One Corpse (Aurora Teagarden Book 3) - Three Bedrooms

"Three Bedrooms, One Corpse" does not rank as one of my favorite Roe Teagarden mysteries. The plot was actually pretty silly in my opinion, & the book seemed to center more on Roe's relationship with Martin Bartell. Seeing that I don't particularly like Martin, I struggled to finish this book. I also feel that their relationship is ridiculous to a point.

This was a good entry into the Aurora Teagarden series, although I must admit to finding myself a little bit 'at sea' at times with the sheer number of characters the series contains. There are lots and lots of peripheral characters, and for those which are mentioned sparingly, I did find myself at times having to think back as to exactly where they fitted in the story line.
Another interesting little murder mystery, in which Aurora finds herself immersed, but I did find that near the end of the book, she 'immersed' herself a little too much. Altruistically, she went to the home of the person she thought to be the murderer because she wanted to ensure her latest beau doesn't end up as a suspect, but I found the reason she'd gone to the house to be fairly 'forced' in regards to giving her an agenda for doing it, and I suspect it was more to bring the story to a dramatic ending, rather than a natural decision on Roe's part.
Still a highly recommended series. These are the sort of books which are just perfect to take with you on holiday, for lying by the pool or sitting on the beach and relaxing.

Three Bedrooms, One Corpse is the third book in the Aurora Teagarden Mystery series. This can be read as a standalone but makes more sense if you have read the previous books. This is a cozy mystery so there is some violence.

The book blurb adequately describes the storyline so I'm not going to repeat that all info here. The author did a good job of explaining what is going on in the series for new readers. The characters are well written, even if you don't like some of them. There are clues in the storyline that keep you guessing what twists and turns will be revealed next. While the storyline is predictable, both old and new fans of the series will enjoy it.

Three Bedrooms, One Corpse was the third book in the Aurora Teagarden mystery series. It wasn't nearly as boring as the second book. Lord. It still took me some time to get through because I kept getting distracted by more exciting reads, but I'm getting used to this series and Aurora is becoming a bit of a friend.

Like Sookie Stackhouse Aurora attracts trouble without meaning to. She's always present when something crappy happens and that's got the town thinking she's kind of bonkers herself. Oh well. She also has some serious Romance issues. Guys she falls for either marry other women, end up being weirdos, are priests, or are murderers themselves. I mean COME ON!

Three Bedrooms, One Corpse features a newly wealthy Aurora trying to find a job that suits her. Her mother's real estate business seems to be worth a shot, and it would make her mother proud, but Aurora is thinking that it's just not going to work out...especially after she finds a dead body in the first house she's showing. Cue deflated expectation balloon.

As usual it's Aurora that's getting the funny looks for being the one to discover a body, but this time she's got the mutual support of her mother, friend, and a new love interest that is questionably steamy abd possessive.

Aurora is really just your run-of-the-mill girl that happens to run in to a lot of quirky circumstances. There's really nothing incredible or off-beat about her character other than she's got what could be considered an unhealthy interest in real-murder cases. Otherwise, you know, just your girl next door.

This particular mystery was a bit dry and was focused more on the tension between Aurora and her new beau, than anything else.

I'm not aching to read the next one in the series, but I'm not turned off to it yet. I'll start the next one soon and probably by the last book in the series I'll be sad to see it end.

It's an easy, relaxing mystery read. Not too intense, and nice on a rainy day.

This is the 3rd in the AURORA TEAGARDEN series.

What would you do if you suddenly had enough money to quit your job? buy a house? do whatever you want? Aurora Teagarden has found herself in just such a happy situation, she is able to live out all these fantasies thanks to an unexpected inheritance from a friend.

At the end of the previous book she did quit her job and as this novel begins is working on the next two items. Since her mother is one of the leaders of the local real estate scene Aurora is able to combine the two. While checking out what is available in the local market Aurora is also shadowing her mother to see if she would perhaps like to follow her into the real estate business. When her mother is unable to keep an appointment Aurora is sent ahead to show one of the most expensive local properties to a new arrival in the community. This is the first time Aurora has been given such an important assignment, and two amazing things happen. The first is that the client turned out to be the most amazing man that she had ever met and the second is that the master bedroom contained a naked and very dead body.

