Shakespeare's Counselor (Lily Bard Mysteries, Book 5) [Large Print] [Hardcover]

Charlaine Harris (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 2002

Cleaning woman and karate expert Lily Bard is a woman with a complicated past. Trying her best to cope with her terrifying memories and horrible nightmares, she decides to join a weekly group therapy session in her hometown of Shakespeare, Arkansas. At first, Lily can hardly believe the number of her fellow Shakespeareans that share her life experiences.

As it turns out, the group members' feelings aren't the only things that need sorting out -- they assemble for a session and find a woman dead, killed in bone-chilling fashion and deliberately left on display to send a twisted message. Who would commit such horrendous crime, and who is the intended recipient of the message?

Before long, Lily becomes embroiled in this disturbing murder and its aftermath, one in which the brutal killer's motives are entirely unclear. The truth is, the situation has dredged up more than a few of her own terrible secrets, and she may not be able to rest until she can untangle the who and why of this terrible crime. But can she accomplish this before the killer strikes again, and before her nightmares send her over the edge? Shakespeare's Counselor is the most complex and absorbing installment yet in Charlaine Harris's engaging, original, and more than slightly dark mystery series.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Harris's fifth Lily Bard mystery set in the small Arkansas town of Shakespeare (Shakespeare's Trollop, etc.) is good enough in part to make one wish it was better as a whole. Its mainstream novelistic promise is left unfulfilled in its adherence to genre conventions. The victim of horrendous violence and plagued by nightmares, anger and self-loathing, Lily joins a local support group headed by Tamsin Lynd, a professional counselor. Tamsin herself has a major problem. She and her husband moved from Cleveland to Shakespeare after being terrorized by a stalker who remains at large. To their horror, the stalker appears to have followed them. First they find a squirrel hung from a tree in their backyard, then the corpse of one of the group in Tamsin's office. Lily, now a professional detective working for her friend/mentor/lover, Jack Leeds, wants to help. It seems two other people connected to the original investigation have followed Tamsin to Shakespeare: one is a woman cop obsessed with catching the stalker, the other a crime writer hoping to find the stuff of a bestseller. In the end, the author delivers a solution too bizarre to be credible. The book's most serious problem, however, is its lack of focus. It would like to be a story about women's pain the trauma of rape and the terror of being stalked but in fulfilling its obligations to the detective story it loses purpose and direction, as well as most of its suspense. (Nov. 12)series.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Lily Bard has married private investigator Jack Leeds, although she hasn't told many people yet. In tiny Shakespeare, Arkansas, another dreamtime episode finally brings Lily to understand she needs help, and she finds it in a local therapy group of women who have been raped. Lily's own story is horrific, and this series is as much about Lily's re-finding her own self as it is about solving crimes. The leader of the therapy group is a woman named Tamsin, who is being stalked in spectacular ways. When those ways include a grisly murder in Tamsin's own office, Lily wants to know why. She's mostly given up her cleaning service to apprentice to Jack, and she is still obsessive about her own physical training. This dark-edged series finds surcease from a great deal of bloodshed in Lily's growing awareness of the power of her and Jack's attachment, even through a miscarriage and a vicious attack by one of Jack's ex-wives. GraceAnne DeCandido
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

• Hardcover: 322 pages
• Publisher: Thorndike Press (August 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786244038
• ISBN-13: 978-0786244034
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,826,993 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

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow, That I shall say good night till it be morrow. - William Shakespeare, March 10, 2008

By 

Cherise Everhard (Michigan, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Shakespeare's Counselor (Lily Bard Mysteries, Book 5) (Mass Market Paperback)

While dreaming about the weekend she spent tied up in a shack, tortured and raped, Lily Bard wakes up trying to kill the man she loves, Jack Leeds. Lily has made some changes in her life since Jack came into it. Now she takes the biggest and most important step, she finally seeks therapy.

She joins a local support group for rape survivors and finally, willingly, begins to discuss what happened to her over 4 years ago. When a member of that group is murdered, Lily once again finds herself in the midst of an investigation to try to figure out whodunit.

This book will show a lot of changes happening in Lily's life and those around her since the last book. There are some very real and painful moments in this story, things that quite simply made me hold my breath or ripped at my heart. Intertwined with the mystery are glimpses into the very personal lives of the women in the support group, and Lily in particular. It's a heartbreaking, heartwarming, and suspenseful story that's always engaging and impossible to set aside.

On Ms. Harris's website it's stated that Shakespeare's Counselor is the last book in the Bard series and although she'd like to write another one, IF that did happen it wouldn't be anytime soon. So I started this book knowing it was the last in the series and prepared to be thoroughly upset with Ms. Harris for not having another book ready for me to dive into; but the truth is I am happy with this ending. I love Lily and Jack and all the characters that make up the quirky little Shakespeare town and right now I am very pleased with where they all are in their lives.

I would love to come back to Shakespeare and be a back seat driver to another Lily adventure. But Ms. Harris ended this book in a way that has me completely content with everything, and for that I thank her. There is nothing worse then being left hanging in a series; thankfully, there is no noose here. The closure seems a natural progression for everyone in Shakespeare. If she were to revisit, it would be welcome, but if she doesn't get a chance to it won't be devastating to this reader. Besides, I can always visit Shakespeare by rereading, and that is something I intend to do.

Shakespeare's Counselor is a perfect ending to a perfect series.

Shakespeare's Landlord (Lily Bard Mysteries, Book 1)
Shakespeare's Champion (The Second Lily Bard Mystery)
Shakespeare's Christmas (Lily Bard Mysteries, Book 3)
Shakespeare's Trollop (The Fourth Lily Bard Mystery)

Cherise Everhard, March 2008

29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Almost didn't buy it--glad I did!, August 3, 2003

By 

Maria Schneider "Maria E. Schneider" (Texas) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Shakespeare's Counselor (Lily Bard Mysteries, Book 5) (Hardcover)

I alsmot didn't buy this book after reading the Publisher's weekly review. I had the impression that Lilly spent her time in some sort of dark depression wandering through a mystery with no focus. Turns out the book was well-written, the ending to the mystery followed the clues, and while the book dealt more solidly with the violence in Lilly's past it was well-placed and not contrived. I enjoyed the book. The characters were as well-developed as in her past books and so was the story.

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars great addition to lily bard series, December 18, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Shakespeare's Counselor (Lily Bard Mysteries, Book 5) (Hardcover)

I won't write a synopsis because others have done so, instead I'll tell you what I find most compelling about this book.

For me it's less the mystery elements, and more watching the evolution of the protagonist Lily Bard. Now most people who post negative reviews about Harris' later novels in the Lily Bard series complain about the same thing; they dislike the fact that the protagonist appears to be changing. That's right...Oh, the Horror! A character actually growing and evolving...what will be next?!!

If you want a static personality then go read a bad book, or a terrible series. What makes this a good series and a pretty good book, although not my favorite, is that like a real person Lily's character evidences change. She suffered a horrible rape and instead of being permanently emotionally stunted by this( which is what most people seem to be complaining about)she is slowly starting to get her life back together. To go back to the person she would have been, if not for her rape. I'm not saying she'll be the some happy-go-lucky, unaffected, innocentmiss, I don't really see that happening. But instead of having a permanent well of rage and anger inside her she's learning how to be happy. Like a real person would.

That's what I like about these books.