Grave Surprise (Harper Connelly Mysteries, No. 2) [Unabridged] [Audio CD]

Charlaine Harris (Author), Alyssa Bresnahan (Narrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 2007

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.

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

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

At the start of Harris's winning second supernatural caper to feature Harper Connelly (after 2005's Grave Sight), a skeptical anthropology professor, Clyde Nunley, tests Harper's gift of clairvoyance in a historic Memphis cemetery, where Harper correctly senses a fresh corpse in the wrong grave. Strangely, the body turns out to be a missing 12-year-old girl, Tabitha Morgenstern, whom Harper failed to locate in Nashville on a case two years earlier. The hotel suite of Harper and her manager and stepbrother, Tolliver Lang, both of whom fall under suspicion, becomes a magnet for a medley of amusing characters, including Memphis cops, Tabitha's assorted relatives and a drunken Clyde Nunley, who, shortly after accusing Harper of fraud, is found dead in the same grave as Tabitha. Peppered with the author's trademark deadpan wit, this book should help make Harper and Tolliver as popular as Sookie Stackhouse, the heroine of Harris's vampire mystery series (Definitely Dead, etc.). Author tour. (Sept. 26)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

After Harper Connelly was struck by lightning as a teenager, she developed an unusual ability--she is able to locate bodies and see how the victims died, although she cannot identify the murderers. Harper and her stepbrother, Tolliver Lang, are at Bingham College doing a demonstration for a class, identifying bodies and causes of death in an old graveyard, when Harper finds the body of Tabitha Morgenstern, a kidnapped young girl she had failed to locate months ago. To clear their names--the police consider Harper and Tolliver suspects in the crime--they set out to find the real killer. Harper and Tolliver are likable, well-developed characters whose unhappy past binds them together as they care for one another and work together. Harper craves normalcy as she wonders whether her talent is a gift or a curse. The supernatural elements are integrated believably into the plot in this engrossing mystery, the second in a series. Sue O'Brien
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Audio CD
• Publisher: Recorded Books; Unabridged edition (February 2007)
• ISBN-10: 142813249X
• ISBN-13: 978-1428132498
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (119 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,685,566 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

56 of 57 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent sequel, September 28, 2006

By 

ellen "ellen in atlanta" (Atlanta, Georgia USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

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This review is from: Grave Surprise (Harper Connelly Mysteries) (Hardcover)

I must tell you I didn't quite like Grave Sight, the debut book of this series. But, this sequel, Grave Surprise, fell into place and looks to be another great series for Harris.
Harper and her half-brother Tolliver tried to find Tabitha Morgenstern in the past, and while doing a demonstration in a Memphis cemetery 2 years later, find her in an old grave. The mystery deepens as the police, FBI, and family of the lost girl as well as Harper and Tolliver deal with the mystery of how did the child end up from Nashville to Memphis.
The relationship between Harper and Tolliver is believable, though complex. What I felt in the shadows of the first book was confirmed in this book. The writing is crisp and well paced. The only thing I don't like in any book is longer chapters. But if that is the only minus..no prob.
I will look forward to more in this series.
And the Southern Vampire series we all love.
Grave Surprise is a good read.

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Unexpected Detection, July 30, 2007

By 

Arthur W. Jordin (Smyrna, GA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Grave Surprise (Harper Connelly Mysteries) (Hardcover)

Grave Surprise (2006) is the second fantasy mystery novel in the Harper Connelly series, following Grave Sight. In the previous volume, the final confrontation and shootout exposes the secrets of almost everybody. Harper and Tolliver are lucky to get out of town alive.

In this novel, Harper is hired to give a demonstration for an occult studies class in a newly documented graveyard in Memphis, Tennessee. The contract is issued by Bingham College for the class of Professor Clyde Nonley. As far as Harper is concerned, the Professor is a professional jerk.

The graveyard is on the grounds of the college and a detailed list of burials and causes of death had been discovered about three months previously. At first, the professor enjoys directing Harper from grave to grave, but her detailed answers to his queries are beginning to upset his preconceptions. Then he directs her to a grave up against the fence around the cemetery.

At first, Harper declares the occupant to be a young girl and the professor gleefully states that she is wrong. Then Harper notices that another set of bones lies in a coffin below the girl's body. Then she suddenly recognizes the identity of the most recent body.

Tabitha Morgenstern had disappeared in Nashville about eighteen months prior to her rediscovery. Harper had been called in a month after the disappearance and had followed every possible lead within the Nashville area before giving up on the case. Maybe the body had been in Memphis even before she had started her search.

In this story, Joel Morgenstern and his first wife were originally from Memphis, but had moved to Nashville during their marriage. Whitney Morgenstern birthed Victor and then died from cancer in Nashville. Two years later, Joel married Diane and she raised her stepson from a baby. Then their daughter Tabitha was born in Nashville.

Since Harper had only known the Morgensterns in Nashville, she is definitely surprised to learn that the family is now living in Memphis. Joel had apparently brought his wife back home about a year ago. Since then, Diane has become pregnant and is expecting a son. She is very close to birthing the baby.

The Morgensterns are very grateful to Harper for finally finding the body of their daughter. They invite Harper and Tolliver over for lunch to share the food offerings from their friends. There Harper meets other members of the family, including Fred Hart, the father of Whitney and Felicia. Of course, both Harper and Tolliver know Felicia Hart as Victor's aunt. They also meet Joel's parents -- Judy and Ben -- and his brother David.

Harper and Victor had previously shared a moment of shared grief in Nashville, so he confides several bits of information with her at the luncheon. Interrupted before he can finish his confession, Harper is pleased that Victor later shows up at the hotel. Unhappily, so does his uncle David, who speaks somewhat coarsely at Harper and gets punched in the stomach by Tolliver.

This story seems to be a setup, for Tabitha had obviously been moved from another grave. Who had instigated the hiring of Harper to read the occupants of the old cemetery? Their only lead, Professor Nonley, is killed shortly after Tabitha's exhumation and then placed in the open grave.

This case reminds Harper of her missing sister Cameron. She had vanished while on her way home from school. Only her backpack had been recovered, despite years of searching by Harper. At least Tabitha's body had been found to provide closure for her parents.

Since this reviewer tends to become absorbed into the story, the conclusion came as a surprise. However, it would seem to be more obvious by hindsight. Harper should have been savvy enough to sense the murderer much earlier from personal contacts. Or maybe the truth is just easier to see after the facts are laid out for inspection. After all, Harper is not able to read the living as well as she does the dead.

One wonders why so many reviewers insist on comparing the author's different series, often to the determent of this series? Often authors start new series to try different ideas and maybe different treatments. So many reviewers of the first book in this series rejected it because of its dissimilarities with prior series. Should the author just keep on writing the same storyline long after the enjoyment has withered away? At least this volume seems to have been accepted so far without cries of dejection from disappointed reviewers.

Highly recommended for Harris fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of esoteric talents, personal development, and slowly budding romance.

-Arthur W. Jordin

31 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tighter Mystery, Good Read, October 3, 2006

By 

Sires "I enjoy mysteries, historical and proc... (Chesapeake, OH, United States) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Grave Surprise (Harper Connelly Mysteries) (Hardcover)

I think Ms. Harris has found her footing with this second mystery in this series. While I enjoyed and recommnended the first book, the mystery was a bit all over the place. However, in this one she has created a tighter mystery that is both a bit ghastly and intriguing. I guessed who before the end but not exactly why.

Harper and Tolliver are interesting characters and I think bringing in Xzylda and Manfred was a very good idea. I hope they appear again in the future. Harris has a way of surprising the reader with who the good guys in the world are.