Her plans died when she got back to the house and finally got round to opening the morning paper. She idly flicked over the front page, breaking off a piece of artichoke ciabatta. Darkliners Author Dies in Freak Accident seemed to separate itself from the rest of page three and rise towards her like a macabre magic carpet.

“No,” Lindsay breathed as she started to read.

(London, AP)

Penny Varnavides, best-selling author of the Darkliners series of novels, died yesterday as the result of a freak accident while on a trip to England. She was killed when a bottle of beer exploded in the kitchen of the apartment in London, where she was living temporarily.

The body was discovered by a neighbor, alerted by the open door of her apartment. It is thought Ms. Varnavides had just returned home when the accident occurred.

According to police sources in London, Ms. Varnavides bled to death when a shard of glass from the explosion penetrated her carotid artery. The unusually prolonged hot summer weather this year in England, where some areas have not had rain for over five weeks, is being blamed for the accident.

A police officer said, “The beer in question was apparently a kind which contains live yeast. In the warm weather, it must have started a secondary fermentation, and so the pressure inside the bottle would have increased enormously. The slightest vibration could have triggered the resulting explosion.

“It was a freak accident. Ms. Varnavides was alone when it happened. If someone else had been present, it’s possible she might have survived. But there are no suspicious circumstances.”

Ms. Varnavides was in London to complete research on her latest book, said to be a departure from her award-winning Darkliners series of fantasy novels for adolescent readers. She was rumored to be working closely with her British publishers, Monarch Press, on a “women in jeopardy” thriller aimed at the adult audience.

A member of the Monarch editorial team said, “We’re all devastated by Penny’s death. She was in the office only hours before she died. It’s a tragic loss.”

Ms. Varnavides, 42, grew up in Chicago and studied at Northwestern and Stanford. After graduating, she worked in the computer industry. Her debut Darkliners novel, The Magicking of Danny Armstrong, was first published in England because she couldn’t find a US publisher. But its runaway success was repeated all over the world and she became a full-time novelist ten years ago. She was unmarried and lived in San Francisco.

The apartment where the tragedy took place is the home of a British academic who exchanged it with Ms. Varnavides’ duplex in Noe Valley for the summer.

The piece of bread never made it to her mouth. Lindsay sat down suddenly on a kitchen chair and reread the article, tears pricking her eyes. Mutton slumped against her leg, butting his head against her sympathetically. Lindsay’s hand went to the dog’s head in an automatic movement, rubbing her fingers over the silky ears. Her other hand traced the outline of the newsprint. Penny was dead.