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188th out of 779 books
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1,307 voters
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Grave Surprise (Harper Connelly #2)
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.
Mass Market Paperback, 304 pages
Published
September 25th 2007
by Berkley
(first published September 26th 2006)
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Not a bad book, but not quite as good as the first due to redundancy. Very similar to the first in the plot & all. Again, the heroine isn't very upbeat nor is the story line. Same issues with folks accepting her for what she is/does.
The biggest drawback was background of the heroine. We're treated to several pages where she crams in all the background info we learned through the first book & then she dishes it out again through out the book. OK, she & her step-brother had a roug...more
The biggest drawback was background of the heroine. We're treated to several pages where she crams in all the background info we learned through the first book & then she dishes it out again through out the book. OK, she & her step-brother had a roug...more
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GRAVE SURPRISE (Paranormal Suspense-Memphis-Cont) – VG
Harris, Charlaine – 2nd in series
Berkeley Prime Crime, 2006- Hardcover
*** Harper Collins and her stepbrother Tolliver have come to Memphis at the request of Professor Clyde Nunley. He has asked Harper to demonstrate her unique ability to find the dead and know how they died. When she comes the grave of a centuries-old man she not only identifies him, but a second corpse buried on top—the body of a girl Harper had been hire...more
Harris, Charlaine – 2nd in series
Berkeley Prime Crime, 2006- Hardcover
*** Harper Collins and her stepbrother Tolliver have come to Memphis at the request of Professor Clyde Nunley. He has asked Harper to demonstrate her unique ability to find the dead and know how they died. When she comes the grave of a centuries-old man she not only identifies him, but a second corpse buried on top—the body of a girl Harper had been hire...more
3.5 stars...good paranormal murder mystery story
A lighting strike survivor, Harper Connelly has the unusual ability to find dead people and read their cause of death. She and her partner Tolliver turned it into a business--traveling on the road as they work cases. Not everyone is accepting of her ability, some thinking her a fraud. The law enforcement cases are the worst--the cops are more skeptical of her power and the cause of death is more often a horrible foul play.
W...more
A lighting strike survivor, Harper Connelly has the unusual ability to find dead people and read their cause of death. She and her partner Tolliver turned it into a business--traveling on the road as they work cases. Not everyone is accepting of her ability, some thinking her a fraud. The law enforcement cases are the worst--the cops are more skeptical of her power and the cause of death is more often a horrible foul play.
W...more
Caty
rated it
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review of another edition
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review of another edition
Recommends it for:
people who are not bothered by odd boundary issues
This is another series by Charlaine Harris. I have read two and will not read more. The heroine and a stepbrother (odd, odd boundary issues here that get in the way of the plot) travel from town to town using the heroine's ability to communicate with the dead to resolve death's and settle spirits. Good premise. Good read. Creep factor too much to bother with again.
Definitely need to read "Grave Sight" first; this one doesn't stand on its own. Story developed nicely ... until the end. Read as though the author had stopped short, put away the manuscript, and returned close to the contract deadline to tack on a thrown-together ending.
Harper and Tolliver are back and this time Harper is showing her skills off to a college professor and his class. While it is obvious that the professor believes that Harper is a fraud, as only he has seen the secret records of how every person in the cemetary has died there isn't much he can say to discredit her especially when she finds an unexpected body. Before Harper and Tolliver know it they are caught up in the midst of another mystery with some clients from their past.
