Charlaine Harris - more than just Sookie

~ the first post from our latest staff blogger, Dawn.

Earlier this week, Rosemary blogged about the end of Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse series. This is sad news indeed for the many fans of this hugely popular series.

But, did you know that Charlaine has written three other series? I have been reading her since I first discovered her Lily Bard series (M) back in the 90’s. That series begins with “Shakespeare’s landlord” and follows Lily through her life until “Shakespeare’s counselor”. Lily lives in the tiny town of Shakespeare, Arkansas and she is a loner. She works as a cleaning woman and is a devotee of bodybuilding and karate. She stumbles upon a new mystery in each book and in solving the mystery is slowly drawn into interacting with the other residents of Shakespeare. In finding out their secrets, we discover her secrets and what drives her.

I am currently working my way through her Aurora Teagarden series (M). This is her oldest series and it began in 1990 with “Real murders”. Aurora is a librarian and she belongs to a club called the Real Murders club. They are twelve members in strength and they meet each month to discuss famous unsolved crimes. When someone starts murdering the club members, mimicking the style of the cases they had been studying, Aurora starts to dig around to find the culprit. Each book in the series finds another mystery for Aurora to solve culminating in the last book in this series “Poppy done to death”.

I avidly awaited each of her Harper Connelly series (M). This series was only four books long but they packed quite a punch. Harper can sense dead people and “see” their last moments. She and her manager step-bother Tolliver, travel from place to place finding people and solving their murders. The series began with “Grave sight” in 2005 and ended with “Grave secret” in 2009.

One of the things I really like about Charlaine Harris is that she doesn’t drag a story out just for the commercial benefit. The series she has written have ended when she felt that she had told the complete story.

I am impatiently waiting for her next series to being. She is writing a trilogy with Christopher Golden that begins with “Cemetery Girl” (M) in 2014.