Engaged To Die - A Death On Demand Mystery [Large Print] [Hardcover]

Carolyn Hart (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 2003

Large Print Home Library Edition

Product Details

• Hardcover: 488 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow & Co, Inc.; Book Club edition (2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0739434128
• ISBN-13: 978-0739434123
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,667,477 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Carolyn Hart talks about mysteries and writing in a new interview on Oklahoma public tv. Please visit www.CarolynHart.com and click on the link in the upper right hand column.

In April Berkley Prime Crime will publish DEATH COMES SILENTLY, the 22nd Death on Demand title. Coming in October is WHAT THE CAT SAW, a novel of suspense.

Carolyn writes the Death on Demand series set in a mystery bookstore on a South Carolina sea island and the Bailey Ruth Raeburn series featuring a lively redheaded ghost.

Carolyn is also the author of several WWII novels, including ESCAPE FROM PARIS which is now available for the first time in its complete uncut version. Escape from Paris is the story of two sisters who defy the Gestapo to help British fliers avoid capture.

In Ghost at Work, Bailey Ruth returns to earth to help someone in trouble. She moves a body, investigates a murder, saves a marriage, prevents a suicide, and--in a fiery finale--rescues a child who knows too much. In Merry, Merry Ghost, Bailey Ruth protects a little boy from danger. In Ghost in Trouble, Bailey Ruth tries to corral a wilful woman determined to play hunt-the-killer. Coming in 2013 is HIJACKED GHOST which puts Bailey Ruth at risk of ever returning to Heaven.

Letter from Home, a WWII novel set on the home front, received the Agatha Award for Best Mystery of 2003. It was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize by the Oklahoma Center for Poets and Writers. Thirteen-year-old Gretchen Gilman is working for the small-town newspaper during the hot summer of 1944. Murder occurs on the street where she lives, forever changing her life and the lives of those involved.

Hart was one of 10 mystery authors featured at the National Book Festival on the Mall in Washington, DC, in 2003 for Letter from Home and again in 2007 for Set Sail for Murder, 7th in the Henrie O series. In Set Sail for Murder (new in paperback March 2008), Henrie O joins a troubled family on a Baltic cruise and death is an unwelcome passenger.

Hart has been nominated 9 times for the Agatha Award for Best Novel and has won 3 times. In 2007 she received the Lifetime Achievement Award at Malice Domestic. She will be the International Guest of Honor at Bloody Words in Toronto on June 6-8, 2008.

Hart is a native of Oklahoma City, a journalism graduate of the University of Oklahoma, and a former president of Sisters in Crime. She is also a member of Authors Guild, Mystery Writers of America, the International Association of Crime Writers, and American Crime Writers League.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What a Great Time to Discover Carolyn Hart!, June 21, 2003

By 

Bookreporter (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Engaged to Die (Death on Demand Mysteries, No. 14) (Hardcover)

Carolyn Hart, where have you been all my life?

Seriously, how is it that I never spotted you on the bookshelves amongst the Sue Graftons and Patricia Cornwells and Sarah Paretskys? Well, I have now rectified that, thank goodness.

Carolyn Hart is a mystery lover's dream come true. Her stories are for anyone who will confess to the guilty pleasure of reading serial mysteries (okay, and even for those of you who won't admit it, but secretly indulge nonetheless). ENGAGED TO DIE is Hart's latest installment --- the fourteenth installment, to be exact --- in the Death on Demand whodunit series featuring Annie and Max Darling, amateur detectives reminiscent of Nick and Nora Charles.

Annie Darling owns a bookstore, but not just any bookstore. She is the proprietor of Death on Demand, a popular venue on the island of Broward's Rock in South Carolina that specializes in selling leather-bound enigmas and paperback puzzlers. If you have ever walked into a real-life mystery bookstore like The Cloak and Dagger in Princeton, NJ, you know the sheer joy of losing yourself in the thievery, murder and mayhem oozing from the pages authored by Dashiell Hammett, Carolyn Keene or Arthur Conan Doyle.

