When I am on vacation, I really enjoy reading fiction set in the location I am visiting. I just finished Engaged to Die by Carolyn Hart. I got the book from our local Little Library, our neighborhood book trade. It wasn’t set on Hilton Head. It was set on a different nearby fictional Sea Island that can only be reached by ferry. But it was so much like Hilton Head Island that it made me miss it.
Death on Demand is the name of the book store owned by the main character, Annie. There is a lot of talk about the mystery books she sells, which I really enjoyed. Kinda like when you meet people that know your friends. It’s nice to remember. And her cats made me wish I didn’t have allergies.
The characters are likeable, which matters to me. And the mystery was good! I thought it was really obvious, but about halfway through I knew I was wrong. I decided it was someone else (which it was), but I wasn’t really sure until the end.
And one of the best things about it, there are 26 books in the series! And Carolyn Hart is alive and still writing.
Carolyn Hart Death on Demand Mysteries Order of Books
(Links open on Amazon)
- Death on Demand
- Design for Murder
- Something Wicked
- Honeymoon With Murder
- A Little Class on Murder
- Deadly Valentine
- The Christie Caper
- Southern Ghost
- Mint Julep Murder
- Yankee Doodle Dead
- White Elephant Dead
- Sugarplum Dead
- April Fool Dead
- Engaged to Die
- Murder Walks the Plank
- Death of the Party
- Dead Days of Summer
- Death Walked In
- Dare to Die
- Laughed ’til He Died
- Dead by Midnight
- Death Comes Silently
- Dead, White, and Blue
- Death at the Door
- Don’t Go Home
- Walking on My Grave
Engaged to Die is the fourteenth, but it didn’t matter. It was easy to figure out the relationships and they gave you enough to know that there was some back story without being tedious or telling too much. There were no spoilers to ruin the earlier books. (Don’t read Anne Hillerman’s books before reading Tony Hillerman’s books. She gives away everything. I HATE that!)
Some of them are at our library, but since I want to be able to read them by the pool or beach, I went ahead and ordered them. They are all on Amazon. They have them in every format, with lots of variations at lots of prices. You can get them as Audiobooks, too.
Or you can buy them as a lot on eBay.
Death on Demand Series by Carolyn Hart on eBay >
The first in her Henrie O series is partly set on Dead Man’s Island, a South Carolina Sea Island. I don’t yet know about any of the others.
Carolyn Hart has other series. Her first books are stand-alone mysteries. Some of these first books and her most recent are ghost mysteries, not my thing. It’s easy to tell which ones, since they have Ghost in the title or featured on the back of the paperback or inside the flap of the dust jacket.