L...more
L...more
From back cover blurb:
When I was fifteen, I was struck by lightning. I recovered, mostly. I have a strange spiderweb pattern of red on my torso and right leg. I have headaches. I have many fears. And I can find dead people. That was the part that interested the professor…
At the request of anthropology professor Clyde Nunley, Harper Connelly and her stepbrother Tolliver come to Memphis to demonstrate Harper's unique talent-in an old cemetery. Nunley is skeptical, even after Harp...more
When I was fifteen, I was struck by lightning. I recovered, mostly. I have a strange spiderweb pattern of red on my torso and right leg. I have headaches. I have many fears. And I can find dead people. That was the part that interested the professor…
At the request of anthropology professor Clyde Nunley, Harper Connelly and her stepbrother Tolliver come to Memphis to demonstrate Harper's unique talent-in an old cemetery. Nunley is skeptical, even after Harp...more
As I believe I'd posted earlier in the year while working on some of the Lily Bard books, I'm these days definitely liking Charlaine Harris better when she's slanting more towards the mystery side of her spectrum than the fantasy side. The Harper Connelly series seems to occupy a space between the Lily Bards and the Sookie Stackhouses--but it's closer to the former than the latter, even given Harper's strange talent of being able to find dead bodies and sense the causes of their deaths.
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I say this book is a must-read and that’s because a lot of Harper and Tolliver is revealed in more detail. It also sheds more light on the motivations behind Harper becoming a body locator (there’s got to be a better term for this but my brain is failing me!) and delves deeper into hers and Tolliver’s darker pasts. Even though I thought the book veered off track from the overlying mystery of the murders, it was still interesting enough to keep me reading on.
Once again I have to nod to...more
Once again I have to nod to...more
Paranormal events in literature always seem to symbolize something. In Grave Surprise, it's not some allegory about religion, sex, or power - rather, a marker of difference. Harper Connely's ability places her apart from the ideas and beliefs common to modern America. I feel like the real drama in the novel is in how Harper deals with the disbelief and scorn she meets almost everywhere she goes. Harper's corpse-finding is treated very matter-of-factly; there's no fanfare or mystery about it. The...more
Harper Connelly finds dead people, but she eschews the term "psychic." It doesn't matter how she refers to herself; people don't like her because they think she's a con artist, regardless of her nearly perfect record of results for her clients.
How do I know how she feels about this?
Because she whines about it so often.
Everything that is resilient and charming about Sookie Stackhouse seems to be lacking in Harper Connelly. I'm not saying that Harper doesn...more
How do I know how she feels about this?
Because she whines about it so often.
Everything that is resilient and charming about Sookie Stackhouse seems to be lacking in Harper Connelly. I'm not saying that Harper doesn...more
That the Harper Connelly books are not what they seem becomes apparent in this, the second book in the series.
Like the first book, this one is focused around the consequences of Harper using her strange gift for finding the dead and knowing how they died. The plot is complex enough to be satisfying and plausible enough not to be irritating but you soon realise that the purpose of the book is to understand more about Harper and her relationships to her family.
During the bo...more
Like the first book, this one is focused around the consequences of Harper using her strange gift for finding the dead and knowing how they died. The plot is complex enough to be satisfying and plausible enough not to be irritating but you soon realise that the purpose of the book is to understand more about Harper and her relationships to her family.
During the bo...more
This was great. Again, as I've said in other sequels I've reviewed, this was a success for me partly because I was familiar with the characters, having got to know some of their quirks and qualities in the previous book allows me to slip into their lives quicker the second time around.
I really enjoyed the mystery in this book, though i guessed the perp early on (side note: I've often pondered whether mystery novelists and crime show writers make it easy to pick the perp so that the ...more
I really enjoyed the mystery in this book, though i guessed the perp early on (side note: I've often pondered whether mystery novelists and crime show writers make it easy to pick the perp so that the ...more
Firstly, I have to say that the American covers for the Harper Connelly series are super creepy! Especially this one. Honestly, when I started reading the book and realised just what this cover was supposed to represent... *shiver*
I've had this book (and the third one) on my bookshelf for quite some time and decided to catch up on it, since the fourth one's going to be released very soon.
I really enjoyed the first one, so I knew this one would be great too. I love the mys...more
I've had this book (and the third one) on my bookshelf for quite some time and decided to catch up on it, since the fourth one's going to be released very soon.