As the story progresses the body count goes up, as does Aurora's interest in the client. Aurora is faced with a variety of choices, to pursue the killer, or a career in real estate or the handsome new man. What will she do?

This series of cozies follows the life of Aurora Teagarden, a (now) former librarian in her hometown of Lawrenceton, Georgia, her family and friends. Aurora (known to most as 'Roe') has an interest in crime, one that unfortunately has been leaving the pages of the mystery novels she collects and entering her real life (REAL MURDERS, A BONE TO PICK). This is the first of Harris' series, and like her later works, focuses on a young woman living in a small southern community. Unlike her later works this series does not contain any supernatural elements.

There is an overall story arc to this series and so it would be best to proceed in order.

This a quick easy read. Aurora Teagarden used to work in a library but has decided a change of pace was needed. Her mom works in real estate so Aurora decides maybe she like to try that. She has worked all her life but thanks to someone left her some money so now she has time on her hands to try new things. This story has Roe helping her mom out by showing a house to a couple when they come across a naked dead corpse of a rival broker .As Roe follows the clues it leads to a few surprises. I really like Charlaine Harris writing and have read quick a few of her other series. I also watch her movies on TV.

Aurora Teagarden is trying to decide if she wants to go in to her mother's real estate business by going with her to house showings. The first showing they find a dead woman in a bedroom, which proves that it has something to do with the real estate world. Aurora gets involved in helping solve the murder and her new relationship. An interesting book in the Teagarden series.

I started reading this series of books after watching the movies on Hallmark. The first two were pretty good but this one turned me off a bit. I am not a big fan of Candace Cameron Bure but found I liked the movie version of this book better than the book itself. I think the main thing that turned me off is that the main character, Aurora Teagarden, is supposed to be a bright woman, but can't distinguish the difference between love and lust. She also can;t recognize some creepy behaviors of her new man, Martin Bartell. Martin suggests she wear her hair a certain way and she runs around making sure she does that. He buys her jewelry and doesn't like getting upstaged by someone else's engagement ring upstaging what he bought and she recognizes that. He likes control and she runs around like a little girl trying to please him. In the movie version Aurora pushes back a bit when she feels Martin is trying to control her. Not in this book. Control away Martin. Not sure I like the direction the book series is heading after 3 books.

Another fun, enjoyable read.... though the heroine pulls a dumb stunt near the end (& almost her end!). But of course all ends well & I do believe Roe has met her match in Martin! Looking forward to other books in this series. Roe finds out one thing for sure, being a realtor & showing houses is not her cup of tea! Especially when she turns up another body on her fill-in real estate showing for her Mother! More twists & turns to keep you interested & reading! Enjoy! Thanks to Goodreads for the chance to read & review this book.

"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")

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.

Three Bedrooms, One Corpse (1994) is the third mystery novel in the Aurora Teagarden series, following A Bone to Pick. In the previous volume, Roe spent the night in Jane's house. She awoke in the night to find that someone was searching the house.

Roe called for help and they subdued the intruder. The intruder confessed to the killings. Then Roe put the skull with the other body.

In this novel, Aurora Teagarden was born and raised in the small town of Lawrenceton, Georgia, in the suburbs of Atlanta. She is the child of Aida. Roe used to work at the local libray, but quit after inheriting the estate of Jane Engle.

Aida Brattle Teagarden Queensland is Roe's mother. She owns Select Realty, a very successful real estate firm. She is now married to John Queensland, who has two sons by his previous marriage.

Martin Bartell is manager of the local Pan-Am Agra plant. Martin was born and raised in Corinth, Ohio, and served in combat as a Marine at the end of the Vietnam War.

In this story, Roe is thinking about getting her realtor's license. She tags along with her mother and learns a bit more about the real estate trade. She is waiting with Aida for a closing, but the clients are late and Aida has an appointment to show the Anderton house.

Aida decides that Roe can escort two clients around the house. Since Roe doesn't have the license, Aida warns her to not show the house per se. Roe agrees to unlock the door and mention the points on the fact sheet. She thinks that not showing the house will be less boring than watching her mother signing all the closing paperwork.

Roe is standing outside the door as a white Mercedes arrives. When she sees the client, Roe is almost overcome with lust. She carefully avoids his eyes and takes the clients inside.

