Tag
April 14, 1755 AD
Walking home through Edinburgh's shadowed closes, Elspeth cannot shake the feeling of being watched—a suspicion sharpened when a cloaked stranger brushes past wearing perfume she recognises from the Emporium. As the familiar stones of her childhood guide her home, she realises the girl who left that morning is not the one returning, and some secrets must be kept even from those she loves most.
LockedApril 14, 1755 AD
Home should be sanctuary. The hearth crackles, beef stew steams in chipped bowls, and Violet's laughter rings through rooms too long shadowed by grief. Elspeth shares what she can of her first day—colour-shifting silks, a proprietress with storm-grey eyes—careful to omit the darker truths. But one careless name undoes her caution. The silence that follows tells Elspeth everything her mother's careful words confirm: some wolves wear silk, and they have already found their way to the supper table.
April 14, 1755 AD
Elspeth is entrusted with helping to alter an extraordinary gown of colour-shifting Venetian silk for a grieving noblewoman, but when Agnes reveals that a previous apprentice vanished after asking too many questions, she begins to understand that the Emporium's true currency isn't fabric at all. The dresses, it seems, are merely wrapping paper for secrets worth more than all the silk in Christendom.
March 30, 2026 AD
A seventeen-year-old girl walks through the door of her family's tenement, and her nine-year-old sister nearly knocks her off her feet. It's been one day. She left this morning for her first day of work at an Edinburgh fashion house, and she's come back a different person. She's spent the last twelve hours learning to press silk and keep secrets. She's watched a noblewoman pass hidden documents through a dress fitting. She's been told that the last apprentice who asked too many questions simply vanished. She's walked home through Edinburgh's closes with the distinct feeling of being followed, a stranger's perfume clinging to the air behind her. And now she's standing in a cramped room that smells of peat smoke and beef stew, with her little sister's arms around her waist and the weight of a world she can't explain pressing against the inside of her ribs. She's going to have to talk about her day. She's going to have to lie. That's the moment.
A twelve-year-old girl stepped between a merchant and a starving child in Edinburgh's Grassmarket, and paid for the stolen apple herself, and thought nothing more of it. An old woman at the edge of the crowd marked her face. It was the first time Elspeth Stewart would be watched for being good. It would not be the last. By the end of her life she would know exactly what a girl like that was worth — and she would have spent the one inside her many times over.
As Elspeth settles into the workroom and learns the delicate art of pressing silk, she discovers that Moira MacKenzie knows far more about her family's disgrace than she had hoped to hide. When a noblewoman's scandalous visit reveals the Emporium trades in secrets as readily as silk, Elspeth begins to suspect she has stepped into something far more dangerous than a dress shop.
LockedApril 14, 1755 AD
Some fabrics hold more than thread. When Elspeth is entrusted with altering a gown of colour-shifting Venetian silk for a grieving noblewoman, Agnes warns her that a previous apprentice vanished after asking too many questions. The dresses, she says, are merely wrapping paper. But wrapping paper for what? By the time the candles burn low on her first day, Elspeth will have her answer—and discover that some knowledge can never be unlearned.
April 14, 1755 AD
Elspeth Stewart arrives at Edinburgh's most prestigious fashion house to begin an apprenticeship that could save her struggling family from ruin. But as she crosses the threshold of Moira MacKenzie's Emporium, she quickly realises that silk and secrets are woven together in equal measure—and discretion may prove as vital a skill as any stitch.
LockedApril 14, 1755 AD
The Edinburgh Elspeth walks through tonight is not the city she left this morning. The same closes, the same cobblestones, the same crooked lantern at Advocate's Close—yet everything has shifted, rearranged by knowledge she cannot unlearn. A cloaked stranger trails expensive perfume through the shadows. Mrs Callum remarks that her father would be proud. And somewhere between the Emporium and home, Elspeth realises she has become two people: one who will lift the latch and smile, and one who will never cross that threshold at all.
LockedApril 14, 1755 AD
In the Emporium's workroom, irons smooth silk whilst secrets smoulder beneath the surface. Agnes Fraser knows what Moira MacKenzie knows—and Moira knows everything. When Lady Drummond arrives with a guest who is decidedly not her husband, Elspeth glimpses the true currency that flows through these elegant halls. Some secrets are merely scandal. Others are dangerous enough to kill for. Learning to tell the difference may be the most vital skill she ever masters.
LockedApril 14, 1755 AD
The household sleeps. Violet dreams beneath thin blankets, Katrina reads past the hour she should, and Effie's breathing has finally steadied into slumber. But Morag Stewart has been waiting—and when her hand touches Elspeth's shoulder by the darkened window, ten months of silence finally break. By the time the embers die, the portrait above the mantel will show a stranger's face: a man who paced until dawn after certain visitors, who burned every letter he received, whose death may have been no accident at all.
