The Bone Garden of Hartwood
A dying judge's midnight summons drags Garret Thorne back to the Hartwood estate, a crumbling mountain mansion he swore never to return to. Judge Cornelius Hartwood, patriarch of a powerful dynasty, is fading fast, but he won't speak until his estranged son stands at his bedside. The reason becomes clear the moment Garret arrives: in the rose garden beneath the frozen earth, a groundskeeper has unearthed human bones wrapped in rotting velvet. Detective Mira Voss is called to investigate, but the family closes ranks around her, Elara Hartwood guards her father's secrets like a dragon hoards gold, while Councilman Marcus Webb works the angles from the shadows. A masked figure known only as the Assailant prowls the estate at night, and Dr. Arthur Vance's quiet demeanor hides something the coroner's report won't explain. As Garret digs into his father's past, he crosses paths with the enigmatic Raven, the enforcers called the Ironclad Operatives, and the old family friend Silas Crowe, whose loyalty is never what it seems. A museum curator in town is selling documents that should have been destroyed years ago, and a young woman named Mags knows more than anyone realizes. With Senator Harlan Beck's name surfacing in connection to a decades-old disappearance, the bones in the garden threaten to bring down more than one powerful house. Garret can unearth the truth and destroy his family, or bury the past and live with what's buried inside him.