Susan Kenney

Sara Boyd has been shaped by crises, by illnesses and deaths that wrench her from familiar domestic landscapes into "another country." In the series of six interlocking stories that comprise this award-winning novel, Sara recalls the devastating death of her father when she was 12; her mother's frightening recurrent bouts with madness; and the protracted illness that now threatens to take her husband.

Winner of the Quality Paperback Book Club New Voices Award, In Another Country was published in Viking Hardcover, Penguin Contemporary Authors paperback, large print and several book club editions.

For Sara, sailing was first a gift to Phil, a symbol of her belief that he would survive his mortal illness another summer. For Phil, sailing was both self-discovery and escape--from his fears, from his doctors, from Sara's constant vigilance.

Following the characters and events of In Another Country, this novel portrays two people faced with a one crisis after another who react in very different, even diametrically opposed ways. It is the story of two ordinary people who vacillate between frantic, hurtful terror and stoical, heartbreaking heroics, a story about not giving up, about recognizing that there are no easy answers, and about learning to go on without hope.

A sequel to In Another Country, Sailing was published in Viking Hardcover, Penguin Contemporary Authors paperback, and a large print edition.

Seventeen-year-old Sara's visit to Manhattan with her mother illuminates her mother's past and enhances Sara's understanding and sympathy with her mother's eccentricities. This novella details events involving Sara and her mother that precede,intertwine and connect with the first three chapters of the novel In Another Country.

Note: This work was originally published in EPOCH, 2005 series. Click on the title above for an excerpt from the revised and updated 2010 version as well as some special features.

Who would want to murder a garden? This horrific question arises as Roz Howard, a young professor of English on leave from Vassar, undertakes the coveted job of editing the diaries and letters of the late author and famed gardener Lady Viola Montfort-Snow. Soon after Roz arrives at Montfort Abbey, the unimaginable prospect becomes a reality as one by one the hauntingly beautiful gardens fall prey to sabotage. Roz must contend with sundry eccentric residents who have much to hide, including her host, the autocratic Giles Montfort-Snow, his much-too-meek housekeeper Mrs. Farthing and her oddly secretive visiting relative Francesca, Cory and Stella, the master gardeners who have access to any number of very powerful insecticides, and Alan Stewart, the handsome artist whom Roz would love to trust, but whose expertise in the lore of poisonous plants raises questions about his role. When the mayhem escalates to include not just the gardens but the people living among them, death along with destruction flourish in this "garden of malice,' and it's up to Roz to discover who or what is at the root of evil.
First volume in the Roz Howard/Alan Stewart mystery series.

The trials and tribulations of campus life have escalated at Canterbury College: members of the English department are slowly being removed by a chillingly systematic killer. And Roz Howard, newly arrived on campus to replace one of the recently deceased, has a more than academic interest in the proceedings when she discovers that each violent act parallels an occurrence in one of the works assigned in her own survey of literature course. Relying on her scholarly acumen (along with a bit of luck and a lot of pluck, Roz sets out to find the killer before her own term at Canterbury comes to an untimely end. Second volume in the Roz Howard/Alan Stewart mystery series. Click on the title above for two brief excerpts.

Roz Howard and Alan Stewart plan to spend an idyllic holiday together sailing from Maine's Northeast Harbor to the west side of Penobscot Bay. Their plans get sidetracked when, en route to a picnic on a semi-deserted island, they discover a dead body lying on the beach. Although the authorities are quick - perhaps too quick--to label the death accidental, Roz and Alan are less convinced and the two become involved in uncovering the truth. Third volume in the Roz Howard/Alan Stewart series.

In this mystery short story, Roz Howard goes sailing with her aunt Jessie off the coast of Maine and solves a decades old mystery.