A WOMAN NAMED BARD

ONCE UPON A TIME ...

There was a woman named Bard.

Lily Bard decided to bury herself after a season of violence, brutality, and media scrutiny branded her not just physically but mentally.
 

Where to go? 

Her finger hovered over the map and stayed over the city of Shakepeare, Arkansas. 


What better city for a woman named Bard to find the peace of oblivion?
 

Never again will she be helpless.  She studies martial arts. 


 Never again does she want her scars gawked at.  She becomes a cleaning lady, someone no one notices as anyone of worth.
 

She cannot sleep.  She jogs at night until she is so exhausted that fitful sleep finally comes.
 

One night, she spots a figure pushing a garbage trolley ... HER garbage trolley.  That person dumps a huge garbage bag into the town green.
 

She waits until the person is gone and investigates.  Opening the bag, she shifts the huge burden under the street lamp to get a good look:
 

It is her landlord ... dead.  Her fingerprints are on the bag, on the man's clothes.
 

Lily doesn't care who did it, but when the police and local community start pointing fingers in her direction,

she realises that if she doesn't unmask the killer, her new life will not simply crumble.
 

It will end.
 

Unless the real killer ends her life first.
 

The first of five sterling mysteries written surprisingly well by Charlaine Harris.  Read the slow progress of Lily's bruised soul into a whole woman once more.

 

QUOTES

 

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“I have lived one step away from losing my mind for years. I am quick and accurate in spotting unstable streaks in others.”
 

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The children were probably not demonic.  But massed together like this, they were definitely hell.
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