Deader Homes and Gardens (Southern Ghost Hunter Mysteries Book 4)

Goosebumps Galore with This Story. Verity is a gutsy young woman who makes needed decisions in her life… The fact that she has had some really bad situations arise–like a cheating fiancee and a revengeful ex-to-be-mother-in-law who sued Verity and forced her to plan on selling everything to pay for the wedding she never had, has never quite completely got her down… Even if the town thought she was crazy for not marrying the most eligible bachelor in town and decided not to offer her opportunities to continue in her freelance design business.So when she accidentally met Frankie, whose funeral urn had been given as a gift, and she decided to clean it up a little, thinking it was a vase, she had made her way into an entirely, more intriguing job…maybe she could be paid for being a ghost hunter! After all, she’d been successful in several previous criminal cases, right? So in this next novel, Deader Homes and Gardens, when she gets a call from a client who needs her services, she naturally becomes excited…even if she had no idea what she might be getting into! Yikes! Because, of course, Frankie wasn’t so sure that her new job was actually a job he wanted also!And he wasn’t thrilled to be called upon to immediately head out on a job, when he’d plan to relax… Nevertheless, when Verity takes his urn with her…he must follow…kinda like this gangster has finally been placed in jail, almost!Lee Treadwell, her new client, lives in a small cottage, behind the main house which has not been used for many years. One of his ancestors had been into Egyptology and the house was still filled with artifacts. But as soon as Jack Treadwell came home, he died… Some said a curse had been placed on him after opening a tomb of a lost king… During the years more Treadwells died…It didn’t take long for Verity and Frankie to see at least two women who were still residents in the house… one was thought to be the housekeeper and the other a younger woman… Until, finally, Lee decided not to live in the main house anymore…So why was he calling now?This latest novel was the most scariest in my opinion… After all, add a curse on top of a house full of ghosts, it’s easy to foresee lots of strange doings! And the first strange thing was an old fountain that had not been used for years…Now water was flowing–from the eyes of the statue, not the pitcher from which it would normally flow… and the flow of the water? It was slowly filling up to cover… dozens of doll heads, torn from their bodies!I must admit that I would have loved to be Verity as she walked into a haunted mansion filled with items that, really, had been stolen from Egypt. But can you imagine going through not only a haunted house, but one which had a curse placed on it? OK, I’m probably not brave enough to do it, but it was easy to imagine as more and more of the history of the mansion and the events that were happening now come to light…Spooooky!In order to begin trying to resolve the problem, Verity soon had her sister Melody researching what she could find about the history of the Treadwell family and estate… In the meantime, Verity had to adjust to not being paid for her first job, except in vegetables and fruits from Lee’s beautiful garden…at least, Verity thought, Lucy, her pet skunk, would be thrilled with fresh fruits. And it would save money Verity didn’t really have, for food… Good thing Frankie didn’t eat…much…If you enjoy ghostly shenanigans more than the heartwarming type, then this latest book is for you! The mystery is more complex and provocative and certainly grabs your interest, while producing some delightful goosebumps! Highly recommended and this one would be a good one to start reading if you haven’t already been following the series! But there’s still more to come! Keep watching, ’cause Dog Gone Ghost, a short story, is next.GABixlerReviews

I love reading this series. I tried to make light of the gossip, hoping that with time I wouldn’t care, but deep down it hurt that my greatest fear had come true. I was the town oddball, the flake, and nobody understood that I was really just a good Southern girl aught up with a 1920s gangster ghost. It wasn’t like I wanted to be this way. it had happened when I’d accidentally tampered with the funeral urn of a cranky prohibition-era whiskey runner named Frankie. His urn looked a lot like a vase, and his ashes like dirt. So I’d dumped him out over my favorite rosebush and rinsed him in good. Not knowing the dirt was…him. It hadn’t helped that I’d filled his final resting place with water from the hose and inserted a fat red rose. But that was before I realized my error. Or what rinsing his ashes into the ground would do. My actions trapped Frankie on my property. He couldn’t leave unless I brought his urn with me.My name is Verity Long. I moved back to my home time with the plans of marrying. That didn’t quite work out but I did find myself spending much of my time chasing ghosts and in the arms of my ex-finance’s brother Ellis who is also a deputy sheriff with the Sugarland Police Department. Breaking off my engagement found me not only broke but I also had to sell off everything but the house my grandmother had left me just to make ends meet. Now I’ve just been offered my first paying job. With Frankie’s help the task should be profitable and a breeze. I simply have to rid an 1886 estate called Rock Fall of it’s ghosts. An easy task. Yeah right. No one really explained to me how evil these ghosts could be nor that there was also a curse attached to the house. After all the whole family had died within days of each other. How dangerous could this curse be?Deader Homes and Gardens is Book 4 in the Southern Ghost Hunter Mysteries. I’ve read the three before this one and have had a hard time putting them down. They hold my attention with a combination of humor as well as my mystery and suspense. It is a fun series of books and I’m now looking forward to reading Book 5 – Sweet Tea and Spirits. Each book stands alone but I don’t think you’ll want to miss reading them in order to keep you up-to-par on who is who.

Fast paced, quirky and amusing. I love this book. So much so that I bought – actually bought – the whole series. I have only ever done that once before. I am going straight on to the next book in the series now.