I'm currently reading GRAVE SECRET by Charlaine Harris. This is 4th of 4 in series featuring Harper Connelly, a lightning survivor who can find bodies, and her stepbrother Tolliver, in Sarne, Arkansas. Here's a description:
Harper Connelly and her stepbrother Tolliver take a break from looking for the dead to visit the two little girls they both think of as sisters. But, as always happens when they travel to Texas, memories of their horrible childhood resurface. To make matters worse, Tolliver learns from his older brother that their father is out of jail and trying to reestablish contact with other family members. Tolliver wants no part of the man- but he may not have a choice in the matter. Soon, family secrets ensnare them both, as Harper finally discovers what happened to her missing sister, Cameron, so many years before. And what she finds out will change her world forever.
It was just published and has 320 pages. This series is interesting to me; it has a touch of woo woo in that because she was struck by lightening, Harper can find dead people. Never been done before or since in mystery books. I'm not a fan at all of vampires, so I've not taken up her Sookie books; I loved her Lily Bard series and wish that hadn't ended.
Here's an excerpt from GRAVE SECRET:
“All right,” said the straw-haired woman in the denim jacket. “Do your thing.” Her accent made the words sound more like, “Dew yore thang.” Her hawk-like face was eager, the anticipatory look of someone who is ready to taste an unknown food.
We were standing on a wind-swept field some miles south of the interstate that runs between Texarkana and Dallas. A car zoomed by on the narrow two-lane blacktop. It was the only other car I’d seen since I’d followed Lizzie Joyce’s gleaming black Chevy Kodiak pickup out to the Pioneer Rest graveyard, which lay outside the tiny town of Clear Creek.
When our little handful of people fell silent, the whistle of the wind scouring the rolling hill was the only sound in the landscape.
There wasn’t a fence around the little cemetery. It had been cleared, but not recently. This was an old cemetery, as Texas cemeteries go, established when the live oak in the middle of the graveyard had been only a small tree. A flock of birds was cackling in the oak’s branches. Since we were in north Texas, there was grass, but in February it wasn’t green. Though the temperature was in the fifties today, the wind was colder than I’d counted on. I zipped up my jacket. I noticed that Lizzie Joyce wasn’t wearing one.
The people who lived hereabouts were tough and pragmatic, including the thirtyish blonde who’d invited me here. She was lean and muscular, and she must have tugged up her jeans by greasing her legs. I couldn’t imagine how she mounted a horse. But her boots were well-worn, and so was her hat, and if I’d read her belt buckle correctly, she was the previous year’s county-wide barrel riding champion. Lizzie Joyce was the real deal.
She also had more money in her bank account than I would ever earn in my life. The diamonds on her hand flashed in the bright sunlight as she waved toward the piece of ground dedicated to the dead. Ms. Joyce wanted me to get the show on the road.
I prepared to dew mah thang. Since Lizzie was paying me big bucks for this, she wanted to get the most out of it. She’d invited her little entourage, which consisted of her boyfriend, her younger sister, and her brother, who looked as though he’d rather be anywhere else but in Pioneer Rest cemetery.
And this book, being woo woo, is suitable I think for the time of year: we're getting closer to Halloween of course. I've got a couple bags of candy -- last year we had so few kids come by that I decided this year not to go all out buying candy we may be stuck with afterward. The requisite scary movies are now showing on tv as well as documentaries about all things scary and haunted. I don't mind the docs but I've never been fond of scary movies. Yes, I've enjoyed the classics: Nightmare of Elm Street I believe I actually saw in the theatre when it was first released. Halloween with Jamie Curtis is a must. I liked Scream being so clever about the genre. But gory violent death just for the sake of gory violent death doesn't trip my trigger like it does the younger generation. Being that Hallween falls on a Friday this year, I imagine there will be more grown-up parties than kiddie stuff. I prefer to think of the old traditional view of the day -- All Hallow's Eve.
Tonight, Steve has pistol shooting at the gun club -- after tonight he can stay home and get better the rest of the week -- and I'll watch America's Next Top Model because "I love to watch beautiful skinny girls being criticized" (c). Otherwise, I think my cough is slowly getting better and I hope to read tonight and then sleep and sleep. :)
All right, off you go then ...
Much love,
PK the Bookeemonster
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