April 14, 1755 AD
The household sleeps, but Elspeth's mother has been waiting—and when she finally speaks, the portrait above the mantel begins to show a stranger's face. By the time the embers die, Elspeth understands that the Emporium's secrets and her own may share the same dark roots.
LockedApril 14, 1755 AD
The city whispers of rebellion and ruin, of Jacobites hunted and loyalties tested. Seventeen-year-old Elspeth Stewart walks through grey morning streets toward a destiny she cannot yet fathom. Her father is dead. Her family is destitute. And Moira MacKenzie's Emporium of Fashion promises salvation—or something far more dangerous. In a world where secrets are currency, every stitch tells a story.
April 14, 1755 AD
As the candles burn low on her first evening at the Emporium, Elspeth's meticulous stitchwork earns rare praise from Moira—but the warm glow of approval turns cold when she witnesses something that transforms whispered suspicions into undeniable truth. Agnes's silent glance across the shimmering silk confirms it: some knowledge, once gained, can never be unlearned.
April 14, 1755 AD
Reunited with her sisters around a humble supper of stew and laughter, Elspeth shares carefully edited tales of the Emporium's wonders—but when she mentions Lady Aberfoyle, her mother's reaction suggests the noblewoman's name carries a weight far heavier than silk. As Violet begs for a bedtime story with happy endings, Elspeth begins to understand that the fairy tale she's stumbled into may contain wolves far closer to home than she ever imagined.
End of list
Men are vanishing across Tasmania, and Detective Senior Constable Karl Jenkins is running out of time, patience, and sanity. Every lead points to Luke Smith—but proving it means crossing lines Karl can't uncross. He breaks into houses without warrants. He sees faces in windows that shouldn't be there. He chases the wine-soaked Gladys Cramer through high-speed pursuits only for her to slip away. His partner becomes collateral damage. His sergeant's warnings go ignored. Karl knows something monstrous is happening on this island, and he'll tear through every boundary to expose it. Even if it destroys him.
When a series of disappearances grips Tasmania’s remote edges, Detective Sarah Lahey is drawn into a case that threatens to unravel her—professionally and personally. As tensions flare with fellow detective Karl Jenkins, trust becomes a gamble neither can afford. In the search for truth, they’ll find the shadows run deeper than they imagined. Into the Dark is a haunting thriller about loyalty, obsession, and the cost of stepping beyond the light.
Thrown into an unfamiliar world with nothing but her medical kit and a backlog of questions, Dr. Glenda De Bruyn never asked to lead. But when strangers start arriving—wounded, lost, and dangerous—triage becomes survival. Each decision risks more than a life; it tests what remains of her logic, loyalty, and control. As the lines blur between science and myth, Glenda must confront not only the fractures in her patients—but the ones inside herself. In Clivilius, everyone bleeds. Not everyone gets patched up.
Gladys Cramer wasn’t looking for trouble—just a quiet glass of red and maybe a cat that actually came when called. But when a Portal opens, a body turns up, and a man with too many secrets begs her trust, Gladys is pulled into something vast, strange, and far too dangerous. She doesn’t know the rules. She doesn’t want the job. Dryly funny, quietly furious, and not at all qualified—Gladys is about to learn that staying out of it doesn’t mean staying safe.
Luke Smith's world transforms with the discovery of a cryptic device, thrusting him into the guardianship of destiny itself. His charismatic charm and unpredictable decisions now carry weight beyond imagination, balancing on the razor's edge between salvation and destruction. Embracing his role as a Guardian, Luke faces the paradox of power: the very force that defends also threatens to annihilate. As shadows gather and the fabric of reality strains, Luke must navigate the consequences of his actions, unaware that a looming challenge will test the very core of his resolve.
Joel Gibbons had never been anywhere. Hadn't finished school. Hadn't met his father. Hadn't done much except show up for his mum and hope that counted for something. A passport application changed everything—a name on a birth certificate, a coincidence that put him in the wrong place, and a death he didn't see coming. Joel should have stayed dead. Instead, he woke in glowing water—claimed before he even drew breath—gasping back to life with three words branded somewhere deeper than skin. You are mine.
Jamie Greyson was shoved through a Portal into a dimension that shouldn't exist, by a partner he no longer trusts. In the dust and desperation of Clivilius, the son he'd only just begun to know arrives with a slit throat and no heartbeat. The lagoon brings Joel back. But when Jamie begs for a second miracle, Clivilius answers with silence. Some debts, it seems, are only paid once.