Ms. Harris starts to hit her stride with her "formula" Our main character puts the clues together and this books moves forward with each chapter - no wasted time!

If you like a good mystery with a heroine who doesn't know it all, but must put the clues together - you'll enjoy this one.

Catherine Linton drives out to shoot at tin cans one hot summer day. The peace and quiet is shattered by Catherine's discovery of a body, hideously fly coated. When Catherine reports her discovery to the sheriff she is offended that he suspects her because the woman was the late Dr. Linton's (Catherine's father's) nurse. This novel establishes a strong sense of place, a small southern town slowly experiencing transition after the Civil Rights movement. Each character, even minor ones, is briefly sketched but realistically developed: the town's first black librarian, the sheriff whose son is dealing pot, the black deputy, her employer's matchmaking mother etc. This is a gem of a mysery novel- one feels the heat, the beauty of the south, and the rising sense of danger that builds to one of the most suspenseful and exciting climaxes I have ever read. Sweet and deadly is one of the best mystery novels I have ever read. What I find a mystery is why it was never made into a film and why such a superb novel is out of print!

Aurora "Roe" Teagarden had just finished wrestling her lounge chair into a comfortable position when the body of her old nemesis, Detective Jack Burns, landed with a thud in her front yard. Everyone in town knew that Jack and Roe did not get along, but its not like Roe could be in two places at once so the police start looking for other suspects. But then Roe has an argument with her assistant at the library and she turns up brutally beaten the next day and her open purse is found on the hood of her bodyguard's car. An admirer sends her flowers with no name attached, her cat is suddenly sporting a new ribbon around his collar, her ex-lover is stabbed, and that is just the beginning. Roe has been found in the middle of murder and mayhem before, but this time, it's personal...

I enjoyed this book, just as I have enjoyed all of the Aurora Teagarden series, but this one was not as good as the previous books. Roe solved the crimes a little too easily and there was a little too much going on for no one else to spot that the connection between all of the goings-on was Roe herself. I know it is a small police force, but come on. Anyway, Charlaine Harris' writing style is still very engaging and clear. I always enjoy her characters and there were some new people to meet in this book that were fun to get to know because they were a little different. I just wish that the plot had been a little bit better developed and solved. I felt that the author was rushing to finish this one and just decided to end it one day, wrote the last couple of pages and called it done. Still, if you have enjoyed her other books, you will enjoy this one and, if you are like me, you like to read a series all the way through, so find a cheap copy.

I was pleasantly surprised at how great this book was. It is truly suspenseful as a good mystery should be. It has a moving plot with very few boring parts. The only reason I am giving it 4 stars instead of 5 is that I didn't like the ending. I thought it was unbelievable. This book is only 205 pages, so up until
page 190, it was great, a true miracle in this day and age of fiction/mystery publishing.

In this 5th. book of the series, Aurora Teagarden has a dead body dropped unceremoniously from a passing airplane into her yard. The victim is a policeman who has been the bane of her existence when trying to solve other crimes. The finger of suspicion points to her and her bodyguard and then to a series of people who may have had a motive. The premise of the eventual solution is slim indeed, but if you enjoy Aurora Teagarden books and are good at suspending disbelief, give this one a try.

I enjoyed this first book in the Lily Bard/Shakespeare series. The mystery is not one with too many twists and turns, but the characters, especially the protagonist, are nice to know. I have read each of the next four books and enjoyed each one a little bit more than the first.

Charlaine Harris has created another intriguing character in Lily Bard who debuts in *Shakespeare's Landlord*. This is no cozy, with a librarian stumbling over bodies while studying true crime as her prior series began. Lily is much more scarred, literally and psychologically, and harder and more impenetrable than Aurora Teagarden. It does not take long for the reader to comprehend that there has been a major trauma in Lily's life as a result of which she has cut herself off from society. She is a college graduate who cleans houses and runs errands for people. She has no friends while knowing intimate details of many people's lives. She prowls the streets of Shakespeare at night when she cannot sleep. One night, while prowling, she sees a figure wheel a cart, hers as it happens, into the park across the street and then return, cart now empty. Curious and afraid she will be accused of involvement in some crime, she goes into the park and finds a dead body. She reports it anonymously, but she cannot stay anonymous, nor can her secret remain hiddden. The story is solid, fun to read, with very interesting people, even though I did not really care very much about the identity of the murderer. The dead man was, by all accounts, unliked, a blackmailer, a miser whom we see only through others' eyes. It is hard to have any sympathy for him and concern for "whodunit" would not make me read further. But Lily Bard intrigues the reader as she does several men in the town of Shakespeare. However, now that her secret past is known, at least by these men, will the absence of mystery make the next episode less appealing? It will be interesting to see where Ms. Harris takes Lily Bard in her next adventure

I've enjoyed Ms. Harris's works for years, well before this series began, and when I ran across it, I was thrilled.

