Grave Sight (Harper Connelly Series #1)

by Charlaine Harris

Overview

The first Harper Connelly mystery from #1 New York Times bestselling author Charlaine Harris!

Harper Connelly has what you might call a strange job: she finds dead people. She can sense the final location of a person who’s passed, and share their very last moment. Harper and her stepbrother Tolliver are experts at getting in, getting paid, and then getting out of town fast—because the people who hire Harper have a funny habit of not really wanting to know what she has to tell them.

At first, the little Ozarks town of Sarne seems like no exception.  A teenage girl has gone missing, but the secrets of her death—and the secrets of the town—are deep enough that even Harper’s special ability can’t uncover them.  With hostility welling up all around them, she and Tolliver would like nothing better than to be on their way.  But then another woman is murdered.  And the killer’s not finished yet...

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101205600
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	10/04/2005
Series:	Harper Connelly Series , #1
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	2,336
File size:	517 KB
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

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Harris debuts a series that just might surpass all her others in popularity." - Booklist
"Will have readers dying for more." - Booklist
"A knuckle-gnawing tale, populated with well-developed, edgy characters." - Publishers Weekly

Editorial Reviews

The Barnes & Noble Review
The first book in Charlaine Harris's mystery series introduces readers to Harper Connelly, a strange young woman who -- after being struck by lightning as a child -- is able to locate dead people and determine exactly how they died.

Accompanied by her stepbrother, Tolliver (who works as her manager), Harper heads to small-town Arkansas for their next job. Her client is a socialite named Sybil Teague, who wants Harper to find a teenage girl who disappeared on the day her son was found shot dead in the woods. The girl, Monteen "Teenie" Hopkins, has a reputation for being "wild as a razorback," and scandalous rumors abound about the two. But once Harper locates Teenie's corpse a short distance from the spot where Sybil's son died and reveals that she was shot in the back while trying to escape, the real trouble starts. As more town residents begin to turn up dead -- and with her brother in jail on bogus charges -- Harper must find the real killer before she becomes his next victim.

Fans of Harris's Southern Vampire saga (Dead Until Dark, Living Dead in Dallas, Club Dead, et al.) featuring Sookie Stackhouse -- the telepathic waitress from southern Louisiana with a thing for the undead -- will thoroughly enjoy Grave Sight, a terrific read filled with paranormal intrigue, hot romance, and some really clever mysteries. Anyone who enjoyed reading about Sookie's adventures will embrace Harper Connelly, who is created from the same feisty mold. Paul Goat Allen

bn.com

Ever since Harper Connelly survived a zap from a lightning bolt, she's been able to find dead people, a skill that makes the protagonist in the first installment of Harris's new series a tad more bizarre than the mind-reading heroine of the author's Sookie Stackhouse books (Dead as a Doornail, etc.). Harper travels to the Ozark town of Sarne, Ark., to find a missing teenage girl's body, accompanied by her stepbrother, Tolliver, who acts as her manager and bodyguard and with whom she shares a thinly disguised physical attraction that they manage to keep at bay by engaging in casual sex with various partners. Finding the body takes no time at all, but leaving town afterward isn't so easy. When Harper's life is threatened and Tolliver ends up in jail on trumped-up charges, it quickly becomes apparent that something sinister is going on in Sarne. Harris delivers a knuckle-gnawing tale populated with well-developed, albeit edgy characters. A nifty puzzle toward the end will challenge the most jaded mystery buffs. Agent, Joshua Bilmes at Jabberwocky. (Oct.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

The creator of telepathic Sookie Stackhouse (Dead as a Doornail, May 2005) and other paranormals sets her latest heroine the unenviable task of finding undiscovered corpses. Arkansas socialite Sybil Teague and her lawyer, Paul Edwards, hire Harper Connolly because of her unique talent for finding dead bodies-a skill Harper's had ever since she was struck by lightning at age 15. But once she locates Teenie Hopkins, who vanished with Sybil's son Dell, and confirms that both teenagers were murdered, her employers join the rest of two-bit Sarne, Ark., in regarding her gift with revulsion-and Harper wants nothing more than to get into her stepbrother Tolliver Lang's Subaru and drive far, far away. Even a budding romance with deputy Hollis Boxleitner, who uses Harper's powers to learn that the drowning of his wife Sally, Teenie's sister, was no accident, can't convince her to stick around. But after the beating death of Helen Hopkins, Sally and Teenie's recovering-alcoholic mom, Sarne Sheriff Harvey Branscom forces the siblings to stay put, despite minor harassment by Vernon McCluskey, owner of the motel where they're stuck for the duration, and more serious persecution from highschooler Scot Briscoe, who's irked by the crush Dell's sister Mary Nell develops on Tolliver. Branscom's so busy busting Tolliver for a broken taillight that solving the case themselves might be the beleaguered pair's only ticket out of town. Despite her nifty gimmick, Harris's whodunit is unlikely to raise the dead.

Kirkus 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

Ever since Harper Connelly was struck by lightning, she’s been able to locate dead bodies and determine how the victims died. Now she makes her living using that gift, assisted by her stepbrother, Tolliver. However, a job in a small town in the Ozarks becomes more than she bargained for when threats are made against her. Alyssa Bresnahan's clear, youthful voice is pleasant to listen to as she brings Harper and the other characters to life with convincing accents that fit their ages and genders. Bresnahan narrates with excitement and emotion where appropriate and, in general, turns in a good performance. S.S.R. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine

AUG/SEP 07 - AudioFile