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BOOKS BY SARAH GRAVES
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 NAIL BITER: A Home Repair Is Homicide
Bantam
ISBN: 0553803107
(December 2005)
Jacobia "Jake" Tiptree took the dangerous plunge from Wall Street power broker–to homeowner! Now the do-it-yourself enthusiast is about to discover that her own dream house is built on a foundation of murder.
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 TOOL & DIE: A Home Repair Is Homicide
Bantam
ISBN: 0553585789
Mystery
288 pages
(December 28, 2004)
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Jacobia "Jake" Tiptree traded her power-broker life for a run-down dream house in peaceful Eastport, Maine. But the do-it-yourself enthusiast is learning that no matter how carefully you build your home, murder has a way of slipping in through the cracks....
It's a bright June afternoon and old-house-fixer-upper Jake Tiptree is driving through downeast Maine on an unusual errand. Read More
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 MALLETS AFORETHOUGHT
Bantam
ISBN: 0553803085
(March 2004)
It's Eastport's most notorious landmark: the old Harlequin House. Named for the disgraced physician Chester Harlequin, it was used as a hideout for gunshot gangsters and their molls during Prohibition's heyday. Now fixer-upper enthusiast Jake Tiptree and Harlequin's only living descendant, Ellie White, are refurbishing the mansard-roofed mansion to host the local Historical Society's upcoming gala. But when stripping down old wallpaper reveals a secret door to a room containing not one but two corpses, Jake and Ellie once again find home repair leading to homicide.
One of the bodies is a skeleton dressed in 1920s flapper chic. But the other is that of real-estate mogul Hector Gosling, and in his pocket is a paper bearing the single word "Guilty." The less-than-scrupulous tycoon has been poisoned, and when it's learned that the offending substance is the poison that Ellie's husband George has been using to kill red ants, he is immediately taken into custody. Then it develops that George had recently accused Gosling of a scheme to scam George's vulnerable old aunt out of her life savings --- and George out of his inheritance.
With George held for murder, Jake and a pregnant Ellie swing into action. In between Ellie's Lamaze sessions, baby showers, and CPR classes taught by Jake's ex-husband Victor, the two amateur sleuths must sift their way through a trail of seemingly contradictory clues. Then another corpse surfaces and suddenly Jake and Ellie realize they must find this killer fast. A clever culprit is not only building an airtight case against Ellie's husband. He --- or she --- is planning to nail everyone who stands in the way.
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 UNHINGED
Bantam
ISBN: 0553582275
(November 2003)
It began with the mysterious disappearance of Harriet Hollingsworth--Eastport's snoopiest resident. Everyone is convinced the old busybody bolted out of town to escape her creditor--everyone except Jake and her best friend Ellie who know Harriet would never leave home without her most prized possession. But before Jake and Ellie can persuade police chief Bob Arnold to open an investigation, they'll need to come up with proof more sinister than a pair of abandoned binoculars.
Just as Jake starts poking around for clues, things suddenly take a troubling turn for the worse. A suspicious accident nearly kills her teenaged son, Sam, and her husband, Wade, just misses getting his head blown off. Jake is prepared to attribute these incidents to a spate of bad luck--until another "accident" leaves a visitor to Eastport unmistakably dead.
Most perplexing, all this mayhem coincides with the unexpected arrival of a man from Jake's past: a former New York City cop. Harry Markle claims he has unintentionally brought an unwelcome guest into Eastport: a crook determined to knock off everyone with ties to Harry.
Twenty-four hours ago, Jake's only worry was fixing her broken-down gutters and downspouts before the big storm swept into town. Now, everything seems to be falling apart all around her. Jake knows from experience that the truth is usually as messy and complicated as do-it-yourself remodeling. As it becomes chillingly clear that appearances in this quaint community are more misleading than ever, she'll have to find a way to lure a homicidal maniac into the light--before he nails another victim.
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 WRECK THE HALLS
Bantam
ISBN: 0553582267
(October 2002)
People hardly ever lock their doors in Eastport. So when Jake and her best pal, Ellie, arrive at Faye Anne Carmody's kitchen door, they knock and walk right in. But though Christmas is just two weeks away, what they find is far from festive: a dazed Faye Anne covered with blood, and her no-good husband --- the town butcher, Merle --- nowhere in sight. Nowhere, that is, until Jake discovers his body --- tidily wrapped in his own butcher paper....
It doesn't take long for news of the murder to race through the small town, and just about everyone has a theory about the grisly crime that has robbed Eastport of its least-liked citizen. But while police chief Bob Arnold considers it an open-and-shut case, Jake and Ellie aren't convinced of Faye Anne's guilt.
Jake has enough going on in her life without trying to investigate a murder. After all, she's just married her longtime love, Wade, and the pair plan to spend the winter rehabilitating the paint-encrusted windows in Jake's old house.
