Sheila Connolly was such a great storyteller. And, it's evident in Killer in the Carriage House.

She has woven well-crafted characters that make you feel as if you personally know them. Even the storyline is captivating. I truly enjoyed reading this book and am certain will read it over and over again in the future.

In the first book we meet Kate Hamilton who returned to her hometown to help out her best friend with a town situation. In this addition to the series, Kate is once again back in Asheboro, Maryland, but it might be for good. She recently lost her job when the hotel chain she worked for was bought out by a foreign company. She is hoping to help the town transform itself into a Victorian Village to bring in more tourists and keep them afloat. She is working with papers and manuscripts that have been found in the Barton mansion as well as the office in the old Barton factory. They are moving them to the closed library for safety, as well as to have room to examine them. What they didn't expect to find in the library was the body of a man that recently arrived in town. Who is he and why is he in Asheboro? Will this derail the plan for the town? Was it an accident or was he killed?

Kate, Josh and a few others are working hard to try and convince the town's movers and shakers that this plan is viable and will help save the town. Examining the paperwork and trying to highlight the history is necessary, but some information they find could shake up a few people and a large company. The characters are realistic and I like that. They have jobs and other responsibilities which makes them easy to identify with. The murder is not the real mystery in this story and as more information is revealed, it becomes a bit harder to figure out who killed the man in the library. I had some suspicions, but that changed a few times. I enjoyed this mystery and liked learning more about early electricity and what it was like to live just after the Civil War. I enjoyed this story and am ready to start the next one.

I received this book via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. I enjoyed this short story set in Asheboro Maryland. I live in Maryland so that was a nice surprise. The characters were fun, and I figured out who the killer was before they announced it which is always nice.

Kate Hamilton left her hometown of Asheboro, MD, but after working for a large hotel, Kate is laid off when the hotel she managed is bought by a hotel chain. Kate has returned home only to find that the little town is nearly bankrupt and needing a plan to revitalize. Kate takes on the job of developing a plan to bring the town back to its former glory.but as usual trouble seems to be in abundance.

There is a murder, of course, but it doesn't seem to be the center of the story. The majority of the book centers around the search for Henry Barton's papers which would hopefully fund the revitalization of the town.

I will look for the next in the series, hoping that there is more of a mystery and a little less to do lists.

Killer in the Carriage House

by Sheila Connolly

Lisbeth invites her friend Kate to Asheboro to try to save the town. The only industry, a shovel factory, has long since closed its doors. Kate’s only work experience has been in managing large hotels, but she thinks she could possibly turn the town into a replica of a Victorian village. The source of the idea is the Victorian mansion left to the town by the deceased factory owner.

There are many unanswered questions involved in this project. Kate needs to get the townspeople, especially the shopkeepers, on board. She needs to research the history of the period and develop resources to help put the plan into action. Meanwhile, she finds herself in the middle of a murder mystery when she discovers the body of a young man she encountered the day before at the library. She also wants to learn more about the factory owner and his connections with both Clara Barton and Thomas Edison.

The storyline of Killer in the Carriage House is acceptable, but I had a hard time with the main character Kate. She isn’t believable to me as a project manager. She wastes a lot of time just waiting for things to happen and then complains that there are so many things to do. She also says that in her former position she was told what she had to do and was never in charge of initiating events. That does not seem in line with a hotel manager’s responsibilities. Her personal relationships are weak and not well defined.

The plot is better developed than the characters. I liked the plot resolution but was surprised that certain characters’ presence in town hadn’t been questioned earlier.

I would like to extend my thanks to netgalley.com and to St. Martin’s Press for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

Rating: 3/5

Category: Mystery

Notes: Although this book is the second book in the Victorian Village Mysteries, it is the first book in the series for me. It was easy to pick up with the plot and characters and move into the tale.

Publication: July 9, 2019—St. Martin’s Press

Memorable Lines:

But to have someone—or in this case, something like an entire town—hand the whole unwieldy mess to me and say, “Here, make this nice, and don’t spend too much money”? I was left floundering.

“So, are you going to tell me about this new murder?”
“You mean the body in the library? Sounds like an Agatha Christie novel, but unfortunately it’s true.”

“You got tossed into a difficult situation, one that kept changing about every ten minutes. You did the best you could.”

This was a solid second book. Kate pitches her idea to “save the town” to the villagers and of course stumbles onto a body. I like how we find out more about the late Barton. Will Kate be able to help the police find the bad guy and come up with a financial plan to revamp the town? Of course she can!

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of this book, which I voluntarily chose to review.

