A Bone to Pick (Aurora Teagarden Mysteries, Book 2) [Paperback]

Charlaine Harris (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1, 1993

When librarian Aurora Teagarden becomes the unexpected beneficiary of a colleague's estate, she stumbles upon the skeleton of a murder victim and sets out to clear the name of her late friend, but the real killer is still watching and waiting nearby. Reprint. AB. PW.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Aurora Teagarden, who made a strong series debut (in Real Murders ) as a southern librarian turned amateur sleuth, suddenly finds herself very rich when elderly spinster Jane Engle dies and leaves her a fortune. When Aurora goes to take possession of Miss Engle's home, she finds the place ransacked. Poking around, she turns up a ghoulish artifact the intruder missed: a bashed-in human skull hidden in a cleverly disguised window seat. Fearing that her mild benefactor was actually a vicious killer, Aurora is relieved to find a note the deceased left behind pointing her suspicions elsewhere. She delves into the lives of her new neighbors, masking her scrutiny with Southern charm, and discovers that over the years two men have disappeared from the neighborhood. Harris provides some genuinely funny scenes as Aurora breezily unravels the murderer's identity, but the plot is just too farfetched, even when supported by an appealing cast of Southern gothic characters. Harris, who struck the right note in Real Murders , here unfortunately goes beyond the humorous social satire that is her metier, striving for a wildly exaggerated parody of southern life. But with three solid novels behind her, this talented mystery writer will surely regain her focus the next time out.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Pleasant reading...heartily recommend[ed]." -PEN & DAGGER "An appealing cast of Southern gothic characters." -PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

--This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 252 pages
• Publisher: Worldwide Library (December 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0373261365
• ISBN-13: 978-0373261369
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,234,573 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Charlaine Harris (born November 25, 1951 in Tunica, Mississippi) is a New York Times bestselling author who has been writing for over twenty years. She was raised in the Mississippi River Delta area. Though her early works consisted largely of poems about ghosts and, later, teenage angst, she wrote plays when she attended Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. She began to write books a few years later.
After publishing two stand-alone mysteries, Harris launched a lighthearted series "starring" Georgia librarian Aurora Teagarden, with Real Murders, a Best Novel nominee for the 1990 Agatha Awards. Harris wrote eight Aurora titles. In 1996, she released the first of the much darker Shakespeare mysteries, featuring the amateur sleuth Lily Bard, a karate student who makes her living cleaning houses. Shakespeare's Counselor, the fifth--and last-- was printed in fall 2001.
After Shakespeare, Harris created The Sookie Stackhouse urban fantasy series about a telepathic waitress who works in a bar in the fictional Northern Louisiana town of Bon Temps. The first of these, Dead Until Dark, won the Anthony Award for Best Paperback Mystery in 2001. Each book follows Sookie as she tries to solve mysteries involving vampires, werewolves, and other supernatural creatures. The series, which now numbers nine titles, has been released worldwide.
Sookie Stackhouse proved to be so popular that Alan Ball, creator of Six Feet Under, announced he would undertake the production of a new show for HBO based upon the books. He wrote and directed the pilot episode for that series, True Blood, which premiered in September of 2008. It was an instant success and was quickly picked up for a second season.
In October 2005, Harris's new mystery series about a young woman named Harper Connelly debuted with the release of Grave Sight. Harper has the ability to determine the cause of death of any body. There are now three Harper titles (GRAVE SIGHT, GRAVE SURPRISE, AN ICE COLD GRAVE) with a 4th (GRAVE SECRET) to be released in 2009.
Harris has also co-edited three very popular anthologies with her friend Toni L.P. Kelner. The anthologies feature stories with an element of the supernatural, and the submissions come from a rare mixture of mystery and urban fantasy writers.
Professionally, Harris is a member of the Mystery Writers of America and the American Crime Writers League. She is a member of the board of Sisters in Crime, and alternates with Joan Hess as president of the Arkansas Mystery Writers Alliance. Personally, Harris is married and the mother of three. She lives in a small town in Southern Arkansas and when she is not writing her own books, she reads omnivorously!

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Aurora Teagarden ~ Woman of Leisure..., January 30, 2003

By 

Silmarwen (Huntington Beach, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: A Bone to Pick (Aurora Teagarden Mysteries, Book 2) (Paperback)

