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The Worm Turns: When Greed Leads to Murder Beware... For the Worm Will Turn

by Paulette Winsted Butt

310 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #05-0205; ISBN 1-4120-5310-2; US$26.00, C$30.00, EUR21.50, £15.00

Rebecca is a wealthy widow and wants her first husband Matthew back. His rejection results in her joining teams with a corrupt police detective to see Matthew falsely indicted for her millionaire husband's murder.

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About the Book      About the Author      Excerpts      Catalogue Information

About the Book

Brandon Goodman is the catch of a lifetime. He's handsome, rich, and dead. His family, friends, and business associates expected to see him return from his honeymoon tanned and smiling. Instead, he was found face down in a pool of his own blood. Now that Rebecca is a wealthy widow, she wants her first husband, Matthew Billingsley, back in her arms again.

But there are two problems: first, Matthew is the prime suspect in the murder of Rebecca's deceased millionaire husband; and second, Matthew is in love with another woman. Rebecca, not happy with Matthew's rejection of her, places the noose around Matthew's throat and starts to tighten it. Will Brandon Goodman's killer be caught and brought to justice before Rebecca, and her accomplice, successfully pins the murder on Matthew? And what (or who), other than rejection and greed, is the driving force that could possibly place Rebecca in this web of deceit to want Matthew - a man who she still carries a torch for - to become a perfect scapegoat for a murder she knows he didn't commit.

This novel flits and flutters like a worm as it struggles to free itself from the spiraling and piercing hook that dangles at the end of the line on a fishing rod. And, as Rebecca manipulates everyone involved - including a corruptive police detective - readers will wonder if the next bend in the road, or the next struggle of the worm, is Dead Man's Curve. One thing is sure; before it's over, the worm will turn.

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About the Author

Paulette Winsted Butt, a former business accountant, resides with her husband in the small town of Springville, just north of Birmingham, Alabama. After leaving a successful 25-year career in the business field, she kept her pen in hand, working with words instead of numbers. She hopes, through her writing, that she will enjoy the success of being an author as much as she did as an accountant.

Coming from a family of eight, Paulette has personally experienced just about all of the emotional conflicts that one can possibly be dealt in life; thus directing her writing technique to provide "serious" fiction. Being an avid reader herself, she hopes to offer her reading audience this novel, The Worm Turns, as her first piece of art; in hopes that this novel will carry them from start to finish by giving them a vivid imagination of all the emotions that we * as human beings - can possibly imagine.

Paulette is currently working on a second novel and hopes that her reading audience will enjoy The Worm Turns so much that they will continue to support her efforts in her writing career by being on the look-out for her next novel.

Paulette is the proud mother of a daughter that resides in Chicago, and a stepson residing in Alabama. She also proudly announces her role of grandmother (July 2004) to a precious grandson - adopted from Eastern Europe. She vows that this grandson was destined from birth to be her grandson, and her angelic daughters' son. And, speaking for herself and her daughter, they feel truly blessed that he has found his way into their life.

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Excerpts

INTRODUCTION

The Worm Turns is a thrilling suspense that implores the act of human behavior in given circumstances; showing how greed and/or intense pressure can drastically change human beings. While forming the external events of punishment, rape, and death, I filtered in events that add friendship, love, and reward, in order to offer an ongoing novel mixed with all types of emotional conflicts that we - as human beings - can possibly ever imagine.

This novel contains two settings - both directed to develop the title of this book. The first setting begins with Matthew Billingsley, the main character, being implicated by his ex-wife (Rebecca) in the murder of her recently married millionaire husband (Brandon Goodman). The story tells of the anxiety and desperation that is put upon Matthew to prove his innocence; along with revealing the driving force behind Rebecca's participation in having her rich husband killed, as well as her reason (other than greed) for implicating Matthew for the murder. The second setting gives the desperate measures that Matthew took - outside of the law - to avenge the rape of his new love (Belinda). And, as the story unfolds, it tells how Matthew, along with the help of Belinda and her close friend Vicky (also a rape victim) carries out the punishment of the two rapist that raped Belinda and, in turn, sets the stage for the bonding of love, sex, and lust that develops between the three of them as they aid Matthew in proving his innocence of a murder he did not commit.

Since this novel does explore demented men who rape innocent women - and bully others - the rape descriptions are vivid; and so are the acts of punishment and violence that befalls the guilty. And when I describe Matthew's actions to avenge the guilty, the extreme measures he takes will keep the readers' thoughts jumping from one impression of him to another... until their completion of this novel.

When the two settings merge (and the guilty parties are revealed and punished) hopefully Matthew, instead of being stereotyped as a vigilante - one stepping outside of the law to be judge, jury, and executor - will be seen as the hero that I have tried to portray. And, along with that, hopefully the reader will readily comprehend what my personal projection of The Worm Turns really means.

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Catalogue Information

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