Grave Secret (Harper Connelly Series #4)

by Charlaine Harris

Overview

Lightning-struck sleuth Harper Connelly and her stepbrother Tolliver must face their family’s troubled past in this gripping mystery from #1 New York Times bestselling author Charlaine Harris.

Taking a break from looking for the dead, Harper and Tolliver decide to visit the two little girls they both think of as sisters. But as they travel to Texas, memories of their horrible childhood resurface...
 
To make matters worse, Tolliver learns his father is out of jail and trying to reestablish contact with other family members. Tolliver wants no part of the man—but he may not have a choice in the matter. Soon, family secrets ensnare them both, as Harper finally discovers what happened to her missing sister, Cameron, so many years before. And what she finds out will change her world forever.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780425237519
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	11/02/2010
Series:	Harper Connelly Series , #4
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	396,700
Product dimensions:	4.20(w) x 6.70(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Charlaine Harris is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Sookie Stackhouse and Midnight, Texas, fantasy/mystery series and the Aurora Teagarden, Harper Connelly, and Lily Bard mystery series. Her books have inspired HBO’s True Blood, NBC’s Midnight, Texas, and the Aurora Teagarden movies for Hallmark Movies & Mysteries. She has lived in the South her entire life.

Hometown:

Southern Arkansas

Date of Birth:

November 25, 1951

Place of Birth:

Tunica, Mississippi

Education:

B.A. in English and Communication Arts, Rhodes, 1973

Website:

http://www.charlaineharris.com

Editorial Reviews

Praise for the Harper Connelly Mystery series 
 
“Charges in with plenty of plot.”—Entertainment Weekly
 
“[Harris] has a great gift for getting inside her characters and making them amazingly real.”—The Denver Post

“Grabs your heart and doesn’t let go.”—Gumshoe Review
 
“A winning supernatural caper...Should make Harper...as popular as Sookie Stackhouse.”—Publishers Weekly

“A spooky but sweet amateur detective mystery full of interesting characters.”—Locus

From the Publisher

In bestseller Harris's solid fourth Harper Connelly mystery (after 2007's An Ice Cold Grave), Harper, who can not only locate bodies but also deduce the cause of death, and her stepbrother, Tolliver Lang, are summoned to Texas by members of the wealthy Joyce family, who are looking for answers behind the death of their patriarch, Rich. But when an act of violence threatens the pair, Harper realizes that the circumstances behind Rich's death may have ties to her own troubled childhood in nearby Texarkana. Further complicating matters, Tolliver and his drug addict father, who's recently been paroled, have an uneasy reunion that stirs up long-buried memories about the unsolved disappearance eight years earlier of Harper's older sister, Cameron. Harper and Tolliver's relationship, which blossomed into romance in Ice Cold, is the beating heart of the story and helps smooth over the somewhat rushed and questionably coincidental plot. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

Harper Connelly hasn't led a normal life since she was struck by lightning and left with the ability to sense the dead and determine their manner of death. In this fourth installment of the series, Harper's investigation into the death of Richard Joyce overlaps the tragedy in her own life, the disappearance of her sister and the destruction of her family eight years earlier. Alyssa Bresnahan provides an overly enunciated narration that is at odds with Harper's supernatural adventures. Even through the action scenes, including two shootings, she doesn't stray from her slightly monotone voice. While Bresnahan cleanly distinguishes between characters, especially Harper and her boyfriend and her stepbrother, her narration fails to deliver the ambiance of the story’s Southern setting, which one expects from Harris's books. E.N. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

APRIL 2010 - AudioFile