Sentenced to Death

A Booktown Mystery #5

by Lorna Barrett

Berkley Prime Crime

Mystery, Mystery: Cozy

June 7, 2011

ISBN-10: 0425241866

ISBN-13: 9780425241868

Available in: Paperback

Read an Excerpt

Sentenced to Death
by Lorna Barrett

It’s Founder’s Day in Stoneham and the whole village has turned out to celebrate in the square, including Tricia’s friend and festivities organizer Deborah Black. As everyone watches Deborah give the opening speech, a small aircraft crashes into the village gazebo, killing both Deborah and the pilot. While the Sheriff’s Department is convinced that it was an accident, Tricia has a feeling that there’s more to the story. And when she reads between the lines of the case, what she finds is worse than the most sinister whodunit ...



Lorna Barrett's Bio

Lorna Barrett is the nom de plume of author Lorraine Bartlett.

Lorraine's other alter ego, L.L. Bartlett, writes psychological suspense and the Jeff Resnick mystery series.

She's done it all, from drilling holes for NASA to typing scripts in Hollywood, and lives a life of crime in western New York.

Her first sales were to the confession magazine market. In all, she's sold nine short stories, including one on Amazon Shorts.

The Booktown Mystery series concerns a mystery bookseller who deals in rare, out-of-print, and used books. What does "L" know about bookselling? A little. She, too, has sold used books.

Authors are split on the whether "used" bookstores are good for building their careers. From a reader's perspective, they're a great way to find new authors or find out-of-print books by their favorite authors. Sadly, authors make no money from the sales of used books—and this is a business where unless you're Stephen King, Nora Roberts, or John Grisham, you aren't going to make enough money from your writing career to cover the mortgage and groceries. So it's a catch-22.

Tricia Miles, the owner of the Haven't Got a Clue bookstore that's the heart of the Booktown Mysteries, also sells new books, thus helping current "real" authors (who are mentioned in the Booktown Mysteries) stake out some kind of living, as well as keeping "alive" the works of long-dead authors.