The Gull House Inventory
(2026)(The first book in the Alderwick Second Tide Mystery series)
A novel by Claire Bessey
When Tess Alden leaves Chicago behind and opens Second Tide, a carefully curated antique shop in the English seaside village of Alderwick, she wants one thing: a quiet life built on honest work, beautiful old objects, and her own hard-won judgment. Instead, she gets a wealthy client with secrets, a dead man in a cliffside house, and a village already deciding whether she belongs.
Julian Harcourt hires Tess to carry out a discreet private valuation at Gull House, an elegant old family home where every room feels controlled, curated, and just slightly wrong. Tess sees what others miss at once. Dust shadows where objects once stood. Missing pairs. Replaced pieces. A small silver snuffbox with a hidden maker’s mark that should not have been lost in the back of a desk. When Julian is found dead the next morning, the snuffbox disappears, suspicion turns fast, and Tess realizes her brand-new business may not survive its first scandal.
With her sharp eye for antiques, a growing instinct for trouble, and a wary rescue dog named Tide slowly choosing her as his person, Tess begins pulling at the loose threads surrounding Gull House. The deeper she digs, the uglier the picture becomes. Quiet sales. Family fractures. Missing heirlooms. Smoothed-over records. A polished local heritage world that prefers tidy stories to uncomfortable truth. And somewhere inside it all lies the reason Julian Harcourt died.
Perfect for readers who love British cozy mysteries, seaside village mysteries, antique shop mysteries, dog cozy mysteries, small town murder mysteries, clean mysteries with slow-burn romance, and cozy crime filled with family secrets, old houses, and hidden history, Book 1 of The Alderwick Second Tide Mysteries delivers a smart female sleuth, fair-play clues, layered suspects, strong atmosphere, and a village full of old rooms with too much to hide.
In Alderwick, the most dangerous things do not look dangerous at all. They look valuable, respectable, and perfectly at home.
Genre: Mystery
Julian Harcourt hires Tess to carry out a discreet private valuation at Gull House, an elegant old family home where every room feels controlled, curated, and just slightly wrong. Tess sees what others miss at once. Dust shadows where objects once stood. Missing pairs. Replaced pieces. A small silver snuffbox with a hidden maker’s mark that should not have been lost in the back of a desk. When Julian is found dead the next morning, the snuffbox disappears, suspicion turns fast, and Tess realizes her brand-new business may not survive its first scandal.
With her sharp eye for antiques, a growing instinct for trouble, and a wary rescue dog named Tide slowly choosing her as his person, Tess begins pulling at the loose threads surrounding Gull House. The deeper she digs, the uglier the picture becomes. Quiet sales. Family fractures. Missing heirlooms. Smoothed-over records. A polished local heritage world that prefers tidy stories to uncomfortable truth. And somewhere inside it all lies the reason Julian Harcourt died.
Perfect for readers who love British cozy mysteries, seaside village mysteries, antique shop mysteries, dog cozy mysteries, small town murder mysteries, clean mysteries with slow-burn romance, and cozy crime filled with family secrets, old houses, and hidden history, Book 1 of The Alderwick Second Tide Mysteries delivers a smart female sleuth, fair-play clues, layered suspects, strong atmosphere, and a village full of old rooms with too much to hide.
In Alderwick, the most dangerous things do not look dangerous at all. They look valuable, respectable, and perfectly at home.
Genre: Mystery
Used availability for Claire Bessey's The Gull House Inventory