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Killer in the Carriage House
Killer in the Carriage House
Killer in the Carriage House
Audiobook6 hours

Killer in the Carriage House

Written by Sheila Connolly

Narrated by Emily Durante

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

()

About this audiobook

After fifteen years away, Kate Hamilton never expected to end up back in her hometown of Asheboro, Maryland, full time. And she definitely didn't expect to be leading the charge of recreating the town as a Victorian village and tourist attraction. But as unexpected as the circumstances are, Kate is ready to tackle them.

The town, on the other hand, is going to take some convincing. Ever since Henry Barton's shovel factory closed down, it's started to seem like there are more tumbleweeds than tourists rolling down Main Street. Kate's ideas are good, but ambitious-and her friends and neighbors are worried that finding the money for them would push the town even further into debt.

Luckily, Kate and historian Joshua Wainwright may have come up with a solution. The Barton mansion, meant to be the centerpiece of the Victorian village, has proven to be a veritable goldmine of documents about the town's nineteenth-century history, and Kate is convinced the papers hide something of value. When a dead body turns up in the town library-mere hours before the documents were meant to arrive there themselves-Kate begins to worry that the papers spell danger instead of dollars. It seems that someone doesn't want these forgotten secrets coming to light, and they'll do whatever it takes to keep Kate quiet . . .
LanguageEnglish
Release dateJul 9, 2019
ISBN9781541485587
Killer in the Carriage House
Author

Sheila Connolly

SHEILA CONNOLLY (1950-2020) published over thirty mysteries, including several New York Times bestsellers. Her series include the Orchard Mysteries, the Museum Mysteries, The County Cork Mysteries, and the Victorian Village Mysteries. She was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Society of Mayflower Descendants.

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Reviews for Killer in the Carriage House

Rating: 3.6086956956521736 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

23 ratings4 reviews

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Kate Hamilton left her hometown of Asheboro, MD, but after working for a large hotel, Kate is laid off when the hotel she managed is bought by a hotel chain. Kate has returned home only to find that the little town is nearly bankrupt and needing a plan to revitalize. Kate takes on the job of developing a plan to bring the town back to its former glory.but as usual trouble seems to be in abundance.There is a murder, of course, but it doesn't seem to be the center of the story. The majority of the book centers around the search for Henry Barton's papers which would hopefully fund the revitalization of the town.I will look for the next in the series, hoping that there is more of a mystery and a little to do lists.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Kate has been coerced into trying to save her hometown from fading away. Her vision is to recreate the town as it was nearly a century ago, as a tourist attraction. But first, she has to get the townspeople to agree, and she has to find a way to fund it. The characters are engaging, and the story line of saving the town is quite interesting, but as a mystery, it falls a bit short. There is a body, an apparent murder victim, that turns up after about 75 pages, but solving the circumstances of the death never seems to be the focus of the story. Most of the book centers on Kate and her plans, and finding the old documents that would support her theories. The solution to the death is covered in less than than two pages and what mystery there is, is over and done with in the blink of an eye. The book continues with a town meeting, explaining Kate’s vision. An interesting tale but hardly a real mystery.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I can hardly believe that this is only the second book in the series. The first book, Murder At The Mansion, did such a phenomenal job of setting up the characters and the backstory that you feel as if, in this book, you are coming home and visiting with old friends and places. The overarching background story concerns Asheboro, Maryland – a very small town that has gotten lost in the migration to larger cities. The only industry has closed down and the younger people are all moving to the larger cities for work. This leaves the town with few residents and no money to sustain itself. In a desperate, last-ditch effort to save the town, they are looking are re-making the town into a Victorian Village in the vein of colonial Williamsburg, VA.Kate Hamilton is busily trying to figure out how to convince the town merchants to rip out all of the modernization in their storefronts and change them back to their original Victorian configuration. Most of the changes from the last hundred years has been superficial and left the original structures intact. She also needs to find another tourist draw to the village and is hoping to find that in the remainder of the Henry Barton papers. In the last book, they found valuable and historic letters to Henry from Clara Barton, but that won’t be enough to draw tourists to their town. So, they are hoping that there will be additional historical documents of significance in Henry’s papers. Those things are very, very important because the town doesn’t have the money for any of the projects and if something of importance and value isn’t found, the town will just wither and die. So Kate has her hands full.As Kate, Josh and Carroll ready the documents from the Barton mansion to the town library, Kate has a young man drop in at the closed library asking to visit the family section of the library. Kate tells him that the library is temporarily closed because they don’t have a librarian and that he’ll have to ask permission from the town leaders before he can come in. The young man leaves and Kate soon locks up and leaves the library. When she returns the following day with her friend Carroll, it is to discover the body of the young man who had just visited the day before.Kate calls Detective Reynolds of the State Police and tells him what has happened. Nobody knows who the young man is – and his death wasn’t natural or accidental. Kate and company try to leave the murder investigation to Detective Reynolds while they focus on the documents – but – things keep happening that lead them to believe that the murder is somehow associated with the documents and they begin to wonder if there aren’t more documents stored somewhere else. What other secrets could there be? Is there something that would garner the town the money it needs to save itself? What was the young man looking for? Who could have killed him and why? This is a fun read with excellent mysteries – murder and other. I also liked the introduction of the historical and research information included because it made the scenarios very believable. All-in-all, it was a thoroughly enjoyable read and I can’t wait for the next book.I’ve read other series by the author and she seems to bring any romance elements into it very slowly – much to my dismay. I love a good mystery, but it also needs to have a good, strong romance element in it for me. So far, the romance in this series is tenuous and I’m getting antsy about it. Is Josh the one? The real, strong connection doesn’t seem to be there so far. Is it Ryan? Unlikely, but possible. Someone else? Who knows. I’m ready for it to be settled.I voluntarily read and reviewed an Advanced Reader Copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I received an ARC of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This did not affect my opinion of the book or my review itself.Kate Hamilton has returned to the small town she grew up in an attempt to save it from complete bankruptcy and thus essential extinction. She comes up with a plan to take the town back in time and turn it into a Victorian village for tourists to visit. But on top of all the usual hurdles, Kate also must deal with a dead body, boxes of documents, and the possibility of romance.Small town settings typically work really well for cozy mysteries, and the town of Asheboro is a good fit for the story being told. Having a small town for a setting also keeps the action in one place, meaning all kinds of people must interact and the suspect list is centralized.Connolly has a really nice writing style for this genre. It's light enough for a cozy, but able to handle the darkness of a murder mystery.Unfortunately, there was a lot I didn't like about this book.The main problem for me is it's a mystery where the actual mystery doesn't start until over a quarter of the way into the book. And even when the mystery does start, it feels like it's essentially a last-minute addition to the book. The story is far more centered around historical research than the murder, and the solution to the murder feels like a throwaway afterthought.While I know this is an ARC, and thus not a finished work, there were a ton of really glaring typos, including a whole chapter repeated (the beginning of the chapter was changed to present a different scenario, but then the rest of the chapter was completely duplicated as a new chapter). This was really distracting and took me out of the story.I've enjoyed other of Connolly's cozy mysteries, so I'm not sure what happened with this one, but I definitely wouldn't recommend it.