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The Julius House
The Julius House
The Julius House
Audiobook6 hours

The Julius House

Written by Charlaine Harris

Narrated by Therese Plummer

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

()

About this audiobook

This fourth best-selling tale starring Aurora "Roe" Teagarden finds the amateur sleuth newly married to slick businessman Martin Bartell. The couple settles into a new house, but soon Roe-suspicious about her husband and their home-begins an investigation that turns up unsavory secrets.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateDec 4, 2009
ISBN9781440789632
The Julius House
Author

Charlaine Harris

Charlaine Harris is a New York Times bestselling author who has been writing for over thirty years. She was born and raised in the Mississippi River Delta area. She has written four series, and two stand-alone novels, in addition to numerous short stories, novellas, and graphic novels (cowritten with Christopher Golden). Her Sookie Stackhouse books have appeared in twenty-five different languages and on many bestseller lists. They’re also the basis of the HBO series True Blood. Harris now lives in Texas, and when she is not writing her own books, she reads omnivorously. Her house is full of rescue dogs.

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Reviews for The Julius House

Rating: 4.125 out of 5 stars
4/5

72 ratings15 reviews

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Another solid cozy mystery. I love the renters-cum-bodyguards, enjoyed the complex murder mystery, and kind of disliked the emo romance subplot. Martin is the sort of person I'd run screaming from in about ten minutes, because he goes around radiating drama all the time and then acts surprised when people notice he's not telling all the truth. I can handle people with complicated pasts; I dislike incompetent liars.

