Frequently while paging through catalogs and reviewing book lists from vendors, I’ll notice a title that sounds familiar. The latest is “night garden” and its variations, prompted by my sighting of The Night Gardener by Terry and Eric Fan, a picture book being published by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers on February 16. This immediately made me think of the middle grade book by the same title by Jonathan Auxier as well as Barbara Joosse’s picture book In the Night Garden. Turns out there’s a whole host of books for kids and adults that use this phrase in its title, as you’ll see below. Descriptions are all via WorldCat.

The Night Gardener by Jonathan Auxier (middle grade fiction)

Irish orphans Molly, fourteen, and Kip, ten, travel to England to work as servants in a crumbling manor house where nothing is quite what it seems to be, and soon the siblings are confronted by a mysterious stranger and secrets of the cursed house.

The Night Gardener by Terry and Eric Fan (picture book)

Everyone on Grimloch Lane enjoys the trees and shrubs clipped into animal masterpieces after dark by the Night Gardener, but William, a lonely boy, spots the artist, follows him, and helps with his special work.

In the Night Garden by Barbara Joosse (picture book)

Three friends play in a garden and in the bath before bedtime, each one imagining herself a different animal.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt (adult nonfiction)

In charming, beautiful, and wealthy old-South Savannah, Georgia, the local bad boy is shot dead inside of the opulent mansion of a gay antiques dealer, and a gripping trial follows.

The Night Gardener by George Pelecanos (adult fiction)

When the body of a local teenager turns up in a community garden, veteran homicide detective Gus Ramone teams up with T.C. Cook, a legendary, now retired detective, and Dan “Doc” Holiday, his former partner who left the force under a cloud of suspicion.

In the Night Garden by Catherynne M. Valente (adult fiction)

A lonely girl with a dark tattoo across her eyelids made up of words spelling out countless tales unfolds a fabulous, recursive Arabian Nights-style narrative of stories within stories in this first of a new fantasy series from Valente. The fantastic tales involve creation myths, shape-changing creatures, true love sought and thwarted, theorems of princely behavior, patricide, sea monsters, kindness and cruelty.

The Night Garden by Lisa Van Allen (adult fiction)

In the Pennywort, there is a garden of edible flowers, a garden meant for touching, and one in which the flowers only bloom at night. Since her mother’s death 5 years ago, Olivia has been carrying on her legacy, caring for Pennywort Gardens and running an informal program that provides safe haven to women in exchange for their help with the lush gardens. The townspeople hate having what they call a ‘halfway house’ around, and Olivia’s neighbors are convinced she’s using more than her allotment of water in a drought year, and keep calling the police. But Olivia has secrets of her own and needs everyone to just keep their distance.