How Firm a Foundation – Paperback

The hymn was still on the second verse when the floor of St. Mark’s gave way.

Beneath the sanctuary, past a crypt no living soul in Penrose remembered, a section of the east wall has been rebuilt to look old. Behind it, sealed in a metal-bound box since 1908: a covenant signed by the town’s founding families, promising silence about something they never named.

Bookseller Ari Penrose and his circle – an archivist who trusts paper more than people, a caf owner with opinions, a geology teacher, and a shop cat with a gift for placement – start pulling the thread.

The town would rather they didn’t. Someone with a badge would rather they couldn’t.

In Penrose, the past doesn’t stay buried. It waits for the floor to break.