From Booklist
Thirtysomething Aurora "Roe" Teagarden is a widow who lives in a small southern town where she works very part-time in the library. It's the sort of place where everyone seems to be divorced from everyone else. Roe finds her stepbrother's wife, Poppy, murdered, and the complicated extramarital escapades of both Poppy and Poppy's husband unfold in an unpleasant fashion throughout the tale. Meanwhile, Roe's teenage half-brother has hitchhiked across the country to Roe to escape his parents' wrangling; Roe's mystery-writer boyfriend, Robin, is bringing his mom to meet her over Thanksgiving; and more and more people turn out to have had reason to wish Poppy dead. Roe is a genuine steel magnolia: even when she suffers from terminal second-guessing of herself, she knows what's proper and what a lady would do--and, mostly, she does it. Entertaining fare, but very different from Harris' darker Lily Bard series. GraceAnne DeCandido
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FROM THE PUBLISHER

On the way to a lunch meeting of her local book discussion group, the Uppity Women, small-town Southern librarian Aurora "Roe" Teagarden is shocked and dismayed to find her sister-in-law, Poppy, lying bloody and dead right outside her own back door. Poppy had her flaws, certainly - she and her husband were having trouble staying faithful to each other - but she didn't deserve to be so brutally murdered.

Investigating a case like this is never easy, of course, given the gossipy atmosphere of any small town, what with Poppy and her husband's extramarital affairs, the local police detective, who also happens to be a former boyfriend of Roe's, and his seemingly unresolved feelings of Poppy, and the need to protect Poppy's family. But Roe is also coping with a burgeoning romantic relationship as well as the sudden appearance of her teenaged half brother. All in all, it's a lot for one woman to have on her plate, even one as together as Roe.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

In Charlaine Harris's Poppy Done to Death: An Aurora Teagarden Mystery, the eighth in this lively cozy series after Last Scene Alive (Forecasts, July 29, 2002), the smalltown librarian looks into a murder too close to home-that of her stepsister-in-law. A particular highlight here is Aurora's local book discussion group, the Uppity Women. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Librarian/sleuth Aurora ("Roe") Teagarden (Last Scene Alive) has problems: after discovering the dead body of her sister-in-law, she tracks down the woman's "missing" husband at his current girlfriend's house, shelters her own teenaged runaway half-brother, and juggles both a successful writer/boyfriend and several would-be love interests. But all this pressure seems to sharpen her sleuthing, for Aurora is nothing if not organized-she even finds a stray (but crucial) gas receipt in her kitchen. Well-established characters, family concerns, wry humor, and small-town busybodies solidify the plot of this delightful cozy. Essential for most collections, especially where Harris's "Lily Barr" series is also popular. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews