THE WATCHMAKER'S LAST LIE

When Emma Mercer's grandfather is found at the bottom of his cellar stairs, the coroner calls it an accident. Emma isn't so sure. Edward Mercer spent eighty-three years mending other people's clocks and saying almost nothing about his own past. But the house he leaves behind is full of things that don't add up: a watch that shouldn't still be ticking, a date carved into a cellar wall year after year, a locked room no one is allowed to open, and a letter that reads less like a goodbye than a warning. Piece by piece, Emma follows the trail her grandfather built for her - one he could never risk putting in writing, one only she was ever taught to see. It leads back to a railway platform in October 1943, a wartime operation that was never supposed to leave a paper trail, and a betrayal that has spent eighty years hiding behind good manners and an old family name. Some men are remembered for what they built. Edward Mercer will be remembered for what he was brave enough to hide, and patient enough to leave behind for the one person who would finally know how to look. A slow-burn historical mystery about inheritance, silence, and the things people protect us from by never telling us the truth - for readers of Kate Morton, Kristin Hannah, and Diane Setterfield.