Shakespeare's Landlord

Cleaning woman Lily Bard is trying to build a new life for herself in Shakespeare, Arkansas, after some traumatic events elsewhere. She keeps herself busy with her housecleaning jobs, body building and martial arts. Even so, some nights she just can't sleep because of the memories.

One night, she discovers someone she doesn't recognize hauling something to the arboretum across the street from her house. She notices because they are using her garbage can cart! After they leave and go into the nearby apartment building, Lily decides to investigate. She finds the body of Pardon Albee who owns the apartment building and sold Lily her house. Not wanting to get involved, she makes an anonymous phone call the Police Chief Claude Friedrich.

She show more doesn't want to get involved, but she cleans for most of the residents of the apartment building among others in town and her curiosity is engaged. But she does more than investigate. She's also beginning a romantic relationship with her almost-divorced karate instructor and having confrontations with a drunk who lives in the apartment building and is supposed to clean the church Lily is also hired to clean.

I enjoyed getting to know Lily and gradually learning about her traumatic past. Julia Gibson did a good job with all the Southern accents and also did a good job with the pacing of the story. show less

It turns out that you can no more judge a book by its title than by its cover.

I'd been put off reading the Lily Bard books because the combination of Lily Bard and the word "Shakespeare" in the title of each novel reminded me of the twee and sugar-coated Aurora Teagarden books, which I had not enjoyed.

I'm glad I overcame my prejudices and listened to the first Lily Bard novel.

There is nothing sugar-coated here. Lily Bard is a survivor. Her old life has been stolen from her. She regards her current life as successful if she gets through each day quietly, without attracting any attention.

Lily is strong, focused, observant but tight-lipped. She earns her living cleaning houses in the small town of Shakespeare. She comes alive when she is show more practising Karate. partly because of the joy of doing something so demanding well and partly because it stands between her and any future threat to make her a victim.

Her life changes when, walking off her insomnia in the middle of the night, she notices somebody using her garbage can cart to dump a body. Despite her best efforts to protect the anonymous life she's built, events and her own strong will pull Lily deeper into solving the murder, even at the cost of revealing her own past.

The plot of "Shakespeare's Landlord" works as a conventional "whodunnit" mystery. Two things raise the book well above the average for this genre. The first is that Lily Bard is a wonderful creation: strong but vulnerable, proud but wanting to stay in the background, curious but discrete, and afraid but brave. She seemed real to me. A woman to be admired, whether there is a mystery to solve or not. The second is Charlaine Harris' prose: she does not waste a word, does not indulge in extravagant descriptions, but the result is still a rich evocation of people and the town they live in.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I'm looking forward to the rest of the series. show less

Lily Bard, resident of Shakespeare, Ark., for four years, has PTSD. That’s putting it mildly. Readers won’t find out why until more than halfway through the book, but it’s immediately obvious that the ever-vigilant loner Lily has run away from something. Something really bad. But what kept me glued to this book was not her brokenness but her intelligence, powers of observation and — despite her instincts to keep a very low profile — curiosity. That author Charlaine Harris provides the novel with a twisty mystery was simply icing on a most delicious cake.

Harris — thanks to HBO’s True Blood — remains better known for her Sookie Stackhouse series, set in New Orleans; however, there’s plenty in Shakespeare, Ark., for a show more mystery aficionado to love. Five stars and a promise to myself to continue the series. show less

It's been on my TBR pile for ages—a recommendation—but I didn't realize it lacked the paranormal elements present in Charlaine Harris’ other works. My bad. I still loved it. I usually read fantasy/paranormal fiction, but now that I'm invested in Lily Bard's mysteries and characters, I feel compelled to read more.
So we get Lily, a strong woman recovering from a terrible trauma she prefers to keep secret. She seeks a fresh start in the small town of Shakespeare, Arkansas. Lily's journey of self-discovery begins when she stumbles upon a dead body in her new apartment building. This unexpected turn of events thrusts her into the role of amateur sleuth, forcing her to confront the secrets and dangers lurking beneath the surface of her show more seemingly quiet new life.
I like how quirky some of the characters are. The story is a blend of mystery, humor, and Southern charm, leaving you eager to dig deeper into Lily's world and unravel the secrets that lie ahead. I'm off to read the next installment. show less

I may have gone on a Charlaine Harris kick after I started the Southern Vampire Mysteries. This woman can write and does it SO well. I never feel like the book is lacking, ever. She is able to develop a character set that you love and can't get enough of.