    So a mixed bag, but my standards for the genre are low and this was still fun.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Aurora "Roe" Teagarden has received a most unusual but welcome wedding present from her fiancé, Martin Bartell. He has given her "the Julius House", a local house that's been shrouded in mystery for the last 6 years since it's previous occupants went missing. Roe has always been drawn to the house, as well as the circumstances surrounding the unexpected and sudden disappearance of its previous inhabitants. But when she starts sleuthing, can she handle the things she discovers?It took me a little while to reacquaint myself with a few of the characters in this series. I didn't really recall Martin all that well, though I did remember her previous two boyfriends, Arthur the cop and Aubrey the minister. So either Martin came into the picture late in book 3, and I haven't yet read enough about him, or else he simply didn't make much of an impression on me. Nevertheless, that was the only character I didn't remember. And I quickly warmed to the familiarity of Roe and her family and friends from the small town of Lawrenceton, GA. This book and the next, Dead Over Heels were fairly difficult to find so I purchased them from eBay for a fair price and plan to give them to NeedSun. I'd actually planned to do that after I bought them last year, but she insisted I read the series first since I had been acquiring the majority of the early books for her. And I'm certainly glad I did. These are cute little cozies, not as dark as the Shakespeare series, but Charlaine's terrific writing style comes through just as easily in these earlier books, making them a joy to read. :-)
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I got the feeling with this one that the author didn't like the character she started with so she remade everything to go in a different direction. Tired of the librarian, tired of the small town, etc. Maybe she really wants to write spy thrillers?
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    "The Julius House" by Charlaine Harris is the fourth book in her series about Aurora Teagarden. (Follows Real Murders: An Aurora Teagarden Mystery, Bk. 1, A Bone To Pick: An Aurora Teagarden Mystery, Book 2 and Three Bedrooms, One Corpse: An Aurora Teagarden Mystery) Roe is now happily engaged to Martin Bartell, but nothing is as it seems. Martin has just gifted Roe with the old Julius house as a wedding present, and she is happily planning on moving them in. Depite its history (the Julius family mysteriously vanished years ago), she finds it enchanting. She even finds no problem with letting a couple of Martin's friends live on the property. That is, until she finds out that they're her bodyguards. Besides dealing with her husband, Roe decides she wants to figure out what happened to the Julius family. I enjoyed this book as much as I did the earlier ones. It did take me a bit to warm to Martin, but I've decided that he's just what Roe needs. And unlike "Three Bedrooms, One Corpse", I did not solve the mystery before Roe! Everytime I thought I had figured it out, something new would be revealed, and I'd have to rethink my whole theory. I fully recommend this series! Next is Dead Over Heels: An Aurora Teagarden Mystery, Bk. 5, followed by 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")
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Aurora (Roe) Teagarden marries the love of her life, Martin Bartell. As a wedding present. he gives her the house of her dreams, the Julius House. So what could go wrong? Well, just about everything. Roe knows that Martin is hiding something from his past, but loves him so much she is willing to wait for him to be ready to tell her. And the house, well, 3 people disappeared from it 6 years before, never to be heard from again. None of this really bothers Roe, but when Martin moves his friends Angel and Shelby into the garage apartment, she begins to wonder if all of Martin's issues are in the past. And since Roe can't resist a mystery, she can't help trying to find out what happened to the Julius family. Needless to say, nothing is as it seems and Roe finds herself knee deep in gators once again.I found this book very enjoyable. One would think that a former librarian would be a bit more cautious than Roe but I have gotten to really like her. I love the way she just throws herself into things. I am looking forward to the next book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Aurora is back and is finally getting married. She hasn't known her prospective husband for very long and there are a lot of secrets she doesn't yet know about him. Still, she is in love and is willing to do what she can to make it work. As a wedding present he buys her the Julius House to keep her mystery solving hobby alive. The house is shrouded in mystery as one morning the families grandmother who was living above the garage came over to make breakfast for the father, mother and teenage daughter. They were missing but with their car in the garage and nothing stolen from the house. No bodies were ever found and it was a mystery to the police and local experts.Roe quickly starts to decorate to her tastes and when her husbands friends arrive to live in the garage apartment, she enlists the help of Angel to help her measure the house looking for any clue as to what happened to the houses previous owners. It seems though that the house isn't her only problem when her new husbands past starts to catch up with them. Roe becomes the target of an axe man and it looks like if her husbands business associates won't kill her maybe the house will...I really enjoyed this novel. It spent quite a lot of time with Roe and her personal life, but unlike the second book in the series A Bone to Pick, it didn't neglect the mystery aspects. There were lots of twists and turns, some of which could be predicted but others came from left field in the way of the best mysteries. I like Roe as a central character still and am interested to see what she gets up to next, both in her personal life and her mystery solving capacity.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The addition of some fascinating new characters heightens the interest in book four of the Aurora Teagarden series.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This is the book that I solved the soonest. I was less than halfway through when the most important plot point became really clear to me (making every other details given make sense instead of being a vague clue that isn't supposed to make sense till later). This is partly the fault of the front cover, I suppose, but I just felt that the plot of this one wasn't up to Harris' standards.-KK
