Three Bedrooms, One Corpse

This is the third book in the Aurora Teagarden series. Aurora, known as Roe to her friends, is happy and thriving in the small town outside of Atlanta where she has lived all of her life except for college. Independently "comfortable" since an inheritance from a friend, Roe is trying out real estate as a possible new career. Unfortunately, while showing a house to a client, she finds a body in the bed of the master bedroom. All the small town chatter could be trite in lesser hands, but in Harris's writing, it reminded me of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple and her belief that anything is possible in a small town. In many series, the secondary characters appear only to disappear and never recur. In this series, you find yourself getting to know the locals and their foibles. I enjoy this series and look forward to more in the series. Charlaine Harris is a talented writer with multiple series. While I find her vampire series not to my taste, I thoroughly enjoy her other books.

If you haven't picked up the Aurora Teagarden series - you should! These books are great - entertaining and smart, and they flow very easily from one to the next, leaving you wanting more. If you like these, you will love the Harper Connelly series, Sooke Stackhouse series, and I have recently started the Lily Bard (Shakespeare) series. I can't believe I just "found" Charlaine Harris last year! :)

"Three Bedrooms, One Corpse" by Charlaine Harris is the third book in her series about Aurora Teagarden. (Follows Real Murders: An Aurora Teagarden Mystery, Bk. 1 and A Bone To Pick: An Aurora Teagarden Mystery, Book 2) The story begins with Aurora aka Roe showing a house to Martin Bartell and his sister Barby who are interested in moving nearby. Everything is going swimmingly, well if you ignore the attraction between Martin Bartell and herself, until she opens one of the bedroom doors and finds a dead body. The dead woman was also a realtor, and had been showing the house the day before. But with the key to the house put back in the office, it points to a fellow realtor being the murderer. Roe is determined to get to the bottom of this, and deal with the attraction between Martin and herself in the meantime (while still dating Aubrey). I fully recommend this book. I did figure out who was the murderer before Roe did, unlike the previous two that I read. Don't forget to check out the rest in this series. Next is The Julius House: An Aurora Teagarden Mystery, Bk. 4, followed by 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")

Aurora Teagarden returns in the 3rd book in the hilarious mystery series. Aurora is a short, respectible, 30-something single female in the small town of Lawrenceton. She used to work at the library until she unexpectedly inherited a fortune from a friend. Now she is footloose and fancy free with no job to tie her down, no boyfriend (due to a recent break up) and no money problems. Too bad that she is bored to death. Aurora decides that she needs something to do, so she starts learning about the real estate business from her mother, the best real estate agent in town. When her mother asks her to go and open up an expensive home so that her wealthy new clients can take a look, Roe is agreeable and cheerfully sets off to show the home to the best of her ability. Within an hour she has decided that the real estate business isn't for her, that the new guy in town, although quite a bit older is really hot and there is definitely some attraction there, and that, no matter how trashy in real life, no one deserves to be murdered and put on display in an empty house for someone to find. When her friend's husband is accused of being the murderer, Roe feels that she has to intervene and find out what really happened. Along the way she has to deal with her completely physical reaction to a gorgeous, wealthy older man, a cantankerous cat, shopping for a new home, and a disgruntled ex-employee of her new boyfriend who has started stalking her. You know, the usual problems...I thought that Three Bedrooms, One Corpse was quite entertaining and finished it in one sitting. Charlaine Harris is a very talented author and, while there may have been a few small errors (which I didn't notice because I was too caught up in the story), she has a very smooth writing style that allows you to be amused and informed at the same time. The plot moves quickly and there are several subplots that keep the reader involved with the characters. Although I still enjoyed the Lily Bard/Shakespeare series and the Southern Vampire series more, I have grown quite fond of Aurora Teagarden and know that I will pick up anything that Charlaine Harris cares to write. At the cheap price that these books are available for, why not treat yourself?

This author is a real "find". It's great to stumble across an author who really manages to balance humour, plot and character development. I'm looking forward to reading more of these books because Ms. Harris obviously intends for her characters personal relationships to change and develop. Hope she writes more (and soon)