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The Gift Horse Garden
Matt and Anne Evans Carlton (last seen in How to Murder Your Contractor) have an unexpected problem on their they inadvertently hold the winning ticket in the $1.7 billion Powerball lottery. They’ve Googled ‘Powerball curse’ and know too much money can bring misery.
Their solution is give it all to charities that can absorb and do good works with their unexpected windfall. Anne, though, also wants to do something nice for their adopted home town of anonymously donate a five-acre native plant garden.
Standing in the way are a few they have just 60 days to create a charity. Would-be podcasting stars want to unmask ‘America’s newest billionaire’. Groups in Hardington have other ideas of how to use the money. And, a labor boss in town is incensed his crews won’t benefit from the action (or money).
The Gift Horse Garden will educate readers on topics ranging from AI digital assistants to New England Town Meeting procedure. It is also guaranteed to keep you laughing and guessing to the last page.
Their solution is give it all to charities that can absorb and do good works with their unexpected windfall. Anne, though, also wants to do something nice for their adopted home town of anonymously donate a five-acre native plant garden.
Standing in the way are a few they have just 60 days to create a charity. Would-be podcasting stars want to unmask ‘America’s newest billionaire’. Groups in Hardington have other ideas of how to use the money. And, a labor boss in town is incensed his crews won’t benefit from the action (or money).
The Gift Horse Garden will educate readers on topics ranging from AI digital assistants to New England Town Meeting procedure. It is also guaranteed to keep you laughing and guessing to the last page.
282 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 18, 2025
1 person is currently reading
About the author
Neal Sanders
22 books26 followersBack in 2005, I helped sell the company that had been my long-time employer. When the sale was done, I had two ‘sensible’ offers that would have kept me in the corporate world. To make a long story short, neither option appealed.
There was something else I wanted to do, something that had been on my mind for a couple of decades: I wanted to see if I could write fiction.
Not the Great American Novel. Not poetry. Not some thinly disguised autobiographical cathartic work. I wanted to see if I could tell a rousing good story using believable characters people would root for. I wanted to write stories with satisfying conclusions that sprinkled enough clues about the outcome throughout the story to make a reader say, ‘why didn’t I see that coming?’ Oh, and I wanted to write stuff that people would actually go out and buy. In short, I wanted to write mysteries, suspense, and thrillers.
Since then, I’ve published 15 books. Apart from being mysteries, what they all have in common is that their central characters are strong, independent women. Some of these women solve crimes. Some commit them. But they're all memorable.
Five of my books are stand-alone titles. The others are part of two series featuring recurring characters. But if your next question is 'where do I start?', the answer is, 'anywhere'. My pet peeve about most authors is their lack of charity toward new readers; unless you've read everything else in the series, you're at sea three pages into the book. My stories are deliberately designed to stand on their own.
My books are also, well, humorous. For example, if four 'women of a certain age' are going to take a giant step outside of their comfort zone and rob the daily gate of a large New England fair (as happens in 'The Garden Club Gang'), you can count on a rash of unexpected complications.
I invite you to hop over to my website and sample the wares. You'll find the first few thousand words of each book and a handy guide to which books belong to which series.
There was something else I wanted to do, something that had been on my mind for a couple of decades: I wanted to see if I could write fiction.
Not the Great American Novel. Not poetry. Not some thinly disguised autobiographical cathartic work. I wanted to see if I could tell a rousing good story using believable characters people would root for. I wanted to write stories with satisfying conclusions that sprinkled enough clues about the outcome throughout the story to make a reader say, ‘why didn’t I see that coming?’ Oh, and I wanted to write stuff that people would actually go out and buy. In short, I wanted to write mysteries, suspense, and thrillers.
Since then, I’ve published 15 books. Apart from being mysteries, what they all have in common is that their central characters are strong, independent women. Some of these women solve crimes. Some commit them. But they're all memorable.
Five of my books are stand-alone titles. The others are part of two series featuring recurring characters. But if your next question is 'where do I start?', the answer is, 'anywhere'. My pet peeve about most authors is their lack of charity toward new readers; unless you've read everything else in the series, you're at sea three pages into the book. My stories are deliberately designed to stand on their own.
My books are also, well, humorous. For example, if four 'women of a certain age' are going to take a giant step outside of their comfort zone and rob the daily gate of a large New England fair (as happens in 'The Garden Club Gang'), you can count on a rash of unexpected complications.
I invite you to hop over to my website and sample the wares. You'll find the first few thousand words of each book and a handy guide to which books belong to which series.
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