I like Lily, I love how she is forced to open her shell in this book and that she has a relationship with people whose lives remain independent like hers. I am crazy about how she forced independence on her life and chooses to live with the world around her an arm's length away due to her past. She is relatable, and you can understand her social life's distance and her animosity towards people who harm others. It makes sense due to her past.

I am not really a fan of Marshall, except that show more he opened Lily's shell. I prefer Claude as a person and as a match for Lily. I kinda wish that his story would come out more, but I like him. I like that he doesn't jump to conclusions and that he trusts her judgement. I don't like that Marshall came into Lily's life and created the chaos that his ex wife, Thea brought upon them in a jealous rage. I also hate Tom David...he's a pig.

This book was honestly fun, and I hate mystery novels. This book made me want to read the Numbered Bountyhunter books by Janet Evanovich that my mom loves so much. show less

This is the first of a dark but “cozy” mystery series by the author of the Sookie Stackhouse books that is set in Shakespeare, Arkansas. The main protagonist, Lily, wanted to pick up and start her life over, and settled on this town because her last name is Bard.

Lily, thirty-one, was the victim of a sensational kidnap, slashing, and rape case in Memphis four years previously. She now seeks a quiet life where she hopes she can live anonymously. She cleans houses, does errands for the elderly, and takes self-defense classes three times a week. She works out at both a gym and at home, trying to dispel some of her anger and fear, and to become someone who could never again be successfully attacked by anyone. At night, she takes long show more walks before she can go to sleep without frightening dreams.

When Lily, on one of her walks, sees a body dumped in the park close to her house, she fears that telling the police could bring too much attention to her and result in everyone finding out about her past. Thus, she decides to try to solve the crime herself, and of course, almost gets killed in the process. But in addition, she finds she can actually get close to a man again, as she begins tentative relationships both with her teacher of goju karate, and with the chief of police.

Evaluation: This is the first in a series of books about Lily Bard, whom Harris portrays with a keen and compassionate sense of the psychology of victims of sexual abuse crimes. Like other women in Harris’s books, Lily is tough but eminently likeable. Neither violence nor sex is portrayed with gratuitous details, and in spite of some dark aspects, this book feels light and warm. It also has a full complement of the eminently realistic eccentric characters with whom Harris peoples her books. Reading a book by Charlaine Harris is like meeting with your favorite neighbor in a small Southern town over coffee and cookies in her kitchen and having a cozy chat with lots of juicy gossip. I look forward to reading other books in the series. show less

I have one piece of advice to anybody interested in Shakespeare's Landlord: buy it, borrow it, whatever, just read it as soon as possible. Put it at the top of your pile. You'll be glad you did.

Lily Bard is one of the most compelling and, frankly, admirable heroines I have ever come across. She's got a very dark past, and from the very first page it's clear how much sheer will it has taken for her to make a new life for herself. Lily is independent, blunt, ass-kicking, solitary, and smart as hell.

The Shakespeare books are mysteries, and they're good ones, but the reason to read them is to watch Lily Bard's character grow and change. Charlaine Harris has a tremendous ability to infuse the most quotidien events with incredible depth, a show more true master of the 'show don't tell' school of writing. Her characters are both ordinary and monumental, and she writes about the South in a way that (really!) bears comparison to Faulkner and Toni Morrison.

The Shakespeare series in particular picks up on a lot of very delicate issues and tackles them head on: questions of race, class, and gender end up tangled in the crimes Lily has to solve. For women, in particular, thinking about how Lily has changed in response to her own past can be a real eye-opener. show less