But Jake has to admit that there are a lot of details that don't add up: for example, Faye Anne's complaint that she was being stalked, and blood-splattered evidence at the crime scene that just doesn't make sense. Then there is the diary that Faye Anne's secret, sometime boyfriend claims is hidden somewhere in her house. Could Faye Anne's own journal be the key to unlocking an even more fiendish murder plot, or is her double-crossing lover trying to frame her?
When yet another Eastport citizen turns up dead, Jake realizes the murderer's trail began long before the night Merle Carmody died. But what keeps eluding her and Ellie is the motive behind the mystery. The truth is so close, they can almost taste it --- but can they stop the shrewd killer before he chisels another victim's name onto a tombstone?
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 REPAIR TO HER GRAVE
Bantam
ISBN: 0553582259
(July 2001)
Jacobia Tiptree and her teenage son are used to their Eastport, Maine, home attracting more than its share of houseguests. This year Jake is hoping the plaster dust will keep them away while she finally gets her gem of a fixer-upper into shape --- from doorknobs and chandeliers to leaky pipes to ghostly phenomena.
But when the charming and mysterious Jonathan Raines appears on her doorstep --- and then just as suddenly disappears --- remodeling the house becomes the least of Jake's problems. Could Jonathan's disappearance have something to do with his quest for a cursed violin --- the one that local legend says was hidden by a long-ago owner of Jake's house before he too vanished without a trace?
Soon Jonathan's grief-stricken girlfriend arrives downeast, and Jake needs to strip Eastport's past of its idyllic veneer --- before a killer paints her very dead indeed!
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 WICKED FIX
Bantam
ISBN: 0553578596
(April 2000)
Do-it-yourself killer fixes small-town thug...
For ex-Wall Streeter Jacobia Tiptree and her teenaged son, Sam, September promises tranquil days winter-proofing their rambling handyman's special of a home in Eastport, Maine. But there's nothing idyllic about this Down East autumn. For starters, the return of truly vicious native son Reuben Tate stirs up the town. And when somebody slits Reuben's throat and hangs his corpse on the cemetery gate, the police trace a bloodied scalpel to surgeon Victor Tiptree--Jacobia's former husband. Yet Jake knows her troublesome, trouble-prone ex is capable of just about anything except murder. Proving that, though, is another matter.
Eastport is packed with tourists and former residents for the annual Salmon Festival--and Jake soon realizes any Eastporter, past or present, has motive for Tate's murder. To nail the real killer, Jake and her best friend, Ellie White, must probe a past as rotten as crumbling clapboard, while a secret hatred builds toward a series of murders even more brutal than Reuben Tate himself....
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 TRIPLE WITCH
Bantam
ISBN: 0553578588
(June 1999)
Jacobia Tiptree saved her sanity--and her son, Sam--the day she abandoned Wall Street for the seacoast village of Eastport, Maine. In her new home, a charmingly dialpidated fixer-upper, she looks forward to repairing old radiators and restoring antique shutter for years to come. But Jake's hopes of serenity are dashed when tiny Eastport erupts in a crime wave.
Hometown bad boy Kenny Mumford--old flame of Jake's best fiend and fellow sleuth, Ellie White--is the first victim. When his corpse washes up on the beach at Prince's Cove, all evidence points to a drowning...except the bullet hole in his forehead.
When bodies begin littering the Maine scenery, Jake and Ellie learn that the ante on Kenny's small-town antics has been upped. Add a pair of unwelcome arrivlas--Jake's ex-husband, and an unscrupulous New York ex-money mogul--and you've got a blueprint for more deadly danger than one house can hold.
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 THE DEAD CAT BOUNCE
Bantam
ISBN: 055357857X
(September 1998)
dead cat bounce n. Stock market jargon for a small, temporary rise in a stock's trading price after a sharp drop.
Since she bought her rambling old fixer-upper of a house, Jacobia Tiptree has gotten used to finding things broken. But her latest problem isn't so easily repaired. Along with the rotting floor joists and sagging support beams, there's the little matter of the dead man in Jake's storeroom, an ice pick firmly planted in his cranium.
Not much happens in her tiny Maine town, but that's about to change. Jake's unknown guest turns out to be a world-famous corporate raider, local boy turned billionaire Threnody McIlwaine. When Jake's best friend, quiet and dependable Ellie White, readily confesses to the murder, cops and journalists swarm into snowbound Eastport.
Jake smells a cover-up, and begins poking into past history between McIlwaine and Ellie's family. But someone doesn't like nosy neighbors...and Jake's rustic refuge may become her final resting place.
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© Copyright 2004 by SARAH GRAVES. Reprinted with permission by Bantam, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved.
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