{"product_id":"the-bequest-ian-mclaren-9798184256542","title":"The Bequest: A Gothic Mystery","description":"\u003cb\u003eNell Harrow can raise anyone's grandmother out of the records. Her own line stops at a single empty box.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eShe mends the dead for a living - slips a lost man back into a parish register in the clerk's own hand, signs each repair with a tiny looped flourish. So when a stranger named Ambrose Ashe dies and leaves her his crumbling fenland estate, Marrowmere, on one unstated condition, she notices the wrong thing first: the writing on the envelope, easy and familiar, sure of a name she invented for herself at eighteen. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThe condition is simple. Live a year. Finish the family chronicle - the Book. Then Marrowmere is hers. But the muniment room holds a column of women logged \u003ci\u003edrowned, no issue\u003c\/i\u003e, running down the page and down the centuries. A deed signed in a hand whose owner was already in the water. Instruction cards, in a dead man's hand, that answer fears Nell has not yet spoken aloud. And beneath the cold flags, a pen scratches all night long. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThe deeper Nell reads, the more the records bend toward her - until she understands that the empty box she always called freedom was never a lack at all. It was an erasure. And the woman at the bottom of the stair has been waiting a very long time for someone who would know how to read her hand. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eSome inheritances aren't given. They're set, like a trap, generations before you were born.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Ian McLaren,Frances Hale\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9798184256542\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Independently Published\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 06\/25\/2026\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 274\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.74lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.68d","brand":"Ian McLaren","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":49173906653439,"sku":"9798184256542","price":11.83,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/the-bequest-ian-mclaren-9798184256542","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}