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A dead body falls out of the Georgia sky on the first page of this rollicking, romantic Southern mystery starring librarian/sleuth Aurora Teagarden, "a heroine as capable and potentially complex and P.D.
Charlaine Harris is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Southern Vampire novels featuring Sookie Stackhouse. She writes both fantasy and mystery and lives in a small town in southern Arkansas with her family. Visit her website at www.charlaineharris.com.
After her early success, Harris released the first installment in a series of lighthearted mysteries starring spunky, small-town Georgia librarian, true crime enthusiast, and amateur sleuth Aurora Teagarden. When Aurora debuted in Real Murders (1990), Publishers Weekly welcomed "a heroine as capable and potentially complex as P. D. James's Cordelia Gray." The book went on to receive an Agatha Award nomination.
Anxious for another challenge, Harris began a second series in 1996. Darker and edgier than the Teagarden novels, these mysteries featured taciturn, 30-something housecleaner Lily Bard, a woman with a complicated past who has moved to the small town of Shakespeare, Arkansas, to find peace and solitude. The first novel, Shakespeare's Landlord, was well-received. BookList raved: "Harris has created an intriguing new character in this solidly plotted story." [Much to the disappointment of her fans, Harris concluded the Lilly Bard sequence in 2001 with Shakespeare's Counselor.]
Although Harris achieved moderate success with these two series (which she laughingly describes as "cozies with teeth"), she would hit the jackpot in 2001 with Dead Until Dark, a sly, spoofy paranormal mystery starring a telepathic Louisiana cocktail waitress named Sookie Stackhouse, who falls in love with a vampire named Bill. The novel, a delightful hybrid of mystery, science fiction, and romance, was an instant hit with critics. ("Harris' Sookie has the potential to attract more readers than Hamilton's Anita Blake," raved the dark fantasy magazine Cemetery Dance.) Readers, too, adored the Southern Vampire Series and have rewarded the author with bestseller after bestseller. (In 2008, the Sookie saga came to HBO in a top-rated television adaptation, True Blood, starring Anna Paquin.)
With 2006's Grave Sight, Harris added yet another fascinating character to her stable -- a young woman named Harper Connelly whose youthful encounter with a lightning bolt has left her with the ability to find corpses and determine how they died. In addition to juggling characters and plots for her popular series, Harris has also contributed short stories and novellas to several anthologies of paranormal fantasy fiction.
"I'm really a boring person. My family (my husband and three children) is the most important thing in my life. I go to bed early, I get up early. I love to go to the movies with my husband. My favorite things about finally making some money as a writer are (a) I can buy as many books as I want, and (b) I can hire a maid. The first job I had was working in an offset darkroom at a very small newspaper. I stood on a concrete floor all day and made minimum wage -- which then was $1.60 an hour. I hated it, and I learned a lot, though not necessarily about working in a darkroom. So being a writer is much better."
In Lawrenceton, Georgia strange, sometimes dangerous things occur around Aurora ¿Roe¿ Teagarden, but nothing seems to directly happen to her. As Roe and her bodyguard Angel are in her garden, suddenly a body falls from the sky leaving a deep imprint on her lawn. The police arrive at the landing site and turn the body over only to find it is one of them, Detective Sergeant Jack Burns.---------------- Luckily for the librarian not the victim, Roe has witnesses who saw her in plain sight when the corpse landed near her. Jack had disliked and distrusted Roe although she never knew why. She soon gets calls with the other person hanging up on her without a word and someone places a pink ribbon around the neck of her cat. Angel and Roe get into a fight with a librarian aide soon after that woman is assaulted by a pipe and hospitalized. Another cop is in danger her former lover Arthur Smith with both attending a dinner accompanied by their current significant others. Roe tries to put together the puzzle pieces based on the assumption that Angel is the object of an obsessed person, but feels she must determine the coherent picture before someone else is hurt or dead.--------------------- Charlaine Harris, renowned for her Stackhouse urban fantasies and her Harper Connelly mysteries, provides an engaging regional amateur sleuth cozy that is actually a reprint of a mid 1990s tale. The Teagarden mysteries are fun to read as they showcase the talented author¿s earlier works. DEAD OVER HEELS is a fine entry as there seems to be no rationale reason from the incidents. Though not the best Teagarden whodunit, as the suspense never fully leaves the ground (pun intended), fans of the series will appreciate the heroine¿s efforts to uncover the truth and her inner thoughts re her spouse and her bodyguard.------------------- Harriet Klausner
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.I read all of Charlaine Harris' books, I love the Sookie Stackhouse books and Shakespeare books the best, but this cozy series is fun. There are no paranormal overtones to these books. The are about a young, librarian who in this and a few earlier books is now married to a man with a paramilitary history that she was unaware of before the marriage. In this book, people around her who have given her trouble, keep turning up dead. She must try to find out who is killing them and protect those around her including her body guards. There are some interesting turns in the lives of her regular characters and a hard look at all the people around her's backgrounds since they might be the killer. It's a nice cozy mystery that is very different from her paranormal works.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted September 7, 2012
This book was okay, nothing spectacular.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.This book is entertaining, but not great. It's a quick, light read to pass the time, but don't expect to be riveted to the page.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.smjalex
Posted March 22, 2012
I love Charlaine Harris Aurora Teagarden series.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.kymmers
Posted September 2, 2011
Anything Charlaine Harris writes I LOVE!!!!She is amazing with everything she does.. thank you Charlaine... I can never put anything you write down.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.anonymousCA
Posted January 2, 2010
I enjoyed the Aurora Teagarden series as much as the Sookie Stackhouse series.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Dead over Heels is great for rainy days. It is also great for reading that you don't really want to think about if it could really happen or not. Harris writes like a woman that really wants something good happen to a lady that doesn't always have a great life. Aurora is a great person to have a book about. This book is about Roe along with Detective Burns who Roe does not always get along with ends up getting killed in front of Roe. along with alot of odd things that end up since Roe moving into the new House.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.KrisPA
Posted June 20, 2009
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I've read most of the Roe Teagarden series and I'm not so crazy about her. I really can't decide if I like her or not. She's a little too Southern for me, too timid. Most of the mysteries aren't so hard to figure out. This one I thought was a little ridiculous--why all of a sudden would this person (who has known Roe for a long time) suddenly develop a murderous jealous streak and become obsessed with her? Didn't make any sense to me. There's a couple more books in the series that I haven't read but I don't know if I will bother. I certainly am not buying anymore--I will save my money for better books. Charlaine Harris though is a good, entertaining writer. I highly recommend the Sookie Stackhouse series (and the HBO show, True Blood, that is based on them).
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.IndySD
Posted May 11, 2009
Light, easy read in keeping with the rest of the series. Charming characters.
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Posted January 18, 2010
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