Brass of the Drowned Chapel
(2026)(The second book in the Alderwick Second Tide Mystery series)
A novel by Claire Bessey
Tess Alden has fought hard to make Second Tide more than a dream. Her antique shop in the seaside village of Alderwick is finally finding its footing, her rescue dog Tide has become part of daily life, and for the first time since leaving Chicago, Tess can almost believe she is building something lasting. Then her first major auction preview brings in the one thing Alderwick never seems to lack: trouble hidden inside an old object.
Among the effects of the late Reverend Simon Weller is an unusual brass instrument, striking, well-made, and far too important to be sitting quietly among ordinary lots. Tess senses its weight immediately, even before wealthy collector Gideon Renshaw and sharp-eyed scholar Dr. Imogen Quill react to it with the kind of careful interest that means they know more than they admit. By the end of the preview, Gideon is dead in the rear handling area, the auction is under a cloud, and Tess’s growing reputation is once again tied to a murder she cannot afford to ignore.
As Tess digs deeper, the brass piece turns out to be more than valuable. It may be tied to the vanished inventory of Bellwether Chapel, a coastal property swallowed long ago by estate language, private handling, and the sort of heritage logic that makes loss sound respectable. What begins as one death in the orbit of an auction soon opens into something much bigger: disputed trust property, missing records, quiet legal smoothing, and a dead man who may have been using the object not as a treasure, but as leverage.
With Rhys Penwarden’s practical eye for structures and routes, Tide’s grounded presence beside her, and Alderwick’s polished silences pressing in from every side, Tess must untangle who wanted the brass instrument, who feared what it could prove, and why one careful murder was worth more than the object itself.
Perfect for readers who love British cozy mysteries, antique shop mysteries, seaside village crime, auction house mysteries, dog cozy mysteries, clean mystery series, and small town murder mysteries with old secrets, hidden papers, and slow-burn romantic tension, Book 2 deepens the Alderwick series with stronger stakes, fair-play clues, layered suspects, and a mystery where the deadliest thing is not what an object is worth, but what it can expose.
Genre: Mystery
Among the effects of the late Reverend Simon Weller is an unusual brass instrument, striking, well-made, and far too important to be sitting quietly among ordinary lots. Tess senses its weight immediately, even before wealthy collector Gideon Renshaw and sharp-eyed scholar Dr. Imogen Quill react to it with the kind of careful interest that means they know more than they admit. By the end of the preview, Gideon is dead in the rear handling area, the auction is under a cloud, and Tess’s growing reputation is once again tied to a murder she cannot afford to ignore.
As Tess digs deeper, the brass piece turns out to be more than valuable. It may be tied to the vanished inventory of Bellwether Chapel, a coastal property swallowed long ago by estate language, private handling, and the sort of heritage logic that makes loss sound respectable. What begins as one death in the orbit of an auction soon opens into something much bigger: disputed trust property, missing records, quiet legal smoothing, and a dead man who may have been using the object not as a treasure, but as leverage.
With Rhys Penwarden’s practical eye for structures and routes, Tide’s grounded presence beside her, and Alderwick’s polished silences pressing in from every side, Tess must untangle who wanted the brass instrument, who feared what it could prove, and why one careful murder was worth more than the object itself.
Perfect for readers who love British cozy mysteries, antique shop mysteries, seaside village crime, auction house mysteries, dog cozy mysteries, clean mystery series, and small town murder mysteries with old secrets, hidden papers, and slow-burn romantic tension, Book 2 deepens the Alderwick series with stronger stakes, fair-play clues, layered suspects, and a mystery where the deadliest thing is not what an object is worth, but what it can expose.
Genre: Mystery
Used availability for Claire Bessey's Brass of the Drowned Chapel