The bookstore setting is ingenious; it affords Hart the opportunity to show off her knowledge of mystery writers, new and old, great and virtually unknown. Conversations in the store between Annie and her customers are peppered with titles and authors, and the reader, if a lover of mysteries, can't help but feel that he or she is part of a special club. Henny Brawley is described as the store's best customer; each of her visits results in the purchase of several books and the exchange of mystery trivia. (Brownie points for anyone who knows the significance of the name "Hepzibah" in the mystery genre.) The bookstore even boasts a cat named Agatha, homage to you-know-who.

The mystery at hand in ENGAGED TO DIE: Jake O'Neill, the young, handsome fiancé of widowed --- and wealthy --- Virginia Neville, has been murdered, his body found face down at the end of an oyster-shell path at an ocean overlook. The suspects are many, including Chloe, the young assistant who works in Annie's store and who had fallen in love with Jake. The Neville family is also not without motive. Upset by their father's bequest, which left virtually everything to Virginia, his nurse-turned-second wife, each of the Neville children could have and might have bashed in Jake's head to keep him from benefiting from the family inheritance.

Max Darling, a lawyer and devoted husband of Annie, is deputized into duty by the acting police chief and begins to investigate the death. Annie decides to launch a search of her own, hoping to exonerate her co-worker. Their seemingly different paths ultimately intersect, as they become unknowing targets of the murderer.

Find Carolyn Hart on the bookshelf. Read ENGAGED TO DIE. Or, better yet, start at the beginning with DEATH ON DEMAND, the first in the series, and work your way up to ENGAGED TO DIE. That's my plan.

--- Reviewed by Roberta O'Hara

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars enjoyable Death on Demand mystery, March 8, 2003

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Engaged to Die (Death on Demand Mysteries, No. 14) (Hardcover)

Wealthy Nathaniel Neville shocked his two children and their spouses when he married his nurse and later left her with the estate when he died. His wife Virginia promised the irate foursome that they would be her heirs, but that vow seems shaky now. Virginia apparently has fallen in love with artist Jake O'Neill. At the opening of her new gallery in Broward's'Rock, South Carolina, Virginia announces that she and Jake will marry.

Already disturbed by their father's will, her stepfamily goes berserk thinking the handsome artist will waste what they believe is rightfully theirs. Chloe Martin is also stunned by the announcement because she thought she was exclusively seeing Jake. However, someone decides to take action, killing the charming artist. All evidence indicates that Chloe committed the crime as she flees the scene and her shawl is found near the victim. Chloe's boss mystery bookstore Annie Darling tries to prove her assistant is innocent while her spouse Max helps the police with the official investigation.

Though the who-done-it is relatively easy to figure out by real amateurs like this reviewer, readers will enjoy the latest Death on Demand mystery. Although obvious, the story line is fun to follow, as the darling lead couple wants the same thing even while working on opposite sides of the inquiry.

Harriet Klausner

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Dying to Disengage?, October 1, 2006

By 

Rachelle Ayala (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Engaged to Die (Death on Demand Mysteries, No. 14) (Mass Market Paperback)

Young Jake O'Neill was a handsome, smooth talking, a love 'em and leave 'em womanizer who found his way onto Broward's Rock and into the arms of just about every unattached woman in town. So who would have been surprised that wealthy Virginia Neville would commission him to be her husband? For one, the houseful of sour stepchildren whose father had left everything to Virginia but whom she had promised to leave everything to. Equally astounded was Chloe, the young employee of Annie's who had fallen in love with the young artist. On the night of the big party to celebrate the opening of the gallery and the introduction of Boston Mackey, the most successful Low Country painter allied with the gallery, Virginia decides to announce her engagement. With half the island at attendance, murder intervenes and crashes the party. Young Chloe was seen leaving the scene and quickly becomes suspect #1 and Max is deputized to investigate, much to Annie's chagrin. While Max pursues the official line of questioning, Annie sets out to prove Chloe's innocence. Matters are not helped by Chloe's disappearance, and the existence of another witness who saw Chloe, but holds out on what exactly she saw. Gunshots are heard at the Neville home, the gun fished out of the fountain and once again the police are convinced that Chloe had pinched the gun then dropped it in her flight. With the entire town convinced of Chloe's guilt, Annie and Max set a dangerous trap for the murderer. Would the murderer dare to make another desparate move? Or would Chloe be hauled off to jail for a crime she did not commit, other than an utter lack of common sense and discernment.