Showing results by author "Helen Ashford" in All Categories

Money can buy silence, but it can’t bury the truth forever. It’s Los Angeles, 1922, where Rosa Murphy, a skilled nurse with a stubborn streak and a mixed heritage, accepts a temporary post at the mysterious Blackwell Crest estate to care for its ailing matriarch, Estelle Doherty. She expects long days of quiet duty. Instead, she finds herself in the middle of a family legacy steeped in corruption, betrayal, and dangerous secrets. David Doherty—handsome, volatile, and heir to the Crudelot Oil fortune—has spent years squandering his life in parties and scandal. Now, with his health ...

What if the thing that saves your child opens a door you’re not ready to walk through? When author and journalist Bennett Carlton takes his young family to a London park, he doesn't expect to watch his four-year-old son vanish beneath the cold surface of a lake. Nor does he expect the mysterious woman who rescues him—a stranger who moves through the water like she belongs to it. Charlene “Charlie” Morrow is a psychiatrist with a past she doesn’t talk about and a gift she tries not to use. But the lake doesn’t care about her boundaries. Neither does the whisper of a little blonde...

Paris, 1890. One city, two worlds—where a private affair becomes public knowledge. Sir Edward Hastings, an English aristocrat weary of duty and drowning in ennui, retreats to the glamour and shadows of Belle Époque Paris. There, beneath the gaslamps and golden salons, he encounters a woman who unsettles him more than he dares admit: Louisa Avigny, a gifted seamstress with quiet strength, haunting beauty, and a past stitched with sorrow. Louisa has known loss, solitude, and the hard edges of survival. Widowed and alone, she makes her living by the precision of her needle and the dignity ...

Some wounds don’t fade. Some killers don’t stop. Dr. Charlie Morrow thought she had escaped the haunting forests of Mattawa, where her last case left her scarred in body and spirit. But when the Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrest a local eccentric for the murders she narrowly survived, Charlie is called back—this time not as a victim, but as a consultant. Haunted by nightmares and drawn by a truth she can’t ignore, Charlie returns to Canada to confront the man who may—or may not—be the serial predator who has eluded capture for years. And an RCMP investigator weighed down by ...

The mountain never forgets. And sometimes, it demands reckoning. In the remote hills of Biddle Creek, winter has left more than silence in its wake. Reverend Crain is gone, the church doors are shuttered, and the faithful wander without a shepherd. Father Thomas Doherty, still haunted by his past in Ireland, offers quiet guidance from the old mission, but his role in this fractured community remains uncertain. When a fiery revivalist returns, claiming to be redeemed, the town is drawn once more into the grip of charismatic faith and spectacle. Snake handling, speaking in tongues, and ...

Some stories don’t end—they echo. After the mountain takes its due, what remains behind must learn to live again. Winter has broken in Biddle Creek, but peace is slow to return. Meg Taylor—the healer, the witch, the woman once bound to the Mountain—has vanished into mist and legend. In her absence, young Lizzie Dermott carries the heavy weight of the grimoire and the hopes of a bruised community. As whispers of healing rise from fevered homes and the crow circles above, some begin to believe the Red Woman walks again. Father Thomas Doherty, changed by grief and wonder alike, ...

Sometimes the Mountain watches in silence. Sometimes, it demands judgment. In the heat of another Appalachian summer, the Mountain is stirring again. Poisoned moonshine is killing miners, a child bride grieves the loss of her baby, and the fragile peace bought in blood is beginning to fray. Meg Taylor, once a wartime nurse and now the reluctant witch of Biddle Creek, is pulled back into service—not by spells or superstition, but by the sick and dying who have no other hope. But as she seeks the source of the toxic liquor, she finds something far worse: indifference. Indifference from a ...

In the shadowed hollows of the 1920s Appalachian Mountains, something ancient is stirring—and it remembers her name. War nurse Margaret “Meg” Taylor returns to her late grandmother’s mountain cabin seeking refuge from grief, disillusionment, and the ghosts of the Great War. But the land has not forgotten her bloodline. Long-whispered stories of a “witch woman” resurface, and strange signs begin to circle the woods: missing children, healing roots that grow where they shouldn’t, and a scarred figure in the trees who watches…but does not harm. As the townspeople turn toward ...

The victim was playing dead. Until a killer made it real. Halloween night, 2013. A ghost tour winds through the ancient streets of Chester. One actress collapses in a pool of stage blood—only it isn’t fake. Laurel Hart dies in full costume, in front of an audience that applauds the performance. Twelve years later, the case is still cold. No motive. No suspects. No justice. Enter Dr. Charlie Morrow, a forensic psychiatrist with a controversial past and a psychic gift she doesn’t advertise. Recruited into a newly formed cold case unit, Charlie is tasked with uncovering the truth behind ...

Before the Reckoning, there was the Rising. In the wake of the Civil War, the prairie town of Coldwater, Kansas is still finding its shape—restless, divided, and perched on the edge of change. For Will Mertens, a quiet German immigrant carving a life from the unforgiving soil, the war never reached his doorstep—but its consequences are everywhere. When Mary Harper, the defiant daughter of a local matriarch, falls into his life, their union will challenge every unspoken rule of Coldwater’s rigid social order. As the years pass, Will and Mary build something rare: a family, a farm, a ...

Some call for coal. The Mountain calls for blood. In the winter of 1923, the mining town of Pine Lick is held together by sweat, silence, and superstition. At its edge stands Meg Taylor—herbal healer, spiritual guardian, and reluctant witch of Biddle Creek—shouldering the unspoken weight of other people’s needs. When a deadly mine collapse tears through the community, Meg must confront not only the physical cost of greed, but the unraveling of her own faith in the Mountain she once trusted. As survivors bury their dead and rumors swirl through the hollows, Meg retreats from the world,...

A priest in exile. A healer with no faith left to give. And a mountain that remembers everything. In the autumn shadow of 1921, Meg wants only peace. A year has passed since she reclaimed her grandmother’s cabin and began healing the wounded lives of those who still whisper her name with both gratitude and fear. She is no longer just the “witch” of Biddle Creek—but the quiet guardian of a mountain that watches, waits, and sometimes answers. When Father Thomas Doherty arrives from Ireland to take up a long-abandoned mission, he brings with him a rigid faith, a broken soul, and a ...

Some inherit the land. Others fight to belong to it. It is 1895, and the town of Coldwater, Kansas stands at a crossroads. The railroad has finally arrived, promising growth, commerce, and the slow unraveling of the old ways. For Joshua and Rachel Mertens—the children of Alice and Will—this new era brings both opportunity and quiet rebellion. Joshua dreams of industry, determined to build a new mill that will place Coldwater on the map. But his vision faces resistance from townspeople wary of change—and from those who question his growing partnership with Freyde Weinberg, a brilliant ...

A Novel of Love, Loss, and the Fight to Belong 1870s Kansas—On the windswept frontier, where the railroad has yet to arrive and old divisions still run deep, Coldwater is a town caught between its past and an uncertain future. When Alice Payne arrives, she is seeking more than a teaching position. Haunted by loss and driven by quiet defiance, she hopes to forge a new life in this divided town. But her independence and intellect quickly draw suspicion from the town’s elite—and one man’s unexpected attention. Will Mertens is a widowed German immigrant burdened by grief and the weight ...