Irregardless of Murder — Ellen Edwards Kennedy

Amelia Prentice, a forty-something high school English teacher comfortable in her predictable routine, suddenly awakens in the middle of a tragedy. She has tripped over the corpse of a former student in the safest of places, the Public Library. Now nothing of her cozy small town life in New York's Adirondack region will ever be the same. Amelia, whose pet peeve is the use of the non-word "irregardless," determinedly returns to the classroom wearing the badge of her grisly encounter -- a huge bandage on her forehead -- and tries to pretend nothing has happened. Soon, though, she is forced to deal with the facts: the victim's death wasn't simply a tragic accident and she is now a murder suspect.