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The Ashes of Crooked Lane
Paperback
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Jul 29 2026
Pages: 164
Weight: 0.43
Height: 0.35 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
Some buildings keep their history in ledgers. The Lantern & Quill kept one in the wall.
Crooked Lane's Open Doors Weekend should mark the end of months of dust and scaffolding at Charlie Vale's bookshop. Instead, the renovation turns up a soot-darkened tin box beneath the cellar stair-three old ledgers filled with aliases, medicines, and secret routes through Bramblewick, from the years before Wren owned the shop.
Before Charlie can read more than a few lines, someone sets fire to The Lantern & Quill. The blaze is contained, but the heat and hose water break open a sealed section of the cellar-and human remains hidden there since the civic unrest of 1972, when the bookshop sheltered tenants and students under curfew.
The ledgers tell of a frightened boy who once betrayed the cellar's refuge, then spent a lifetime trying to repair the harm-and of the promise Wren inherited to keep his name safe. Now a respected man would rather burn the refuge to the ground than let that promise fail. As Charlie and Detective Jonah Reed trace the modern fire through access logs and frozen ash, the old cellar yields a harder question: what does a home owe the dead, and what does it owe the living?
The Lantern & Quill Mysteries, Book Eight. A cozy about refuge, inheritance, and the promises buried under an old building. A complete standalone.
Perfect for fans of Kate Carlisle's Bibliophile Mysteries, Jenn McKinlay's Library Lover's Mysteries, and Ellery Adams's Book Retreat Mysteries.
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McGillick, K. J.
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