I really enjoyed the first one, so I knew this one would be great too. I love the mys...more
Okay, I tried. I really tried. I got another book from this series, just to see if it left me feeling icky. And it did. Oh, it did.
Once again, the creepy relationship between Harper and Tolliver was there for all to see. Every time she mentioned him "holding" her or kissing her, I just wanted to pull my eyeballs out and scrub them. Once again, Harper had to talk about how Tolliver was all about having sex with waitresses. Why waitresses? I mean...why would the author...more
Once again, the creepy relationship between Harper and Tolliver was there for all to see. Every time she mentioned him "holding" her or kissing her, I just wanted to pull my eyeballs out and scrub them. Once again, Harper had to talk about how Tolliver was all about having sex with waitresses. Why waitresses? I mean...why would the author...more
This series is like crack to me. First off, the books you can read fast, and they're fun, but they're such a fast read that it's almost like novellas rather than novels.
Anyway, one of the most interesting and weird aspects of this series is the vaguely-incestuous overtones between the main character and her brother Tolliver. (They call themselves brother and sister even though they're step-siblings that didn't meet until they were in their teens.) Now it's obvious that they chemis...more
Anyway, one of the most interesting and weird aspects of this series is the vaguely-incestuous overtones between the main character and her brother Tolliver. (They call themselves brother and sister even though they're step-siblings that didn't meet until they were in their teens.) Now it's obvious that they chemis...more
This was a solid read. Not as good as the first book, but still enjoyable. I suspected the killer pretty early on, as I did with the last book, which was kind of disappointing. But there were enough red herrings that I couldn't say who it was with 100% certainty, so it kept me curious until the end. As for that, I did think it seemed a bit rushed, though. Maybe that was just me, but after all the build up, the climax and the resolution felt more like a summary because it all happened within less...more
Harper and her stepbrother Tolliver have been invited to Memphis to give a demonstration. Dr Nunley, who teaches an unorthodox class at Bingham College, has it in mind to expose Harper as a fraud. But when Harper makes a surprising discovery at the old cemetery, even Dr Nunley is left speechless.
Harper had finally found Tabitha Morgenstern who had disappeared eighteen months ago in Nashville; only its months later and in the wrong city. Something about all this was not quite right, and...more
Harper had finally found Tabitha Morgenstern who had disappeared eighteen months ago in Nashville; only its months later and in the wrong city. Something about all this was not quite right, and...more
Harper Connelly is back in her 2nd book and this time she finds a missing girl in an old grave. Months before, she'd been hired by the girls parents to find her, but she'd had no luck locating her body. When a professor of a paranormal class invites her to "read" the graves in the university cemetary in hopes of exposing her as a fraud, Harper finds young Tabitha in the grave of a man who'd dies more than a 100 years before. Of course, it is highly suspicious that Tabitha's body is the...more
I needed something lighter and less intense than all the non-fiction I've been reading. This is the second, I believe, in the Harper Connelly series. As a recap, Harper was struck by lightning when she was young and now she can find corpses and see how they died. She travels with her brother on jobs, she's who people call as a last resort.
This one is a case within a case. Harper, on another assignment, actually finds a body of a child that she was asked to find (and couldn't) months e...more
This one is a case within a case. Harper, on another assignment, actually finds a body of a child that she was asked to find (and couldn't) months e...more
This is the second book in Harris' Harper Connelly series - and pretty much as good as the first. There is a reason why I have only heard good things about this series - her writing is exciting and engaging; her characters are realistic and herstorylines, and the suspense as they unfold are perfect.
In this book, we travel from Saines to Memphis with Harper and Tolliver - her step-brother. She is going to give a demonstration of her ability to a group of university students. The old gra...more
In this book, we travel from Saines to Memphis with Harper and Tolliver - her step-brother. She is going to give a demonstration of her ability to a group of university students. The old gra...more
I was really really really hoping that this one wouldn't be as predictable as the first book of the series, but it was, almost from the very beginning. There were a couple of twists, but it always came back to the glaringly obvious. For that I'm dissappointed.
