Charlaine Harris writes about more than Sookie Stackhouse. Check out Aurora Teagarden and Lily Bard.
Charlaine Harris is best known for her Sookie Stackhouse novels, which the television show, True Blood is based on. I never got into those and prefer her other mysteries. Two I have enjoyed in the past are the Aurora Teagarden Mysteries about a librarian who is also an amateur sleuth. The stories are clever and her role in finding and solving the deaths is often questioned. Poppy Done to Death is the eighth in the series; when her sister-in-law Poppy is found murdered, amateur sleuth Aurora Teagarden teams up with Poppy's boyfriend, a local police detective, to solve the case, in spite of complications caused by their own past relationship.
I also have enjoyed the Lily Bard Mysteries about a house cleaner and martial arts expert who lives in the small town of Shakespeare, Alabama (don’t worry; you do not need to be a Shakespeare lover to enjoy these books). The books are quick, clever reads that are a lot of fun, but often leave you guessing to the very end. In Shakepeare's Trollop, Lily Bard searches for a killer after she stumbles upon the body of Deedra Dean, the promiscuous tramp of Shakespeare, Arkansas, in her car on a deserted back road.
Both series have a number of books, but reading them in order isn't necessary. They all work very well as individual stories.
Meredith @ Central