The Bone Garden of Ashworth Hall
A murdered stranger leaves Dr. Elias Venn a crumbling estate on the moors , and an inheritance soaked in blood. When Venn arrives at Ashworth Hall, the hearse is already waiting in the fog. Within hours, a body is unearthed from the manor's overgrown bone garden, and Venn finds himself bound by law, conscience, and a curious letter from the dead man to solve the impossible: who has been planting corpses in the family plot for forty years? Teaming with the sharp-witted Margaret Holloway, the methodical Sergeant Finn Calloway, and the reluctant testimony of locals like Arthur Penwick and the Reverend Silas Black, Venn peels back layers of forgery, fraud, and old-money murder. But the estate's secrets have a guardian , a hooded figure the villagers whisper of as The Shepherd, who tends the graves and silences the curious with terrible finality. As more bones surface and a fresh body joins them, Venn must choose between the safe exit his medical career offers and the dangerous truth that the Shepherd is not folklore , and is already watching him. With twenty clues scattered across the moors, twenty chapters to dig, and a clock running out on the living, the only inheritance that matters now is whether the next bone buried will be his.