Book Name: The Lantern Beast
ARC Release Date: 22/09/2026 (22nd September 2026)
Release Date: 13/10/2026 (13th October 2026)
Some secrets lie beneath the surface. Some rise to find you.
Photographer Jules Everton has spent her adult life in motion — new ports, new faces, connections shallow enough to leave clean. When dreams she can’t ignore pull her to Bracken Ridge, she tells herself it’s temporary. Just a winter. Just her aunt’s porch swing and a town that loves its local legend. But Fortune Lake has been waiting for Jules since she was ten years old.
Corporate lawyer Danny Pencroft has built his entire life around a lie of omission — that he doesn’t believe in the lights on the lake. Until Jules arrives, and suddenly he’s the only one in town who understands exactly what she’s seeing. She’s the first person he has never had to lie to.
Something ancient lives beneath Fortune Lake. A guardian older than the town, older than any record of the lake — and it is dying. Night by night its cries grow more desperate. It kept Danny. It called Jules home. They are the only ones who can hear it, and they are running out of time to listen.
Tropes: Small-town lakeside love story & Sierra Nevada, cozy winter setting, Opposites attract, Free-spirited travel photographer x buttoned-up lawyer, Homecoming heroine & the place that calls you back, Stoic hero who falls hard, Gentle guardian creature / cozy cryptid & the monster is a friend, Two people who share a secret the whole town half-believes, Found family, Race against the clock > save-the-town-together stakes, Dual POV, Guaranteed HEA, Closed door / fade to black.
Please be aware that the following trigger warnings apply to ‘The Lantern Beast‘:
- Life threatening near-drowning
- On-page medical emergency
- Backstory grief > parental abandonment; death of a parent (off page, past)
- Harm to a beloved non-human creature (it survives)