About this book:

The Clockmaker’s Cipher begins in the quiet, ordered world of Clara Mercer, a gifted horologist living in the shadow of her recently deceased mentor, Elias Thorn. Her life of meticulous restoration is shattered when she inherits Elias’s personal pocket watch. Within its hidden compartments, she discovers a micro-engraved brass plate known as the Meridian, a complex cipher that leads her down a rabbit hole into a secret history. Elias’s letter warns her of a powerful, clandestine organization—the Meridian Circle, led by the enigmatic Edgar Vale—who have been acquiring priceless artifacts through nefarious means since the Second World War. Armed with only her skill with mechanisms and cryptic clues, Clara must decode the Meridian, a task that puts her directly in Vale's crosshairs.

Her investigation leads her to Larkspur Chapel in Sussex, where she deciphers the first layer of the cipher to uncover a hidden ledger. Inside, she finds a list of stolen art and, to her shock, her own family’s lost collection of watches and instruments. The discovery makes the mission personal, a quest not just for justice but for her own history. It also brings her into conflict with Vale’s ruthless operatives, forcing her to flee London. She turns for help to Daniel Park, a disgraced academic with his own history with the Meridian Circle, who reveals that Elias’s ledger is the key to exposing the entire network. As they work to unravel the cipher’s next layer, they uncover a devastating truth: Clara's mother, Sarah, wasn't just a cartographer but a key agent in Elias’s secret war against the Circle. They also learn that Clara’s grandfather, Arthur Mercer, was not a victim of the war but a founder of the Circle, murdered by Vale for trying to leave.

With the full scope of the conspiracy laid bare, Clara realizes the final secret of the Meridian is not a location, but a fail-safe. Elias and her mother had designed a hidden protocol within The Custodian, a magnificent astronomical regulator that serves as Vale’s headquarters and the ultimate repository for the stolen collection. The protocol, intended as a last resort, is a self-destruct sequence that will entomb the artifacts forever. The final confrontation takes place at The Custodian’s grand unveiling. Clara, using the true master plate and her mother’s watch as the two required keys, infiltrates the museum’s control room. As Edgar Vale takes the stage to celebrate his victory, Clara triggers the "Vale Protocol." The museum is plunged into chaos as the priceless mechanism is irreparably shattered, locking the collection away from the world. Simultaneously, she broadcasts the contents of Elias’s original ledger, exposing the Circle’s entire history to the world’s press. Clara saves her allies, ends Vale’s reign, and finds a new purpose: to use the Meridian's hidden network to restore the artifacts to their rightful owners, becoming a new kind of custodian of history.