The Other Places is a collection of standalone atmospheric mysteries about strange locations, buried systems, unsettling discoveries and the people who have to live with what they find.
The novels do not share a required reading order. Each book has its own characters, setting and mystery. What connects them is an interest in the moment when an apparently ordinary place stops behaving like one.
A standalone atmospheric mystery from The Other Places.
An ordinary setting begins to produce evidence that does not fit the explanation everyone would prefer. The deeper the investigation goes, the more difficult it becomes to separate what happened from what the place itself may be doing.
A standalone uncanny mystery from The Other Places.
A mystery of perception, evidence and persistence, following people forced to decide what counts as proof when the thing they are trying to understand will not remain conveniently visible.
A standalone atmospheric mystery from The Other Places.
At a frozen-food warehouse in the Lincolnshire Fens, Mara Venn is sent to investigate what should be an ordinary vibration problem. The search leads through abandoned drainage channels, forgotten chambers and infrastructure buried beneath decades of redevelopment.
The mechanics can be traced. The history can be reconstructed. But something is still moving through the groundwater system, and the farther Mara follows the evidence, the harder it becomes to decide where engineering ends and something else begins.
A standalone atmospheric mystery from The Other Places.
Rory Hume has spent fourteen years crossing the Sound between Calderay and Arden Quay. He knows how the ferry Lorne should sit in the water, how she should answer the helm, and how weight should move through steel, ramps, roads and people.
Soon, impossible physical effects begin appearing across the route: vehicles sagging under unseen loads, doors reacting to empty spaces, a landing stage moving before the ferry arrives, and familiar objects behaving as though weight, support and presence no longer mean quite what they used to.
Enjoy the free short story prequels to the main events found in the novels above.
A Short Story from The Other Places
Arthur Hesketh has spent his working life following railway lines, timetables and rules. But on one final assignment before retirement, he is sent on a special working to the abandoned Bellwether glassworks.
What waits there is not part of any timetable.
As the journey bends around memory, regret and the life he might have lived, Arthur is forced to confront something far more dangerous than the impossible: the temptation to step away from the life that is still his.
Special Working is a haunting companion story to Bellwether, exploring grief, love, memory and the strange places that open when the past refuses to stay behind.
A Short Story from The Other Places
The Crown Electric Picture House has been open for less than a month when something impossible appears in a local film.
Set in 1937, The Pictures Were Wrong is a historical uncanny mystery and a prequel to Persistence of Vision, where the distinction between what has happened and what the pictures show begins to slip.
A Short Story from The Other Places
At a natural burial ground, the earth is moving the dead. Beneath the frozen orchard, an investigation into displaced coffins reveals that the explanation is stranger, older and considerably less comfortable than vandalism.
Beneath Saint Mere ends here, but elsewhere the strange events continue in The Listening Ground, a standalone novel from The Other Places.
A Short Story from The Other Places
October, 1936.
Samuel Keir has spent eighteen years making sure ships come safely alongside Arden Quay. He knows how a landing stage behaves under load. He knows what a bollard sounds like when a line takes strain. And he knows exactly what should happen when the ferry Plover approaches.
What he does not know is why the quay begins reacting before the vessel arrives.
Across the Sound, Calderay reports the same impossible pattern: landing stages dipping, bollards taking strain, and the ferry itself responding as though contact has happened somewhere it has not.
There are no modern sensors to hide behind, no easy explanation, and no time to indulge in theories. Calderay needs its mail, its supplies, and a replacement part for the island generator. Samuel and the crew must decide how much risk they can accept when ordinary evidence refuses to behave in an ordinary way.
Before the Lines Were Thrown is a standalone historical supernatural mystery. A story of practical people, impossible physical evidence, and the uneasy discipline of acting responsibly when explanation is still out of reach.