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FROM THE AUTHOR'S WEBSITE:
Charlaine Harris, who has been writing mysteries for over twenty years, is a native of Mississippi. Born and raised in the Delta, she began training for her career as soon as she could hold a pencil. Though her early works consisted largely of poems about ghosts and (later) teenage angst, she began writing plays when she attended Rhodes College in Memphis, and graduated to books a few years later.
After publishing two stand-alone mysteries, Harris decided to establish a series. She began the lighthearted Aurora Teagarden books with REAL MURDERS, which garnered an Agatha nomination. Harris's protagonist, a diminutive Georgia librarian whose life never turns out quite the way she planned, kept Harris busy for several books, but finally Harris (and Aurora) grew restless.
The result of this restlessness was the much edgier Shakespeare series -- set not in England, but in rural Arkansas. The heroine of the Shakespeare books is Lily Bard, a tough and taciturn woman whose life has been permanently reshaped by a terrible crime and its consequences. In SHAKESPEARE'S LANDLORD, the first in the series, Lily is caught at a moment when the shell she's built around herself is just beginning to crack, and the books capture Lily's emotional re-entry into the world, while also being sound mysteries.
Harris's latest venture is a humorous vampire mystery. Ace has published the first in the series, DEAD UNTIL DARK, and Harris has completed the second. These adventure/romance novels with a dark twist feature Sookie Stackhouse, a telepathic barmaid in Bon Temps, Louisiana.
In addition to working as a writer, Harris is married and the mother of three children under seventeen. She is a weight lifter and sometime karate student, an avid reader, and until recently was senior warden of St. James Episcopal Church.
Harris is a member of Mystery Writers of America and the American Crime Writers League. She is a member of the board of Sisters in Crime, and president of the Arkansas Mystery Writers Alliance.
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