Unlocking digital life of dead tough

SAN JOSE, Calif. — When a landlord discovered the body of best-selling novelist Marsha Mehran last year in a seaside Irish cottage, the 36-year-old had left behind a trove of literary work.

Some of it, such as the international hit Pomegranate Soup, can be found in libraries and bookstores around the world. Other writings were stuck in the Internet cloud, including a password-protected account that only Google knew how to open.