Leigh Perry Books In Order

Publication Order of Family Skeleton Mystery Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Leigh Perry is a pen name for bestselling author Toni LP Kelner who has co authored and won many awards with Charlaine Harris. As Toni, she has written more than eleven titles in the “Where Are They Now” and the “Laura Fleming” series of novels in addition to several short stories.

The author grew up in North Carolina and Florida but has been resident in Massachusetts for the past two decades. Since she had graduated with a degree in English, she would go on to work as a technical writer for more than a decade.

Her first novel as Toni came out in 1993 at a time when e-books were unheard of and manuscripts used to be printed on paper. Facebook was then a literal book used by these students at Harvard and web pages were very much a novelty almost no one needed.

However, while a lot in writing has changed, Leigh has changed right with it and knows how to use all of these awesome technologies to further her writing career.

After writing for a while as Toni LP Kelner, she fell into cozy mysteries even though all she wanted to do was write fantasy and science fiction. However, Leigh Perry never could finish anything in those genres until she heard of a friend of hers that was done with a manuscript and was busy pitching publishers.
It was at this time that she decided that she had to do something and looking through her works in progress found that the most promising one was a cozy. It was about a young woman who is summoned back home when her father is mysteriously injured.

There was no hint of fantasy or science fiction elements in the work and so she made it a murder mystery by killing the grandfather. Over the years, she read a ton of mysteries from the likes of Dorothy Sayers, Arthur Conan Doyle, Ngaio Marsh, and Nero Wolfe.

She got started on modern mystery to see what her true voice was and found cozy mysteries were what she liked best. Since then she has written in all manner of genres from historical, noir, urban fantasy, the funnier and darker even though she is happiest writing cost mysteries.

Leigh Perry was once upon a time asked why she chose to write a story about an ambulatory skeleton and gave a very interesting answer.
She replied that she was only writing what she knows by following the adage write what you know. Since humans are all skeletons beneath the tendons, flesh and all the other stuff she decided it was proper to write her debut on that topic.

In all seriousness though, she has asserted that she doesn’t know why she decided to write about Sid, a talking and walking skeleton. Perry had the idea for the story in 2004 and told her husband about it before she wrote a few chapters that she sent to several of her beta reading friends to see if there was a story there.
Three of her friends believed she could make a novel out of it but after initial planning and research, she got distracted with other projects. It would not be until 2011 that she picked up the project as she was pitching the idea of a new series to her editor and agent.
While she had more than eight ideas submitted, both the editor and agent liked Sid’s story the most.

“A Skeleton in the Family” by Leigh Perry introduces Sid, the teenage daughter of Georgia Thackery. The latter had been forced to move back into her parents’ house after the local college offered her a job.

It was the only sensible thing to do and it is not long before she is settling and reconnecting with old friends from her childhood and young adulthood years. One of the skeletons in the Thackery’s closet is Sid, who has been living with them for the longest time.

But no one in the family has any clue where he is from and how he came to live among them as a skeleton. Sid talks, walks, and makes bad jokes as he tries to avoid getting eaten by Georgia’s dog. He even manages to convince Georgia to let him out of the house.

He goes with Georgia to an anime convention in his own skeleton costume, where he sees a woman that reminds him of his past. More than ever, he wants to know how he died and their investigation may unearth a killer in their midst that has not yet changed his ways.

Leigh Perry’s second novel “The Skeleton Takes a Bow” continues to follow the skeleton Sid. He had been hiding in the Thackery home for years but finally got his moment in the spotlight. He is supposed to star in a high school production of “Hamlet,” where he is to be a prop.

He will be making use of his head, which will be acting out the part of Yorick. Madison, who is the daughter of Georgia Thackery, carries the skull to school every morning and brings him back at night. But then he is inadvertently left at school one night and overhears someone being killed in cold blood.
However, the mystery is that no one is missing the following day once everybody reports to school. Sid is sure of what he heard even though Georgia thinks it is just his imagination until they find a body. Now both Sid and Georgia will need to keep cool heads while playing sleuth and sticking their necks out to catch a clever killer.

“The Skeleton Haunts a House” by Leigh Perry is a novel set during the Halloween holiday season. Sid the skeleton could not be happier as he finally gets a chance to run ebony elbows with people and get some fresh air. For this reason, he does not mind going out as Scooby-Doo in a full body dog suit to Halloween Howl.

He cannot wait to rummage through the haunted house but gets real rattled when they discover a real dead body. The police arrive and quickly seal off the crime scene but Sid instantly drops her Halloween suit and poses as a skeleton.

It is a mysterious murder bu as long as Sid is in the house he thinks why not investigate and find the man that had committed a most heinous murder.