The SILVER CIPHER – Paperback

A storm loosens the cedar roots on Sehome Hill, and a sealed glass jar surfaces. Inside: a fragment of silver ore, a brass claim tag stamped 1855, and pages of symbols no one in Penrose can read.

Ari Penrose sells books for a living and reads history for pleasure. He knows the tag should not exist. It belongs to Excelsior, the mining settlement that stood here before Penrose had a name and has never been found.

Sophia Eden takes the pages into the archives. Clair Finch, Mag Delancy, and Jason Bloom take the rest: cemetery registries, altered surveys, a parcel that vanished from the county maps.

Then someone breaks into the Book Nook and steals nothing.

Oliver Crowley left instructions, not treasure. What does a surveyor bury on purpose, and who in Penrose is still keeping it buried?

The Silver Cipher is Book Two of the Penrose Mysteries.