He spake well who said that graves are the footprints of angels.

books:


	• Grave Surprise (Harper Connelly Mysteries, Book 2) Charlaine Harris Berkley, 2007 - 320 pages average customer review:based on 64 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

An excellent mystery series!

I love to read mysteries but was quite skeptical when I saw the cover, title, and summary of this book since I'm not into anything supernatural, but I read an excerpt and was instantly drawn in and absolutely loved it. I passed it on to my mother-in-law and got her hooked too. After reading the books in this series I was so hooked on Charlaine Harris' writing that I read almost every single one of her many others. Definitely check her out. You won't be disappointed with this book.

A surprisingly excellent follow-up to the first book

I thought the first book was interesting enough to finish, but I wasn't "WOW"ed by it. I did go ahead and pick up the second in the series, out of curiosity. I love a good paranormal mystery and I do love the author's other series! Anyway, I'm glad I did. This book was fabulous....and much more interesting than the first! (Reading the first book, though, will definately help new readers to this series understand the history of the main characters). The characters were well fleshed out, in my opinion, and the mystery not only held my attention but had me stumped for a bit. Also, the subtle direction that the relationship took with the main characters has the potential to be quite interesting. The secondary characters were all very well written and contributed well to the story. Overall, I'm excited to read the next in the series!

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Better the Book 1

I found this book even more interesting than "Grave Sight", but I am not sure I like the direction future plots will be taking.

He spake well who said that graves are the footprints of angels. - Longfellow

This is the second book in the Harper Connelly Mystery series.

When Harper Connelly was a young girl she was struck by lightning. Since the lightning strike there are several oddities that are now a normal part of her life; weakness in one of her legs, a spider web pattern on her leg, headaches and oh yeah, she can locate dead people. If Harper is in a reasonable distance of a corpse she can find its exact location and see the deceased's final moments.

Harper and her stepbrother, Tolliver, travel to Memphis to hold a demonstration of her talents at a very old cemetery whose records have just been located. Professor Nunley brings her out there thinking to prove her a charlatan in front of his class, only to have Harper accurately name the deceased and their causes of death. When she stumbles on a recent burial of a young girl, the professor thinks he has won. But, of course, Harper is right and memories of a case she wasn't able to solve come flooding back when she knows she finally found the poor girls body.

Harper and Tolliver are then the center of a media storm as Harpers gift is scrutinized and the search for the killer begins...

I admit to being a little put off by the unusually close relationship Harper and Tolliver seem to share. I don't know why, maybe it's because I have a brother and if he did half the things that Tolliver does, I'd scream, flee, then vomit... and I am sure the feeling is mutual. During the first book, Grave Sight (Harper Connelly Mysteries, Book 1), I had to repeat "they are step siblings; there is no blood between them." I think half way through this book I finally got over it. Halfway through this book I began to see beyond the "step" label and just see two people who share an intense past and who love and care for one another, deeply.

This was a great follow up to Grave Sight (Harper Connelly Mysteries, Book 1). I was pleased to find the mystery a little more challenging then the first one and found myself flip flopping through the list of suspects. I thought the characters gave the reader an interesting mix of feelings, often times both sympathy and suspect. I already ordered the third book, An Ice Cold Grave (Harper Connelly Mysteries, Book 3), and then went on Charlaine Harris's web site to see when I might be able to get the fourth book. It's safe to say, I am hooked!

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Grave Surprise by Charlaine Harris

Grave Surprise is the second book in the Harper Connelly series from Charlaine Harris. Harper is a woman with a bad past, the most obvious event being the day she was struck by lightning, leaving her with a myriad of small damages and the ability to find the dead. Unlike in other urban fantasies Harper is one of, if not the, only person in the world to have a psychic power. She and her brother, Tolliver who acts as her manager, travel the states working cases where people, or their bodies, are missing.

In Grave Surprise Harper has been hired to do a demonstration for a college professor's class on psychics. Sure that he's called her there to debunk her instead Harper names the occupants and cause of deaths for a little graveyard with stunning accuracy, right down to finding a new grave, a grave on top of an older grave. The newest addition the the cemetery is an eleven year old girl that Harper herself was hired to find a year ago.

The find is stunning enough for the Memphis PD, but the fact that Harper already worked the girl's case, and that the parents moved from the city where their daughter was abducted to Memphis, not far from the graveyard, makes the local cops suspect Harper and her brother and they suspect they've been set up.

Harris is a veteran mystery writer more popular for her Southern Vampire series, but with the Harper Connelly books she's turned back to her mystery roots creating a world that's a strange combination of real and dark. The cover of Grave Surprise (first US mass market edition) features a skulled jack-in-the-box popping out of an open grave. It matches the feel of the book perfectly, implying that this world inside should be bright and whimsical, but never quite makes it out the dark shadows. Likewise Harper and her brother are both trying to help people, and trying to shed the memories of an abusive past, and instead seem to be trapped by subtle chains, like depression and fears, into living dark lives.

This is the best book in the series so far, the plot is sneaky and more compelling than the first, but just as well written and unnerving. While Harris' other books might appeal to a more romance-oriented crowd this series has the potential to draw in fans who never thought they'd like a book like this, proving that Harris and her work should not be dismissed as another in a line of trend writers.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

While in Memphis, psychic Harper Connelly senses-and finds-two bodies in a grave. One of a man centuries-dead. The other, a girl, recently deceased. Harper's investigation yields another surprise: the next morning, a third body is found-in the very same grave.

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