My first reading, however, proved disappointing. I was used to the lighter, humorous tone of the Aurora Teagarden series and was a bit unprepared for the darker Lily Bard.

And then, I loosened up and let myself go with it, and I'm all the better for it. I have encountered few characters as well drawn as Lily Bard. She is an incredibly complex character, yet painted so deftly that the reader gets a full sense of her person. While it is much easier to accomplish this feat with the first-person, as is used here, Ms. Harris allows us to learn about Lily primarily through her actions and interactions with others.

The plot itself is not out of the ordinary--someone's dead, Lily is suspected, she must find the real killer before the cops close in on her, but it's the main character that makes this novel stand out. Why, oh why hasn't someone bought the movie rights to this series?!?

Aurora "Roe" Teagarden is your typical librarian: thick, coke-bottle glasses, long brown hair, sensible librarian-like clothes, single, lives in a small town - you get the picture. She doesn't have much of a social life and has resigned herself to having her Saturday nights free. But, once a month, on Fridays, she meets with her fellow murder-mystery enthusaists and they discuss a real murder. This Friday it is Roe's turn to present the case of the Wallaces. She spent hours preparing and arrives a little early at the community center to make sure that everything is ready. However, she cannot find the woman who unlocked the building, laid out the cookies and coffee and set up the chairs. When she does find her, she wishes that she hadn't as she has been murdered and displayed in the kitchen in a gruesome fashion. Even though Roe is in shock, she cannot help but notice that this murder bears a startling resemblance to the Wallace case. Could one of the club members have taken their little hobby a little too far? When other bodies begin to pile up, all copycat murders from famous past crimes, Roe cannot help but wonder which victim she resembles...

This is a fun, short, easy mystery read that I sat down and read in a couple of hours. Roe is a likeable character whom most readers will relate to as being in her shoes at one time of their lives or another. The other characters are also fairly interesting, but not as fully fleshed out as I would like. Charlaine Harris doesn't really present the plot in such a way where you would be able to solve the mystery on your own with the clues presented so the ending has a surprise twist, but it was a nicely paced story. The romantic subplots were a little perfunctory, but added a nice touch to the story. I enjoyed this book, and I would recommend it, but I really loved the Lily Bard series and highly recommend those books. Keep in mind that most of the Aurora Teagarden and Lily Bard books are out of print, but they are worth hunting down - especially the Lily Bard series!

This book introduces us to Aurora Teagarden, an amusing, intrepid and self-deprecating almost-30 librarian. She shares her interest in historic murders with a group of crime buffs who have formed a group called Real Murders. They meet once a month to discuss murders and murderers of the past. Strangely enough, murders begin to occur which mirror these past murders and which include members of the group. Aurora teams up with the Arthur, a local policeman and member of Real Murders, and Robin Crusoe, a mystery writer, to solve the murder cases. No one is above suspicion, but the solution is a surprise. This is fun, light reading.

With "Real Murders", Arkansas author Charlaine Harris introduces us to an unlikely heroine caught in a bizarre series of gruesome murders. Aurora Teagarden, local librarian, leads a calm, quiet existance but has one curious hobby--a fascination with sensational murders. She and several other townsfolk have formed "Real Murders", a discussion group dedicated to discussing famous murder cases. But among their members is a person whose interest in the details of the world's most sensational crimes is more than a mere curiosity--it is academic. At once amusing and chilling, "Real Muders" is an enthralling read that engages the reader in the small-town world of its characters and leaves them anxios for the next installment.

In the third outing featuring Lily Bard, cleaning lady extraordinaire from Shakespeare, AR, agrees to attend her sister's wedding in their home town - a town she left when her life was destroyed by a gang. Soon after arriving in town, the doctor and his nurse are killed. Then her new boyfriend arrives. And the chaos of a wedding continues around her as she investigates the murders. This series started out as an excellent, if very dark, cozy series. Lily was piecing her life back together, had become self-sufficient, and was recovering. Then, for whatever reason, the author seemed to rethink her main character and quickly evolved her into someone less attractive - less strong, less angry, just less. The author continues this trend in this entry, and this reader will not be reading any more Lily Bards. That's a shame because as Lily was originally drawn, she could have found a place in the same niche as Carol O'Connell's Mallory. Now she's just another cleaning lady in another cozy.

