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A Death Out of Print
Paperback
Series: Last Word Mysteries, Book 4
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Aug 15 2026
Pages: 256
Weight: 0.66
Height: 0.58 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
When Wren Lake's most famous daughter dies at her own writing retreat, obituary columnist Nora Tierney is supposed to write the life, not solve the death.
Crime novelist Sloane Garrett left Wren Lake decades ago and turned her sharp eye into a celebrated career. The town kept her books on display, remembered every slight from the interview that wounded them, and still claimed her as their own.
Then Sloane is found at the bottom of the garden steps at Birchwood House.
The county calls it an accidental fall. Old stones. Damp lake air. No witness. No obvious reason to look closer.
But Nora saw the garden before the story settled into print. The wine glass wasn't where it should have been. The body didn't fit the simple account. And the six writers attending Sloane's private retreat all had something to gain, lose, or hide from the woman whose judgment could shape a career.
To write an honest obituary, Nora begins asking ordinary questions. Who was Sloane Garrett, really? What did she promise? What did she know? And which version of her did someone need buried with her?
With June's dry memory at the kitchen table, Megan chasing the news side of the story, and Detective Ray Castillo bound by proof Nora doesn't yet have, Nora follows a trail of manuscript pages, old reviews, guarded ambitions, and unfinished truths.
In Wren Lake, every life leaves a record. This one may point to murder.
A Death Out of Print is a warm, wry small-town literary cozy mystery about old news, summer kitchens, dangerous words, and the cost of telling the truth.
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