Candle and Bone

A Gripping Historical Conspiracy Thriller

In a town that has repackaged its trauma into a tourist trap, the past is never truly dead. For journalist Audra Doyle, a new assignment in Salem is a chance to redeem her career after a disastrous misstep. Her podcast, “The Unsettled Truth,” thrives on the dark corners of American towns, but Salem in October is a whole new level of performance.

When a local activist is found dead, staged in a grotesque reenactment of the colonial witch trials, Audra is plunged into a story that is far more than true-crime catnip. Her only lead is Dr. Julian Croft, the city’s brilliant, guarded, and last historian of a cursed lineage. He insists the murder is a theatrical fake, a tourist’s understanding of history, yet he seems to know more than he’s letting on.

Forced into a dangerous alliance, Audra and Julian unravel a web of secrets stretching back centuries, a conspiracy of the city's elite hiding in plain sight. Every clue they uncover, from a strange sigil carved into the victim's flesh to a secret society that never truly died, pulls them deeper into the darkness. Now, with a killer using the town’s bloody past as a weapon and the most powerful figures in the city closing in, Audra must uncover the real record before she becomes the final, gruesome chapter in Salem’s history.