Three Causeless Blows

The dead don't lie. The living do. And the lake remembers everything.

At thirty-eight, Cerys Vaughan has buried her marriage, quit her job as a coroner's officer, and inherited a crumbling hill farm in the Welsh mountains from a great-aunt she barely knew. She plans to sell it.

Then, on her first night, she finds a body at the edge of the lake: a man drowned, but dry.

She also finds Cadell ap Rhys, a rider of the Wild Hunt who has been collecting the souls of the dead for four hundred years. This soul should be his. It's gone. And he's sure Cerys knows where.

One rash invitation over her threshold binds him to her house until she can unsay it. Now the woman who trusts no one and the immortal who can't afford to care must find a killer who knows the old ways, before the new moon takes more than a soul.

But Cadell's oath carries a price. Whatever he loves, his hounds will hunt.

A slow-burn, enemies-to-lovers romantasy steeped in Welsh myth, with a murder mystery at its heart. Book one of The Black Mountain Bargains.

You'll find:

• An older heroine with a sharp mind and a coroner's eye
• A centuries-old Wild Hunt rider bound to her kitchen
• Forced proximity, a slow burn and a first kiss worth the wait
• Faithful Welsh folklore: the Lady of the Lake, corpse candles, the Tylwyth Teg
• A fair-play murder mystery with a satisfying solution

Contains death and grief, references to a child's drowning, and infidelity in the heroine's past. Low spice: one on-page kiss; no sex scenes.