Death of the Keynote Speaker

Death of the Keynote Speaker
230 Pages
ISBN 9781942981244

When Susan Warner plans a conference on the writer Abigail Brewster, New England's Isles of Shoals seem the perfect setting. Members of the Abigail Brewster Society will stay in Star Island's historic Oceanic Hotel. They'll visit Appledore Island, where Abigail summered at Celia Thaxter's nineteenth-century salon for writers and artists, and Smuttynose Island, the scene of a notorious 1873 murder.

But Susan hasn't counted on a twenty-first century killer or a killer storm.

Death of the Keynote Speaker blends a fictional Abigail Brewster with the actual histories of Star, Appledore, and Smuttynose islands. Susan needs to piece together the connections between the past and the present as she searches for a murderer while trapped with her group in a creaky hotel with no locks on the doors.

Sharon L. Dean

About Sharon L. Dean (Ashland, Oregon Author)

Sharon L. Dean

Sharon L. Dean grew up in Massachusetts where she was immersed in the literature of New England. She earned undergraduate and graduate degrees at the University of New Hampshire, a state she lived in until moving to Oregon. In New Hampshire, she taught writing and literature at Rivier University.

After giving up writing scholarly books that required footnotes, Sharon reinvented herself as a writer of mysteries. Her first novel, Tour de Trace, is set on Mississippi's Natchez Trace; her second, Death of the Keynote Speaker, on Star Island off the coast of New Hampshire. Her third Susan Warner mystery, Cemetery Wine, is also set in New Hampshire, this time in a farmhouse that was on the Underground Railroad. A stand alone novel, Leaving Freedom, traces the journey of Connie Lewis from Massachusetts to Florida to Oregon as she develops a writing career, cares for her mother, and searches for the mystery surrounding her mother's brother.

Sharon has just published the first novel in a series featuring librarian and reluctant sleuth Deborah Strong. The Barn is set in New Hampshire where Deborah reunites with a friend she hasn’t seen since they graduated from high school. Together they work to unravel the cold case of their classmate’s death thirty years ago. The Barn is a story of friendship lost and recovered, secrets buried and unburied, and the power of forgiveness.

For more information, see https://sharonldean.com/

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