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is book 4 in the Aurora Teagarden cozy mystery series. If you read my reviews for the first 3 books, you know I am reading them for my RL book group, and that I am less than thrilled with them. That opinion is not improved with this book, the last one I read for my group, and the last one in the series I will ever read.The writing is OK, but the whole thing is mostly bland and beige. The characters, especially Roe are wimpy and passive, and the mysteries are not all the good. Its usually a quick unsatisfying read.This book started out with the possibility of being better, but couldn't sustain it. Roe is getting married to her love-at-first-sight, new beau. He isn't a 'nice' bland man, so of course he must be evil. The book takes an interesting character and slowly trashes him with 'dark secrets' that come out. There are hints that he is not long for the series. The Julius House of the title is a property that was owned by the Julius family. One day they all disappear: mother, father and teen-aged daughter. The mother-in-law in the apartment over the garage goes to the house and finds them all missing. They never return and there are no clues as to what happened. Twenty years down the road they are still a mystery.Roe loves the house and she and newly married Martin move into it. Roe begins to decorate and her husband sends a married couple from his past to live in the garage apartment and help Roe out. He travels for business and the house is outside town so he doesn't want Roe to be alone. They are also there to 'help' with the remodel. That fiction is exposed when a drive by shooter attacks the house in Martin's absence and the couple, Shelby and Angel Youngblood are revealed as body guards. As they say, the plot thickens.The story goes on about how Roe discovers nasty truths about her husband's past, and his present. Along the way she also goes on the hunt for the fate of the Julius family. Both the Julius family's fate and her husband's confession are rather preposterous.Its as if Harris has only 2 settings in these books: bland and over the top. Well it is my last foray into Aurora's world and I am not sorry to see the last of her.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The mechanics of this mystery was always interesting to follow, and I'm still not sure that I've got an accurate mental picture. Still, it's fun how Harris fuels this mystery with real estate.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I continue reading candy! The writing is better for most of the book. There are some very good descriptions, some are quite good & funny. Again, the wrap up wasn't as good as it could have been. Bad guy caught, tells all. I also seriously contemplated pulling a star from the book because the base mystery was so flawed. Still, it's candy & suspending my sense of belief for one item, though major, didn't seem quite fair. It was fun read.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Finally deciding on a wedding present for each other, Aurora (Roe) Teagarden and Martin Bartell exchanged gifts. Knowing Roe's fascination with true crimes, he gave her a home that had been the site of 3 missing persons almost 6 years ago. After the honeymoon was over, Martin went back to work and Roe jumped right into her investigation mode, trying to find out what had happened to the Julius family, with the help of the new garage apartment tenant, Roe was determined to find out what had happened in her home.Book 4 ….. The mystery of the Julius family has been around for a while, I really expected more out of the investigation process. I was disappointed in the amount of time that was spent on this mystery, it was too easy, too predictable and treated too much as a distraction from Roe’s marriage problems. I didn’t like Martin being put in such a negative light ( I really enjoyed his character - till now), I hope CH can save Martin and their marriage in the near future. The ending of the book was a large let down, the mystery was easily over and the marriage was left in a bit of a questionable position. Dead Over Heels is the next Aurora Teagarden mystery, it is time to track that book down.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    "The Julius House" is the fourth Aurora Teagarden mystery. Aurora Teagarden went for years without dating. Then in a brief amount of time she had a torrid relationship with a police officer which fizzled fast, and another relationship with the town minister, that never truly heated up. Now 31, Aurora is getting married to an older man, Martin Bartell, who she realizes that she doesn't REALLY know. She knows Martin has big secrets but she is ready to marry him anyway. Charlaine Harris never really spells it out for the reader, but I believe that Aurora feels like she is becoming a 'spinster'. She wants marriage, a real relationship with a man so much that she doesn't care that he has secrets as long as she can pretend they don't exist. Shortly after she and Martin marry, Aurora learns some of his secrets. And now Aurora finds herself with a new house, the Julius House, and its mystery of how the family disappeared six years ago. That mystery is a good, entertaining one, but even more pressing is what Martin is hiding. The new characters are Martin's 'friends' who have moved into the apartment attached to the Julius House, and they are intresting as well. Angel is particular was well drawn and I can't wait to see if anything intresting comes from her character. Altogether this was an extremely strong volume to the series. I think I enjoy this one better than then Harris's Shakespeare's series. I also think this series is getting more engrossing as the go along. Recommended to Charlaine Harris fans as well as mystery fans.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Slight spoilers ahead for some of the previous books but nothing you wouldn't see on the back cover of the edition I've read.Aurora is busy planning her wedding to Martin Bartell, still trying to find out what the secrets he's keeping are. She finds the perfect gift for their wedding for Martin and he buys her the Julius House. Six years ago (and a few months) the whole family disappeared one day and Roe is curious, so she begins digging into the story.Martin installs a couple, who also have secrets into the garage apartment. Roe needs something to do and being a housewife is never going to satisfy her. She likes mysteries so they're always going to attract her. I can see her continue in this vein for a long time! Not a bad read, but the mystery was about a third of the book while the wedding and Martin's past were most of the rest. Interesting but only as part of the series.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    For the first 100 pages or so of The Julius House, Aurora Teagarden is too caught up in preparations for her wedding and her new life with Martin Bartell to worry about sleuthing. Roe travels to Ohio to surreptitiously buy the farm Martin grew up on as a wedding present; when she presents it to him, he presents her with the deed to the Julius House. She spends lots of time--and lots of money--fixing the house up. Then Martin presents her with another present: an assistant. Shelby Youngblood is an old army chum of Martin's, fallen on hard times, and he and his wife, Angel, will live in the mother-in-law apartment over the garage. Shelby will work at the plant for Martin, Angel will help Roe in whatever capacity she's needed.There are actually two mysteries in this book: whatever happened to the Julius family, who all disappeared without a trace one morning, and what dark secret in Martin's past is preventing him from being fully present with Roe. How do the Youngbloods--who have many hidden talents between them--fit into it? Roe does an admirable job of solving both mysteries, although we're left up in the air at novel's end as to where the marriage will go.Charlaine Harris' characters, even minor ones, are interesting and lively, and Lawrenceton, Georgia is as much a character as any human being. Her portrayal of small town Southern life--the quirks, the feuds, the nastiness that sometimes simmers and sometimes boils over violently--is spot-on...at least, it seems so to the reader, and isn't that one of the marks of effective writing?A quick, charming read.