This is the third book in the Lily Bard mystery series and it takes the reader out of Shakespeare, Arkansas to Lily's hometown. Lily is less than thrilled about going home for the holidays, especially when her sister's wedding is involved. She loves her family, but things just haven't been the same since she was violently assaulted years ago. To add to her notoriety, Lily manages to nab a purse natcher within a few days of her arrival and then is the first to walk in on a brutal double homicide. Before the buzz even begins to die down, Lily's detective boyfriend Jack Leeds shows up at the wedding rehearsal. Much as Lily would like to think that Jack showed up to offer her his moral support in her time of need, she knows better. Jack is investigating an eight-year-old kidnapping and the trail leads right to Lily's hometown - and her sister's widowed fiance. With only three days before the wedding and corpses piling up all over town, Lily must work fast to clean up the messy case before her sister commits...marriage!

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I think Charlaine Harris should be congratulated for her fantastic characterization and plot pacing. Many reviewers critized this book for having Lily be too soft and/or too much of her and too little of the mystery. They seem to have completely missed the point. Lily is softer in this book because she is at home and is different there. Everyone acts slightly differently when they go home, especially when they have been away for a long time, as Lily has been. As far as there being too much Lily and too little mystery, I thought that this book gave the reader a chance to learn a little bit more about Lily and what makes her tick. When you are reading a novel that is from a first person point of view, you should expect to hear a lot about the lead character - that is the whole point of having a lead character. Anyway, enough complaining - I just don't understand why everyone didn't love the book as much as I did! Buy this one while it is in print - it is a keeper!

If you haven't met Lily Bard of Shakespeare, Ak, you are in for a rare treat in the mystery genre. A victim of gang rape, coupled with a vicious knifing, Lily has reinvented herself, left home and become a cleaning lady in a small town. Now, however, she must go home for her sister's wedding and the family from whom she's become almost estranged. On her first morning home, she and her sister discover the bludgeoned bodies of a doctor and his nurse. Also in town on the case of a child abducted years before is the new love of Lily's life, Jack. One of the suspects in the kidnapping is her sister's widowed fiance. A taut, well-told tale of suspense with three dimensional characters. I would suggest that before reading this, one should read "Shakepeare's Landlord" and "Shakespeare's Champion." This different and much darker series by the author of the Aurora Teagarden books should not be missed.

I have been looking forward to reading "A Bone to Pick" to read how Aurora Teagarden comes into her inheritance. The story opens with Aurora Teagarden attending weddings for both her mother and Arthur Smith and the funeral of Jane Engle. Aurora then inherits Jane's house and finds a sinister surprise inside.
Aurora, as always, has lots of character detail and internal dialogue (love her hair : >), but
I was disappointed to find little charactization for benefactress and Real Murders ex-cohort Jane Engle. There was also little sleuthing in this story. Aurora gets to know her new neighbors through a couple of social events, but does not beat the street to try to solve the mystery. This installment shares the great atmosphere and the small-town setting with the rest of the series, but I didn't buy the mechanics of the story. Neither did I appreciate that Jane Engle just "didn't have time" to put things back the way she found them.
"A Bone to Pick" is effective in that it made me want to read the rest of the series, but mostly to fill in the blanks this story leaves and see if Harris' characterizations develop further.

When Aurora "Roe" Teagarden attends Jane Engle's funeral, it is more of a kindly gesture to someone who used to belong to the Real Murders club with her before the club stopped meeting. Roe considered Jane a friend, but didn't really know her that well. So she is startled when Jane's lawyer informs her that she is the heir to Jane's estate. Suddenly, Roe goes from scraping by on a part-time librarian's salary to an heiress with a home, nice jewelry and $550,000 in savings. Roe isn't quite sure what to do with herself and her newfound wealth. However, she realizes that all is not as rosy as it seems when Jane's lawyer keeps hinting that there may be some problem that she needs to solve for Jane. When Roe goes to check out Jane's house, it has been broken into and searched, but nothing was stolen. Roe is determined to figure out the secret and eventually discovers Jane's hiding place and pulls out - a human skull. As Roe waffles between handing the skull over to the police or tossing it in the river, her life takes a few unexpected turns. Her ex-boyfriend, a police officer, moves in across the street with his new, very pregnant wife; she starts dating a minister; her mother gets married; her best friends gets engaged; her new neighbors are throwing welcoming parties for her; she inherits a cat who soon has kittens; everyone in town is gossiping about her relationship with Jane and her inheritance - the list goes on and on. Needless to say, Roe doesn't spend a whole lot of time investigating who the owner of the skull was until the rest of the skeleton is discovered at the end of the street...

