The Aldermont Drawings
When a reclusive archivist is found dead in Blackthorn harbour with a folio of coded drawings clenched in his fists, archivist Maren Ashford becomes both curator and suspect. The Aldermont Drawings, sketches that shouldn't exist, point to the island's oldest families and, disturbingly, to her own. Twenty years after she was sent away from Blackthorn, Maren's return to settle the estate coincides with the deaths. Working alongside police investigator Callum Wren, she begins sifting through the collection: drawings that seem to map a chain of old rivalries, half-kept confessions, and a buried ledger of debts. Father Dominic Hale retreats behind his confessional silence. Dr. Pell insists the evidence is circumstantial. And Maren's own family, her sister Lena, her niece Eleanor, and her ailing mother, thread through every page in ways she never suspected. Each sketch she authenticates draws danger closer to the people she came home to protect. A canister vanishes from the archive. A witness disappears mid-sentence. The drawings don't just illustrate Blackthorn's past, they indict it. Now Maren must choose: surrender the folio and let the old families seal the truth, or finish what the archivist started, knowing the exposure could end her sister's marriage, her family's name, and the only home that ever called her back.