The Drowning Season

When a girl's body surfaces tangled in the kelp at the mouth of Harrow Bay, Margot Calder drives back to the only home she ever knew, a fog-choked fishing town where granite cliffs drop into grey water and old families keep old wounds sealed tight. Sheriff Dale Mercer calls it an accidental death, but the clues refuse to cooperate: a set of audio recordings left behind by the victim, a reverend who hears too much in confession, and a faded photograph of a boy who drowned thirty years ago. As Margot pulls at the threads, questioning a grieving sister, a reclusive coroner, a journalist with his own buried past, she finds the same names surfacing in every generation's tragedy. The Ashbys, the Calders, and the Briggses have been circling each other for decades, and the season has come to collect. With the next storm bearing down on the cove and the tide dragging fresh evidence toward the breakwater, Margot faces a reckoning: exhume the truth her family helped bury, or watch the water rise over Harrow Bay once more.