Martin has come with his sister Barbara. His sister thinks that Aurora is a funny name, but asks Roe to call her Barby. Roe shows them the downstairs and then takes them up the grand staircase to the master bedroom. When she pulls the doors open, Barby shrieks loudly.

Roe then looks into the bedroom and sees a body propped up on the pillow. Her mother appears and identifies the victim as Tonia Lee Greenhouse, another realtor. Martin checks for signs of life, but Tonia is definitely dead. From the looks of her throat, she has been strangled.

Aida goes to call the police. Naturally, Detective Sergeant Jack Burns heads the homicide team. After a thorough interrogation, Martin decides that Barby needs to leave and Aida also departs with Roe.

Somehow the key to the Anderton house mysteriously returns to the key board at Select Realty. The police take Mackie Knight -- a Select Realty employee -- in for questioning, but the black man has a very good alibi and they soon let him go.

Meanwhile, Roe has a date with Martin and they spend the night in a motel room outside Atlanta. They both are head over heels in lust. Roe feels afraid of him because he affects her so much.

Luckily for Roe, her former beau has found someone else to occupy his attention. Martin kisses her in public and establishes his claim. He even openly attends a function with her.

This tale exposes many of the foibles and quirks of the local real estate trade. Several small items have been stolen from homes for sale. And then there is the House Hunter.

Roe decides that she is not interested in selling real estate. But the next installment -- The Julius House -- has her buying a house. Read and enjoy!

Highly recommended for Harris fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of coldblooded murder, realtor secrets, and highly curious women. For anyone unfamiliar with this series, the initial volume is Real Murders.

-Bill Jordin

Aurora Teagarden is back, to the relief and delight of her many fans. Charlaine Harris' popular mystery series from the 1990s (originally published in hardcover by Walker, Scribner, and St. Martin's with mass market distributiion by Worldwide) is being reprinted by Berkley Prime Crime. I picked up the series with Three Bedrooms one rainy day, kicked back, and started to read. Before long, I felt more like I was relishing a long, juicy letter from a girlfriend than reading a book. Can't wait to dig into Real Murders and A Bone to Pick, the other two works in the series.

Harris' light approach to the dark side of mayhem, murder, and real estate games in a small town just outside Atlanta was entertaining, warm, and real; her characters could easily have been my neighbors in my own small town. Aurora (Roe) Teagarden, ex-librarian and current super-sleuth, is one of my new favorite heroines. She manages to deal with life, lovers (old and new), lechers, and Mama with equal parts sugar and spice with a bit of exasperation thrown in for balance.

For a weekend at the beach or an evening by the fire, this cozy little mystery is just the release from humdrum reality that you may be looking for. Thanks, Charlaine, for lightening my day!

by Paula Stallings Yost
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women

Excellent read. Truly surprised by twists. Well written, completely takes you into the Miss Teagarden's thought processes. Vivid imagery gives just enough to build the scene using the reader's imagination to populate details without bogging you down with minutia. I don't care for mysteries because they are soooo predictable. It is nice to be surprised by original plots!

A good entry, although the ending annoyed me a bit. Why aren't there any rational crime solvers? I get that the plot has to move, but Roe should have better sense, even if it puts her in an uncomfortable situation.
It's nice to see characters develop throughout the series, and Harris is great at conceiving and seeing them grow, as well as describing setting and establishing the atmosphere.
A good addition to the series.

This is my least favorite series by Harris. I started out trying to give Roe a chance, but at this point I'm only still reading them because they've got to get better or the series would have ended by now. For a character that's supposed to be intelligent, Roe just isn't. Her love life is too ridiculous to care about, and you're not given enough information about the secondary characters to even wonder who the bad guy is. It's not to say the stories aren't mildly entertaining, but the revelations are so anticlimactic that if the books were any longer it just wouldn't be worth the time it took to get through them.

Not my favorite book of the series. I was suspicious of the wrong person through most of the book. There was a lot of mental forehead slaps on my part: The whole love at first sight (gag), going to confront a murderer without help (duh), getting engaged while unconscious (really?)

Three Bedrooms, One Corpse is a mystery about someone who's killing women in for-sale houses.

It was an intriguing mystery, and I liked the premise. And there was a romance, which might have added depth, but the romance was pretty inexplicable--the 30-year-old heroine sees a guy with white hair and immediately has the hots for him.

