About this book:

The frost doesn't just cover the canal—it preserves what the water swallowed. Ten years after a night that shattered her life, Clara returns to Lock 14 as its reluctant keeper, armed with a brass key, a ledger of crossed-out entries, and a past that refuses to stay submerged. The ice is thickening, the coal boats have vanished, and something is moving beneath the black surface: an iron hull with no crew, a woman's glove frozen mid-reach, footprints on a bridge that never lead back.

Atmospheric and relentless, *The Lock-Keeper's Winter* winds the slow dread of a gothic ghost story through the dying veins of England's postwar canals. Every chapter deepens the chill—ledgers written in trembling hands, a bargeman who drowned but still keeps his watch, a confession the silt has held since 1945. Clara came to escape her memories; the canal has other plans. It wants the truth surfaced. And it doesn't care who breaks in the thaw.