I love the idea of turning a town into what it looked like in the past. Honestly, though, I wasn’t sure how this series was going to progress after the first book and still stay interesting. I was pleasantly surprised. The premise of Thomas Edison selling his electricity patents and Henry Barton buying them was a joy to read. I’m ashamed to say I have not taken the time to look this up and see if there is a smudge of truth to this or if creative artistic license was used. Either way, it made for interesting reading.

I am eagerly anticipating the third book in this series to see where we go next in the development in the town.

I received a complimentary copy from the publisher, St. Martin’s Press, through NetGalley. Any and all opinions expressed in the above review are entirely my own.

This was a fun, cute cozy mystery! I love the theme throughout, and I will definitely be continuing with the series.

Okay mystery, but fun to check in with Kate and Asheboro.

Like several other books I've recently read, this was less a whodunit, and more about the lives of the protagonist, Kate Hamilton, and her friends in Asheboro. Even the side mystery dealing with the patents was sort of lacking; at least, I felt like the "surprise" resolution should have been obvious to the main characters much earlier in the book. It was fun to see everyone digging through the papers, almost like going on a treasure hunt. I'm also looking forward to see how the reinvention of Asheboro as a Victorian Village continues.

This is the second book in the Victorian Village Mystery series. I had not read the first book but I was able to jump right in to this. The book centers around Kate Hamilton returning to her home town. There is a suspicious death of a newcomer to town. I enjoyed reading this book but found it slow at times.
Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher and author for this ARC.

“Killer in the Carriage House” earns 5/5 Document Dilemmas...Engaging Page-Turner!

I am a fan of Sheila Connolly’s writing style from her County Cork and Relatively Dead Mysteries, so I was very eager to read the second book in her Victorian Village Mystery series....I was not disappointed and easily joined in as a newbie to this series. With a first-person narrative, Sheila uses descriptive language and clever banter to illustrate the setting and characters, tone and personalities. The story is quite clever from Kate Hamilton’s perspective as she works to recreate Asheboro, Maryland, into a Victorian Village tourist destination in the effort to save the town from urban extinction. However, the town leaders worry about the expense to renovate, and the discovery of several historical documents may not be enough to help fund their projects. But, then there’s a dead body which doesn’t fit in with their Victorian design! I highly recommend this book!

My rating: 2 of 5 stars, it was okay.

Book 2 in the series.

I liked the first book a bit better but, I'm not liking this series as much as I usually like Ms. Connolly's other work. Kate isn't super likable, and in this book, the mystery seems more like filler in the story of the town's history.

However, it took me a few books to warm up to Mara in Ms. Connolly's County Cork series, so I am willing to give the next book a chance.

I thought that this was a nice follow-up to book 1 in the series (Murder at the Mansion). The characters are realistic and I like watching the characters and their relationships grow. The process of watching a dying town be turned into tourist destination is interesting. And the more we know about the mansion, the more interesting the story becomes. This is a well-written mystery that kept me reading late into the night.

This is the 2nd book in the Victorian Village Mystery Series by author Sheila Connolly. I have read the first in series and highly recommend the series. Thank you to the publisher and to Net Galley for the opportunity. My opinions are my own. I am a fan of the author's writing and always enjoy her many series. This is a exciting new series with the first book setting the stage for future murder mysteries in a Victorian Village. I highly recommend this series.


Kate Hamilton has returned and decided to stay in Asheboro. She is working on a project to restore a mansion that the town had purchased. The town is failing financially and has asked Kate to restore the mansion to help attract tourists. She is hoping to turn Asheboro into a Victorian village if she can find funding for her project. She faces many challenges with the project and is hopeful her p[an to restore the village and boost tourism will be successful.

When Kate is working on the mansion rebuild she finds exciting letters written by Clara Barton and other old documents worth cataloging. She enlists the help of a historian, to go through the many historical papers in the attic. She wants them moved to the town library for safe keeping and to be evaluated. . When Kate and her friend arrive at the library they find a break in has occurred and a murder.

The murder is not the center point however it is a pleasing mystery with varied clues throughout the story. The restoration of the village and mansion are a fun part of this series and set the stage for future books. I look forward to how the town grows under Kate's proposed development and how she manages to restore the mansion.
I enjoyed the history of Asheboro and the supporting charcters A very enjoyable addition to the series and I look forward to the next in series.

Killer in the Carriage House is the first book that I have read by Shelia Connolly. I enjoyed the author's writing style as well as the story. While, I have not read the first book in the series, I was able to follow the story line. I will be looking for the previous book in the series so that I can catch up on the series. I found the book to have a nice pace.

I haven't read the first book in this series but that didn't make it difficult to follow along with characters. I'm definitely interested in reading more of this series. The characters are fun and I'm enthralled with the idea of a Victorian village.