When Aurora "Roe" Teagarden attends Jane Engle's funeral, it is more of a kindly gesture to someone who used to belong to the Real Murders club with her before the club stopped meeting. Roe considered Jane a friend, but didn't really know her that well. So she is startled when Jane's lawyer informs her that she is the heir to Jane's estate. Suddenly, Roe goes from scraping by on a part-time librarian's salary to an heiress with a home, nice jewelry and $550,000 in savings. Roe isn't quite sure what to do with herself and her newfound wealth. However, she realizes that all is not as rosy as it seems when Jane's lawyer keeps hinting that there may be some problem that she needs to solve for Jane. When Roe goes to check out Jane's house, it has been broken into and searched, but nothing was stolen. Roe is determined to figure out the secret and eventually discovers Jane's hiding place and pulls out - a human skull. As Roe waffles between handing the skull over to the police or tossing it in the river, her life takes a few unexpected turns. Her ex-boyfriend, a police officer, moves in across the street with his new, very pregnant wife; she starts dating a minister; her mother gets married; her best friends gets engaged; her new neighbors are throwing welcoming parties for her; she inherits a cat who soon has kittens; everyone in town is gossiping about her relationship with Jane and her inheritance - the list goes on and on. Needless to say, Roe doesn't spend a whole lot of time investigating who the owner of the skull was until the rest of the skeleton is discovered at the end of the street...

This is the second installment in the Aurora Teagarden mystery series (Real Murders is #1) and it is a pleasant, fast read. I read it in a couple of hours and enjoyed it, but it isn't anything that is very memorable. The mystery is rather lacking because we don't know who the skull belongs to, but Roe doesn't really go out and try to figure out who it belongs to - the answer just kind of falls in her lap at the end of the story. Charlaine Harris does introduce some interesting new characters, however, and she keeps up with a few of the old ones from Real Murders so it was nice to see time passing in the small town. I would have liked to see a bit more of a plot regarding the mystery side of this "mystery", but this book is more of a fiction novel with a little bit of a mystery on the side. Still an enjoyable read, but I must say that the Lily Bard series (Shakespeare's Landlord, Shakespeare's Champion, etc.) is far superior than the Aurora Teagarden series.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not a Favorite Aurora Teagarden Mystery, January 1, 2003

By 

--corinne-- (Virginia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Bone to Pick (Aurora Teagarden Mysteries, Book 2) (Paperback)

I have been looking forward to reading "A Bone to Pick" to read how Aurora Teagarden comes into her inheritance. The story opens with Aurora Teagarden attending weddings for both her mother and Arthur Smith and the funeral of Jane Engle. Aurora then inherits Jane's house and finds a sinister surprise inside.
Aurora, as always, has lots of character detail and internal dialogue (love her hair : >), but
I was disappointed to find little charactization for benefactress and Real Murders ex-cohort Jane Engle. There was also little sleuthing in this story. Aurora gets to know her new neighbors through a couple of social events, but does not beat the street to try to solve the mystery. This installment shares the great atmosphere and the small-town setting with the rest of the series, but I didn't buy the mechanics of the story. Neither did I appreciate that Jane Engle just "didn't have time" to put things back the way she found them.
"A Bone to Pick" is effective in that it made me want to read the rest of the series, but mostly to fill in the blanks this story leaves and see if Harris' characterizations develop further.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Book #2 in the Aurora Teagarden Mysteries, January 25, 2007

By 

K. Gilligan "grad student & literature lover" (Haddon Heights, NJ) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Bone to Pick (Aurora Teagarden Mysteries, Book 2) (Paperback)

"A Bone To Pick" by Charlaine Harris is the second book in her series about librarian Aurora Teagarden. (The first being Real Murders: An Aurora Teagarden Mystery, Bk. 1) In this mystery, Aurora aka Roe is stunned when she inherits a house and a large sum of money from elderly Jane Engle after her death. That's not the only thing Jane left her- there's a human skull in the window seat. On top of that, the people that have just moved in across the street from Jane's house are none other than Roe's ex-boyfriend Arthur Smith and his new pregnant wife.

After some snooping around, Roe finds out that a couple of people in the neighborhood have gone missing. One went out for diapers and never came home; another skipped out on his rent and left during the night. Was one of them killed? Is it their skull? Roe is determined to find out!

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I fully recommend the rest in this series. Next is Three Bedrooms, One Corpse: An Aurora Teagarden Mystery, followed by The Julius House: An Aurora Teagarden Mystery, Bk. 4, Dead Over Heels: An Aurora Teagarden Mystery, Bk. 5, "Fool And His Honey: An Aurora Teagarden Mystery, Bk. 6, Last Scene Alive (Aurora Teagarden Mysteries), and Poppy Done To Death: An Aurora Teagarden Mystery, Bk. 8.

Or if you'd like to try a different series by Charlaine Harris, check out the Lily Bard mysteries.(Shakespeare's Landlord (The First Lily Bard Mystery), "Shakespeare's Champion", Shakespeare's Christmas", "Shakespeare's Trollop", and Shakespeare's Counselor")

Or her new supernatural Southern Vampire Mysteries (Dead Until Dark (Southern Vampire Mysteries, Bk. 1), "Living Dead in Dallas", "Club Dead", "Dead to the World", "Dead as a Doornail", "Definitely Dead", and "All Together Dead")