Harper Connelly (Charlaine Harris Schulz) Books in Order
Part ofCharlaine Harris Schulz Books in OrderThis page lists all Harper Connelly books by Charlaine Harris Schulz in reading order, with short summaries, series background, and advice on where to start.
Last updated: December 26, 2025
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Publication Order
4 books
Grave Secret
by Charlaine Harris
2009
Harper Connelly and her stepbrother Tolliver travel to Texas to read the grave of a wealthy family's patriarch, only to find the case tangled up with their own painful past and the long unsolved disappearance of Harper's sister.
An Ice Cold Grave
by Charlaine Harris
2007
Harper Connelly is hired to find one missing boy in rural North Carolina and instead uncovers a burial site filled with vanished teenagers, making her a target for a sadistic killer who does not want his crimes brought into the light.
Grave Surprise
by Charlaine Harris
2006
Demonstrating her abilities for a skeptical professor in a Memphis cemetery, Harper Connelly discovers a grave that holds both a centuries dead man and the recently murdered girl she once failed to find, pulling her into a case that quickly turns even deadlier.
Grave Sight
by Charlaine Harris
2005
Harper Connelly and her stepbrother Tolliver are hired to locate a missing girl in an Ozarks town, but when Harper finds the teenager's body and another corpse beside her, they become entangled in a knot of secrets the locals will do anything to keep buried.
Series background & context
Harper Connelly was fifteen when lightning struck her and changed everything. She survived, but the strike left her with a constant ache, strange scars, and an ability that unnerves most people she meets. When she stands near a body, buried or exposed, she can sense its presence and see flashes of how that person died.
Rather than treat the gift as a curse, Harper has turned it into a business. Along with her stepbrother and manager Tolliver Lang, she travels from town to town helping families and law enforcement agencies locate missing loved ones, confirm causes of death, or put old rumors to rest. Every job comes with a fee, a fresh set of skeptics, and a risk that someone connected to the case does not really want the truth uncovered.
Each Harper Connelly novel drops the pair into a different community, from an Ozarks town haunted by a vanished girl to a Memphis cemetery where the wrong grave holds a very recent corpse. The mysteries are built around tangled family loyalties, religious tensions, and small town politics, with Harper's visions providing disturbing but limited answers. She can see the last moments of the dead, but she cannot see the killer's face or motives, which keeps her squarely in the role of investigator rather than supernatural detective.
Harper herself is practical, wary, and used to being judged. She and Tolliver grew up in a deeply dysfunctional family, and the series slowly peels back that history while they deal with their unusual line of work. Their relationship, first as step siblings and business partners and later as something more complicated, gives the books an emotional through line that balances the crime plots.
The tone mixes mystery with a low key kind of urban fantasy. There are no vampires or werewolves here, only a woman whose paranormal talent makes her useful and frightening in equal measure. Readers who enjoy the idea of a psychic sleuth grounded in realistic detail, motel rooms, and long drives on rural highways will find a lot to like in Harper's world.
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