My biggest problem, though, was the tone of the story. It felt like the first-person narrator was on valium or something, or that she was bored by the story. There was a distinct lack of feeling, even in dangerous or romantic scenes.

Aurora has little self-esteem, but seems self-sufficient and independent. I see similarities to Sookie. The only major complaints I have are her self-deprecating comments, always thinking she's too short or too ugly or not sophisticated enough. Also, she comes into a very large sum of money and she doesn't want to travel? See another country, or even another county? Nothing? Otherwise, the stories keep me reading and coming back for more.

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! :)

Aurora Teagarden books are an easy and mindless read. I enjoy the frivolity and the mystery. I started reading Charlaine Harris on our cruise with her Harper Collins character and enjoy those as well. Easy and enjoyable reads for someone Not looking for a serious, deep and twisting read. A nice break from my usual Tess Gerritson and Iris Johansen.

After receiving a sizable inheritance from a library patron, Aurora "Roe" Teagarden quits her job and is helping her mother out at her real estate agency to see if that would interest her as a career. While at the bar waiting for the couple to sign the papers for a house they are buying, Roe's mother sends her to the Anderson abode to show the home to Martin Bartell, the new plant manager of Pan-Am Agra, and his sister.

When they get there she takes them into the master bedroom; where to everyone's horror Tonia Lee Green lies dead on the bed. The realtor is cut up and posed in a very lewd position. The police look at the husband because Tonia was constantly cheating on him but his alibi holds up. A second realtor Idella is found murdered in a house for sale and Roe who loves to investigate a mystery starts looking into the murders when she is not being courted by Martin. Roe and Martin fell in love at first sight even though Roe feels he is no stranger to violence and he affirms her belief when she is at the mercy of the killer.

This book was published fourteen years ago but remains a refreshing original regional cozy whose heroine won the hearts of the reader. This engaging southern cozy stands the test of time. Charlaine Harris scribes a well constructed mystery with a bit of romance to produce a memorable work.

Harriet Klausner

I was a little disappointed in this Aurora Teagarden mystery. Little time was spent on the actual mystery because most of the story centered on Aurora's love life. It was nice to see the main character "fleshed out" a bit more, but not at the expense of time spent on the mystery.

I look forward to reading the next book in the series and hope it will be on par with the first two.

In this 3rd. book of the series, Aurora Teagarden has quit her job as a librarian and decides to try her hand at her mother's real estate business. In the very first house she goes to with a client, she discovers a dead body. The deceased is a rival real estate agent who was reputed to have numerous extra-marital affairs. There are many suspects--jealous husband, rival realtors, spurned lovers, but Roe is the one who uses an obscure clue to track down the murderer. Also in this book, she meets and falls in love with Martin Bartell, a wealthy older man who is the manager of a large company. His attraction to Roe seems unlikely, but their relationship proceeds very rapidly, if unbelievably throughout this book.

In this 3rd. book of the series, Aurora Teagarden has quit her job as a librarian and decides to try her hand at her mother's real estate business. In the very first house she goes to with a client, she discovers a dead body. The deceased is a rival real estate agent who was reputed to have numerous extra-marital affairs. There are many suspects--jealous husband, rival realtors, spurned lovers, but Roe is the one who uses an obscure clue to track down the murderer. Also in this book, she meets and falls in love with Martin Bartell, a wealthy older man who is the manager of a large company. His attraction to Roe seems unlikely, but their relationship proceeds very rapidly, if unbelievably throughout this book.

Three Bedrooms One Corpse was much more of a nail bitter than the first 2. I was guessing about the killer all the way to the end. Lots more characters were introduced. Aurora changed so much in this book but all of it was for the better.

Everything Ms Harris writes is fun and exciting and scary and romantic. This series is no different. I'd give a lot if she would continue this series. And, of course, Sookie and every other series. I'm happy to see that she's beginning a new trilogy. Mine is safely pre-ordered and I'm ready to read!

I started reading the Charlene Harris Sookie Stackhous series and totally enjoyed her style of writing. So I decided to try another one of her series. So far out of the Aurora Teagarden series, Three Bedrooms, One Corpse is my favorite. This series is something a parent could have a 12 to 13 year old read with out worring about the content.
I find her books funny, relaxing and easy to read.