The Frost Cipher

Wren Avery steps off the train into Hollow Pines expecting quiet and cold, what she finds is a town holding its breath. A decade ago, a coded letter was sent from this harbor and never decoded. Now its author is dead, the recipient is silent, and a dying man hands Wren a copy of the cipher with a single instruction: solve it. As she begins to map the town’s careful secrets, Wren draws the attention of Calder Marsh, a man who knew the dead woman better than he admits, and Hattie Brioche, whose sharp tongue hides a longer memory. The longer she stays, the more the town seems to conspire against her, Hattie’s guarded sister Mira, the young Ezra Thatch chasing a story no one wants told, the housekeeper Ottilie Penn who knows every locked room, and Dr. Una Vance, whose kindness may be its own kind of mask. Even Posy Grieve and the ailing Old Man Grieve seem to be waiting for Wren to uncover what they cannot say. Each decoded line of the cipher peels back another layer of the town, and each layer draws the danger closer. Wren came to Hollow Pines to escape, but the cipher is beginning to suggest she was chosen for a reason, and that finishing it may cost her everything the town has worked so hard to bury.