Barbara Barrett

Barbara Barrett started reading mysteries when she was pregnant with her first child to keep her mind off things like her changing body and food cravings. When she’d devoured as many Agatha Christies as she could find, she branched out to English village cozies and Ellery Queen.

Later, to avoid a midlife crisis, she began writing fiction at night when she wasn’t at her day job in human resources for Iowa State Government. After releasing eleven full-length romance novels and two novellas, she returned to the cozy mystery genre, using one of her retirement pastimes, the game of mah jongg, as her inspiration. There are now nine books in her Mah Jongg Mysteries series, and the first five were issued in digital box form in 2022. Not only has the game of Mah Jongg been a great social outlet, it has also helped keep her mind active when not writing. -Personal website