Turn Up the Heat Challenge: Books with a Plant on the Cover

From fields of grass to spiky cacti, these books don't all say it with flowers. Here's an assortment of good reads with plants on their cover.

If you haven’t read John Boyne before, be prepared for beautiful writing and characters dealing with regret, guilt or moral dilemmas. Earth is the second book in his Elements series (quite short books, so good for a reading challenge), and focuses on a young footballer caught up in a sexual assault court case.

By Any Other Name is a dual timeframe novel, so a bit of a departure for Jodi Picoult, taking us back to the writing of plays attributed to Shakespeare. Emilia Bassano is the Lord Chamberlain’s mistress who loves the theatre and contrives a way to see her own plays staged. In present-day New York, Melina Green is inspired to write a new work based on her ancestor’s life.

Amanda Peter’s novel The Berry Pickers is a moving story about a brother and sister separated when young Ruthie goes missing at the berry farm where her Mi’kmaq family are working. Joe grows up plagued by guilt. In an affluent suburb Norma grows up in an atmosphere of secrecy, questioning her dark skin, her missing baby photos.

Sue Williams’ historical novel, The Governor, His Wife and His Mistress, brings to life the household of Philip Gidley King, who sailed with the First Fleet to New South Wales, setting up home on Norfolk Island. The novel charts his relationships with Ann, the housekeeper he brings with him and the mother of his two sons, and the wife he brings home from a return visit to England. A well-researched and engrossing story.

Clairmont by Lesley McDowell could also be read for the “based on real people or events” challenge. Percy and Mary Shelley are visiting Lord Byron at his villa on Lake Geneva. With them is Mary’s young cousin Claire Clairmont, who is carrying Byron’s child. An engrossing story about an unconventional free spirit.

For those more interested in a cracking good mystery, Cutters End is the first book in Margaret Hickey’s series featuring Detective Sergeant Mark Ariti. Mark is involved in a cold case – the body of a man discovered in a burnt-out car three decades ago near Cutters End. Mark has a connection to the area and discovers it’s not the only unsolved case from all those years ago. Classic Aussie Noir.

Jill Johnson is the author of a mystery series following Professor Eustacia Rose, an expert in poisonous plants, which she tends on her roof garden. Life’s quiet and orderly until she gets caught up in a poisoning using a rare plant in Devil’s Breath, the first of the series. In Hell’s Bells, book 2, there’s more mayhem when she finds herself connected to another murder. Both books have beautiful, botanically-inspired covers.

Ruth Ware’s One Perfect Couple has echoes of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. We have a storm battering an island paradise, where five couples are taking part in a new reality show. Soon after their arrival things begin to go wrong - without their cell phones, tensions build, while a killer stalks among them. From the author sometimes dubbed “the queen of just one more chapter”.

Another favourite author, Anne Tyler creates an empathetic character in Clock Dance with 61-year-old Willa Drake, whose life’s most defining moments happen with surprising regularity. Her most recent: the departure from her home to help a stranger - her son’s ex-girlfriend, needing care, along with her nine-year-old daughter and dog, Airplane. A bittersweet novel about second chances, hope and neighbourliness.

These books show that plants of all kinds make good book covers, and hopefully you’ll find their insides just as terrific too.

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