The Clocktower That Skipped
(2026)(The fourth book in the Mosswood Apothecary Mystery series)
A novel by Cordelia Clark
Every night at 2:17 AM, the Mosswood clocktower skips forward three minutes. Not for everyone. Just for some.
Petra Hawthorne is used to the apothecary keeping its own time. She is not used to the clocktower disagreeing with her watch. Or to customers repeating questions word for word. Or to finding drawers already open that she is certain she has not yet reached.
She is not used to waking in the middle of a task with no memory of how she began it.
The clocktower has kept Mosswood's rhythm for longer than anyone has kept records. It is not supposed to skip. It is not supposed to select who it skips for.
But it does. And the reason it does reaches back into the town's history further than Petra has looked, and forward into the substrate's architecture further than she has understood.
Something upstream has gone quiet.
The clocktower is compensating.
And the compensation is costing people time they cannot get back.
A cozy paranormal mystery for readers who love:
Petra Hawthorne is used to the apothecary keeping its own time. She is not used to the clocktower disagreeing with her watch. Or to customers repeating questions word for word. Or to finding drawers already open that she is certain she has not yet reached.
She is not used to waking in the middle of a task with no memory of how she began it.
The clocktower has kept Mosswood's rhythm for longer than anyone has kept records. It is not supposed to skip. It is not supposed to select who it skips for.
But it does. And the reason it does reaches back into the town's history further than Petra has looked, and forward into the substrate's architecture further than she has understood.
Something upstream has gone quiet.
The clocktower is compensating.
And the compensation is costing people time they cannot get back.
A cozy paranormal mystery for readers who love:
- A small town where the magic is part of the working life
A shopkeeper heroine who solves mysteries with patience, herbal knowledge, and stubborn attention
A talking cat who says very little and means every word of it
Warm prose, rising stakes, and a mystery beneath the mystery
The Clocktower That Skipped is the fourth book in the Mosswood Apothecary Mysteries. Set in a small Ozark town where the shop sign has been missing two letters for as long as anyone can remember, the black cat with green eyes runs the front counter, and the woman who keeps the apothecary keeps a great deal more besides.
Perfect for anyone who has ever wanted to walk into a small-town shop just before closing time and be handed exactly the tea they needed.
Each book in the Mosswood Apothecary Mysteries can be read as a standalone, though longtime readers will find that the town, the shop, and the cat only grow more themselves the deeper you go.
Genre: Cozy Mystery
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Used availability for Cordelia Clark's The Clocktower That Skipped