I don't really know what else to say besides the story was predictable, the writing was just par, and there were a few characters that were quite too far out there.
Also worth noting that the relationship between Harper and Toll...more
I don't really know what else to say besides the story was predictable, the writing was just par, and there were a few characters that were quite too far out there.
Also worth noting that the relationship between Harper and Toll...more
For being such a somber character (and series), I'm really enjoying Harper (and her partner in crime and stepbrother Tolliver). I'm also intrigued how Harris structures a mystery in each book involving Harper and Connelly when they are so reluctant to get involved in solving it--their goal is to find the body, get paid, and get out. They're not detectives, and yet Harris gives them plausible reasons to stick around and figure out what happened to the victim.
Again, I thought Harris s...more
Again, I thought Harris s...more
This was better than its predecessor that's for sure but unfortunately it still wasn't fantastic. I found myself gripped a good bit more by the characters and the plotline though so I'm hoping that this series is slowly getting better.
Basically the story follows Harper and Tolliver as they find themselves involved in another missing persons case which swiftly evolves into a murder investigation. The plot wasn't perfect and there were definitely some fairly unrealistic parts. However t...more
Basically the story follows Harper and Tolliver as they find themselves involved in another missing persons case which swiftly evolves into a murder investigation. The plot wasn't perfect and there were definitely some fairly unrealistic parts. However t...more
Malgré le fait que je n'ai pas tellement apprécié, voir pas du tout, le premier livre Murmures d'outre-tombe, j'ai lu ce livre qui est la suite. Mon avis n'a pas tellement changé depuis la première lecture.. Je sais pas.. quelque chose ne n'attire pas tellement dans cette histoire.. et pourtant le sujet est intéressant! Mais je n'arrive pas à apprécier pleinement. J'ai trouvé cette suite sans grand intérêt: pas tellement d'actions, lié par une histoire dont on parle à peine dans le tome 1. Du co...more
I'm starting to appreciate the character of Harper Connelly more - weaknesses, neediness and her gift...it's a complete package that I'm learning to love.
I know I sound like a broken record when I talk about Charlaine Harris' writing style - but let me state again how simple her books are...my favourite quality in a summer read. And since I read mostly in the summer, I enjoy books that are different from the material I'm forced to read for work.
I like how this 2nd book in the...more
I know I sound like a broken record when I talk about Charlaine Harris' writing style - but let me state again how simple her books are...my favourite quality in a summer read. And since I read mostly in the summer, I enjoy books that are different from the material I'm forced to read for work.
I like how this 2nd book in the...more
My rating on this one is a bit odd. I wanted to give a higher rating but some parts of the book really brought it down for me. I enjoyed the overall plot more then the first in the series, and it was a quick and easy read that kept my interest. I did kind of figure out who did it (with some doubts) pretty early on but I don't hold that against the story because I didn't figure out the why at all. The only issues I really had with this were the little conflicting points that most people probably ...more
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Harper Connelly’s job is anything but normal. She finds dead people. Since she got struck by lightning, she can locate corpses, as well as identify the causes of their death. Though how some people find themselves in desperate need of her, they cannot help despising her for what she does for a living. Since her step-brother, Tolliver, is the only family left with her, he works as personal manager.
I expected much, to start with. With all the never-ending fuss about The Southern Vampir...more
I expected much, to start with. With all the never-ending fuss about The Southern Vampir...more
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Charlaine Harris has been a published novelist for over twenty-five years. A native of the Mississippi Delta, she grew up in the middle of a cotton field. Now she lives in southern Arkansas with her husband, her three children, three dogs, and a duck. The duck stays outside.
Though her early output consisted largely of ghost stories, by the time she hit college (Rhodes, in Memphis) Char...more
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Though her early output consisted largely of ghost stories, by the time she hit college (Rhodes, in Memphis) Char...more
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