The Apothecary's Hidden Griffin

Beneath the floorboards of an ordinary apothecary shop sleeps a secret two centuries old - and it has just woken up hungry for a keeper who isn't ready.

When Cassandra Hartwell buries her grandfather in the fog-bound streets of Nettleford Market, she inherits far more than a modest shop and a mountain of debt. Tucked inside his will is a single strange name - Peregrine - and a warning she doesn't understand until she descends to the cellar and meets him: an ancient guardian griffin, bound by a two-hundred-year-old pact to protect the last living root of a plant this town doesn't know it needs to survive.

She has ten weeks to master a trade she's only half-trained in, renew a bargain she barely believes, and outmaneuver a Guildmaster who wants her family's shop for reasons far darker than rent. Between compounding remedies by lamplight and learning to trust a creature out of legend, Cassie finds an unlikely ally in the very Guild inspector sent to shut her down - a careful, principled man who starts asking the wrong questions of the right people, and who may be the one person in Nettleford Market she can't afford to fall for.

If you loved settling into a fog-wrapped Victorian village with a spirited heroine, a slow-burn romance, and just enough magic to make the ordinary feel sacred, Nettleford Market is waiting for you.

What's inside:

• A richly atmospheric Victorian market town of crooked lanes, guild politics, and secrets kept for generations

• A determined heroine building a trade, a home, and a found family from the wreckage of grief

• An ancient, wry, fiercely loyal griffin guardian unlike any you've met before

• A clean, slow-burn romance built on trust earned rather than declared

• A genuine mystery, a corrupt Guildmaster, and a race against a spreading blight

• A complete, standalone gothic fantasy - no cliffhangers, no waiting for book two

Perfect for readers of cozy gothic fantasy who want their suspense without gore and their romance without heat - and a lovely gift for anyone who's ever wished their favorite shop kept a secret worth guarding. Curl up with a cup of tea, let the fog roll in, and step through Hartwell's door.