Harper Connelly Mysteries Quartet

by Charlaine Harris

Overview

Harper Connelly Mysteries Quartet Another acclaimed paranormal mystery series by the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling Sookie Stackhouse novels that inspired HBO’s True Blood. These four novels introduce a “winning heroine”* who uses psychic skills to help law enforcement provide justice for the dead. “A series that just might surpass all [Harris’s] others in popularity.”—*Booklist Grave Sight Grave Surprise An Ice Cold Grave Grave Secret

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101523827
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/01/2011
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	121
Sales rank:	68,957
File size:	1 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

A native of the Mississippi Delta, Charlaine Harris grew up in a family of avid readers (her father was a teacher; her mother a librarian). She attended Rhodes College in Memphis, TN, graduating in 1973 with a degree in English and Communication Arts. Although she penned poetry and plays in school, her first serious foray into fiction was with two standalone novels, Sweet and Deadly and A Secret Rage, published (effortlessly!) in the early 1980s.

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.

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