The shop at 17 Veil Street had no sign. This was deliberate. The people who needed to find it would find it, drawn by word of mouth passed in undertones at kitchen tables and whispered across pharmacy counters when the pharmacist had nothing left to offer. The people who did not need to find it … Read more
11 min readMaren Solvik had not set foot on Heksholmen in fourteen years, and she had planned to extend that record indefinitely. The island — a spur of black rock jutting from the Norwegian Sea like a clenched fist — held nothing for her but memories she had spent her adult life learning to outrun. The lighthouse. … Read more
10 min readThe church of St. Crispin the Martyr had been bombed in 1941, rebuilt in 1953, and was now, in the wet autumn of the present day, losing its windows. Not to vandals or weather, but to something more insidious: the lead cames that held the stained glass panels were crystallising, turning brittle with age and … Read more
10 min readThe map arrived on the morning of the winter solstice, wrapped in oilskin that smelled of centuries and sealed with wax the colour of an old bruise. Dr. Linnea Strand found it wedged beneath the door of her office at the Blackmore Institute for Cartographic Studies, which was itself wedged into a narrow Georgian building … Read more
9 min readThe bells of Saint Elara had been silent for eleven years when Margaux Delacroix arrived to restore them. The church stood at the edge of the village of Briarthorn, where the Somerset levels met the Mendip Hills in a disputed borderland of mist and ancient grievance. It was a building of considerable beauty and even … Read more
10 min readThe advertisement had been precise in its requirements: Wanted — a woman of steady nerves and scholarly disposition to catalogue the library of Ashworth Abbey. Room, board, and generous compensation provided. Apply in writing to Mr. Damien Ashworth, Ashworth Abbey, North Yorkshire. Vivienne Marlowe had steady nerves. She had catalogued the private collections of three … Read more
11 min readWhen restorer Iris Calloway buys crumbling Blackmoor House, she discovers it comes with a resident: Edmund Blackmoor, the ghost who built it in 1874 and has spent forty years watching it decay. As she restores the house room by room, guided by his century-old knowledge, she finds herself falling for a man on the wrong side of mortality.
8 min readWhen Clara Ashton accepts a governess position at Thornfield Hall, she expects a difficult child and a gloomy house. She finds a brilliant girl, a locked west wing, and a master whose weariness hides a man desperate to be seen. The house has secrets. So does he. And Clara has never met a question she was willing to leave unasked.
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