It's Malaya, 1949. After studying law at Cambridge and spending time helping to prosecute Japanese war criminals, Yun Ling Teoh, herself the scarred lone survivor of a brutal Japanese wartime camp, seeks solace among the jungle-fringed plantations of Northern Malaya where she grew up as a child.

There she discovers Yugiri, the only Japanese garden in Malaya, and its owner and creator, the enigmatic Aritomo, exiled former gardener of the Emperor of Japan. Despite her hatred of the Japanese, Yun Ling seeks to engage Aritomo to create a garden in Kuala Lumpur, in memory of her sister who died in the camp. Aritomo refuses but agrees to accept Yun Ling as his apprentice 'until the monsoon comes'. Then she can design a garden for herself.

As the months pass, Yun Ling finds herself intimately drawn to her sensei and his art while, outside the garden, the threat of murder and kidnapping from the guerrillas of the jungle hinterland increases with each passing day.

But the Garden of Evening Mists is also a place of mystery. Who is Aritomo and how did he come to leave Japan? Why is it that Yun Ling's friend and host, Magnus Praetorius, seems almost immune from the depredations of the Communists? What is the legend of 'Yamashita's Gold' and does it have any basis in fact? And is the real story of how Yun Ling managed to survive the war perhaps the darkest secret of all?

The Constant Gardener is a magnificent exploration of the new world order by one of the most compelling and elegant storytellers of our time, John le Carré. The novel opens in northern Kenya with the gruesome murder of Tessa Quayle--young, beautiful, and dearly beloved to husband Justin. When Justin sets out on a personal odyssey to uncover the mystery of her death, what he finds could make him not only a suspect among his own colleagues, but a target for Tessa's killers as well.

A master chronicler of the betrayals of ordinary people caught in political conflict, le Carré portrays the dark side of unbridled capitalism as only he can. In The Constant Gardener, he tells a compelling, complex story of a man elevated through tragedy as Justin Quayle--amateur gardener, aging widower, and ineffectual bureaucrat--discovers his own natural resources, and the extraordinary courage of the woman he barely had time to love.

Recently widowed, Stella Rothchild is no stranger to the ghosts of the past. The move from Michigan back to her roots near Memphis, Tennessee is supposed to be about the future. Her two energetic young sons are thriving in their new school. Stella's got a great job managing the successful nursery 'In the Garden' and an interesting boss and landlady in local legend Roz Harper.

She even has a new friend in Hayley Phillips, the feisty young pregnant woman who turns up at Harper House, Stella's new home, looking for a job. More than that, Stella feels an instant attraction to In the Garden's landscaper, Logan Kitridge, who gets under her skin and makes her feel truly alive for the first time in years.

But there is someone at Harper House who isn't happy about Stella's growing feelings for Logan - the Harper Bride, an unidentified woman whose grief and rage have kept her spirit alive long past the death of her body. Love and loss broke her mind, and in her madness, she will stop at nothing to destroy the new passion that Logan and Stella have found.