beatrice Plum discovers an old diary hidden in her garden wall, a long-buried village tragedy begins to look dangerously like murder. The diary belonged to Edith Faircombe, a young bookkeeper at Little Mallow's once-thriving button factory, who died in a fall that everyone agreed was a terrible accident.

But Edith's notes tell a different story?of altered records, quiet fear, and someone who did not want the truth uncovered.

As Beatrice follows the trail through crumbling factory ruins, old family secrets, and the polished silences of village life, she finds that Little Mallow has preserved its past less carefully than it pretends. And in a place where respectability matters more than honesty, reopening old wounds may be the most dangerous thing of all.

Murder in the Button Garden is a charming and sharply observed cozy mystery full of wit, atmosphere, and long-hidden lies.