While I really enjoyed the first book in this series, this one fell a bit flat for me. I felt like the mystery itself was more of an after thought than the focus of the book, which instead centered around historical research for the Victorian village. While I love history, that wasn’t what I was looking for in my cozy mystery. There also wasn’t much of a reason to care about the victim or the murder so it made me lose interest. I also didn’t really buy the end of the story. The mystery wasn’t really wrapped up very well. I’m hoping that book three in the series will do a better job but I don’t recommend this one.

Kate Hamilton has returned to the small town she grew up in an attempt to save it from complete bankruptcy and thus essential extinction. She comes up with a plan to take the town back in time and turn it into a Victorian village for tourists to visit. But on top of all the usual hurdles, Kate also must deal with a dead body, boxes of documents, and the possibility of romance.

Small town settings typically work really well for cozy mysteries, and the town of Asheboro is a good fit for the story being told. Having a small town for a setting also keeps the action in one place, meaning all kinds of people must interact and the suspect list is centralized.

Connolly has a really nice writing style for this genre. It's light enough for a cozy, but able to handle the darkness of a murder mystery.

Unfortunately, there was a lot I didn't like about this book.

The main problem for me is it's a mystery where the actual mystery doesn't start until over a quarter of the way into the book. And even when the mystery does start, it feels like it's essentially a last-minute addition to the book. The story is far more centered around historical research than the murder, and the solution to the murder feels like a throwaway afterthought.

While I know this is an ARC, and thus not a finished work, there were a ton of really glaring typos, including a whole chapter repeated (the beginning of the chapter was changed to present a different scenario, but then the rest of the chapter was completely duplicated as a new chapter). This was really distracting and took me out of the story.

I've enjoyed other of Connolly's cozy mysteries, so I'm not sure what happened with this one, but I definitely wouldn't recommend it.

In the first book of the series, Kate Hamilton returned to Asheboro, Maryland at her friend's request. Asheboro is a dying town and Kate's friend thought she might be able to help. She got a boost when she and a visiting historian found letters from Clara Barton.
Now, she's trying to convince the town to go along with her plan to set it up similar to Williamsburg but more early 1900s. That's when the town was built and a lot of the stores on Main Street still have their fixtures underneath all of the updates.
Along with that, she and the history professor are working with an archivist to move all of the papers from the local manor into the town's library. The library that has been closed since the librarian was found to have been... well, not keeping it up correctly in the last book. A young man interrupts her work one day looking for his relatives. The next morning, he's discovered dead after having broken into the library. Suddenly, Kate is in the middle of another mystery.
Unfortunately, the mystery is a little thin. There is more about the set up for the town and papers than anything else which is good because that's more interesting than the killing. We don't get to know the victim at all, the reason for the killing isn't shown until the last quarter of the book, and the killer are barely involved in the story.

Three stars
This book came out July 9th
Follows Murder at the Mansion
ARC kindly provided by St. Martin's Press and NetGalley
Opinions are my own

Sheila Connolly’s Killer in the Carriage House is the second book in the Victorian Village Mysteries. I had not read the first book but had no problems following along. I do plan on reading the first one.

After fifteen years away, Kate Hamilton never expected to end up back in her hometown of Asheboro, Maryland full time. And she definitely didn’t expect to be leading the charge of recreating the town as a Victorian village and tourist attraction. But as unexpected as the circumstances are, Kate is ready to tackle them.

The town, on the other hand, is going to take some convincing. Ever since Henry Barton’s shovel factory closed down, it’s started to seem like there are more tumbleweeds than tourists rolling down Main Street. Kate’s ideas are good, but ambitious—and her friends and neighbors are worried that finding the money for them would push the town even further into debt.

Luckily, Kate and the handsome historian Joshua Wainwright are two very determined people who may have come up with a solution. The Barton mansion, meant to be the centerpiece of the Victorian village, has proven to be a veritable goldmine of documents about the town’s nineteenth-century history, and Kate is convinced the papers hide something of value. When a dead body turns up in the town library—mere hours before the documents were meant to arrive there themselves—Kate begins to worry that the papers spell danger instead of dollars. It seems that someone doesn’t want these forgotten secrets coming to light, and they’ll do whatever it takes to keep Kate quiet…

The characters are well developed, and the protagonist Kate and her friends are likeable. The setting of a small historic Victorian town is detailed and I could picture it in my mind.

As another reviewer stated you know the murder will be solved but the fascinating mystery in this series is one that continues to be open ended: will Asheboro be able to pull off transformation into an authentic Victorian Village. I love the history in Connolly's books and this is no different.

I had only read one other Sheila Connolly’s Mystery and it definitely made me a fan! I highly recommend this book to anyone that loves mysteries.

I requested and received an Advanced Readers Copy from the publisher and NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own.