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Her mother left her a bookstore filled with stories... but the most dangerous one wasn't on the shelves.
The letters begin, "Dear Reader, I'm Sorry." But what unforgivable secret was Rose Ashwood trying to confess?
For fans of Lisa Jewell and Shari Lapena comes a haunting psychological suspense novel where inheriting a beloved small-town bookstore means unearthing secrets somebody wants kept buried.
Clara Ashwood never expected to return to the sleepy, suffocating town she fled years ago. But when her estranged mother, Rose, dies in a sudden accident at the family's independent bookstore, Clara is drawn back to handle the estate-a duty she intends to perform with detached efficiency. The store, Ashwood & Sons, is a relic filled with dusty first editions and the ghosts of conversations Clara and her mother never had.
Her perfunctory visit takes a chilling turn when she discovers a hidden key inside her mother's favorite book. It unlocks a drawer containing the first of many cryptic, unsent letters, all addressed to "Dear Reader" and signed with a heartbreaking apology. The letters hint at a dark secret Rose carried for twenty years, connected to the baffling disappearance of a local teenage girl, Eliza Grey, back in 1998.
Haunted by her mother's fragmented confessions and the town's determined silence, Clara is pulled into the mystery. Aided by a reclusive ex-journalist who knows Ashwood's secrets all too well, she begins to decipher the intricate puzzle Rose left behind-a trail woven through hidden alcoves, annotated classics, and the very landscape of the town. But the deeper Clara digs, the clearer it becomes that Rose's "accident" might have been anything but.