This is the second installment in the Aurora Teagarden mystery series (Real Murders is #1) and it is a pleasant, fast read. I read it in a couple of hours and enjoyed it, but it isn't anything that is very memorable. The mystery is rather lacking because we don't know who the skull belongs to, but Roe doesn't really go out and try to figure out who it belongs to - the answer just kind of falls in her lap at the end of the story. Charlaine Harris does introduce some interesting new characters, however, and she keeps up with a few of the old ones from Real Murders so it was nice to see time passing in the small town. I would have liked to see a bit more of a plot regarding the mystery side of this "mystery", but this book is more of a fiction novel with a little bit of a mystery on the side. Still an enjoyable read, but I must say that the Lily Bard series (Shakespeare's Landlord, Shakespeare's Champion, etc.) is far superior than the Aurora Teagarden series.

In this second book of the series, Aurora Teagarden inherits a house and a substantial amount of money from Jane Engle, a former high school librarian. Aurora is surprised at this bequest since she had not counted Jane as a close friend. However, she becomes even more surprised at what she discovers in Jane's house. She becomes acquainted with the neighbors on Jane's street while assessing the possibility that they were involved in a crime which she thinks was committed in the neighborhood. A light and enjoyable read.

This is one of Ms. Harris' earliest works and shows it. Read it if you must read everything by her, but I would start with either her Shakespeare or Roe Teagarden series. For those who like a wee bit of supernatural in their mysteries - the Southern Vampire Mysteries (two books currently) are fun.

There is the promise of the strong herione that becomes the mainstay of Harris' books, but this story is one of her weakest.

When a serial rapist strikes a small, Southern town, his victims band together to catch the predator before he strikes again. Along the way, the protagonist discovers an inner strength that only tragedy can bring about.

While the plot is not very complex, Ms. Harris brings the horrors of rape home to her readers by giving a gripping, first-person account of a rape and its aftermath. What may have been maudlin or overwrought is done with enough understated simplicity that the scene is simply chilling.

The novel is one of Ms. Harris's earlier, "stand-alone" works and is well worth reading if one is able to find a copy. Highly recommended.

This was one of the worst mysteries I've ever read. The writing was sloppy, the story bland, and the romance unrealistic. And without reading too closely, I caught two errors that an editor obviously neglected to correct. Ms. Harris refers twice to fixing a female cat as "neutering" and later in the book she sets a party up to begin, in one conversation, at 6:30 and in the next chapter at 7:30. This is a huge mistake in a mystery story! It leads the reader to expect something will happen as a result of someone getting the time of the party wrong. But it was just sloppy writing. Do yourself a favor and avoid Ms. Harris's novels.

Good book to read on the beach or at the end of a hard day. It required little to no thought. The charaters are flat and the ending is obvious, but the story in general is amusing.

This author is a real "find". It's great to stumble across an author who really manages to balance humour, plot and character development. I'm looking forward to reading more of these books because Ms. Harris obviously intends for her characters personal relationships to change and develop. Hope she writes more (and soon)

I like Aurora Teagarden, but this book puts her through the wringer. And the final plot twist at the end is against the rules! This series had some black moments, but always a happy ending. What happened here? It seems like Harris just got tired of the series and decided to end it the most brutal way she could.

Very disappointing!

Ok, this is not the best book by Charlaine Harris I have read but I really have to admire her daring. I have read so many authors-- best selling genre authors,too, state that they would like to write something different but darnnit their editors won't let them because it might upset their fans. So some series continue down the same paths dragging all of the baggage with them. Other series just relegate the boring significant other to the background.

I think we can see here that the editors are partly right, some people are going to be upset, but it appears an equal number are willing to go along for the ride. This book is well written, well plotted, and well worth reading.

The Aurora Teagarden books have always been something tougher disguised as cozies. In the first book in the series the author went to some trouble to show the difference between the intellectual pursuit of true crime and the reality of murder in your own back yard. While not as dark as her Lily Bard books apparently her use of humor lulled some readers into thinking the author was a harmless cozy writer.

Then BANG, she jumped out from behind a door and stuck a pin in a balloon. Ms. Harris, I salute you-- and promise to buy all of your future books in hardcover!

Charlaine Harris went beyond anything I'd expected in this book. A little darker than the usual cozy, it takes Aurora on a personal journey that truly tests her moxie. The prose is smooth and riveting, and it's impossible to put A FOOL down. Don't go into this expecting "another" anything. It's not a cookie cutter series, folks, and Charlaine Harris is as good as they come.