The Tangle And The Settling

She came to clear a backlog and sell a lease. She didn't plan to stay.

Halla Aldgate is 41, itinerant, and very good at leaving. For 12 years she's worked as a residue-witch - reading the emotional histories trapped in old objects, writing the apology letters that finally set them to rest - and she's done it alone, in empty rooms, in cities she never stayed long enough to know. When she inherits her great-aunt's repair practice in a crooked magical lane called the Tangle, she arrives with an exit strategy already in place.

The Tangle has other ideas.

The lane is four hundred paces of leaning buildings, particular neighbors, and 60 years of shared history. There's Oswin the tea merchant, who leaves cups outside her door before she's learned his name. Dava the scale-balancer, who watches her with the patience of someone who has seen three practitioners take this shop and leave it. And Bem the letter-keeper, who wanders into her working space during a difficult sitting and somehow never quite leaves.

Then there's the backlog - her great-aunt's unfinished cases, each one an object waiting for the right letter. Most of them Halla can read. One she can't. And the reason she can't may be the most important thing the Tangle has to teach her.

The Tangle And The Settling is a cozy fantasy about work done with care, community earned one small mistake at a time, and the particular magic of objects that remember everything - and the right person who finally helps them forget.

Perfect for readers of Legends & Lattes, Paladin's Grace, and Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries.

If you've ever wanted a book that feels like coming home, this is it. Pick it up today.