The New Rhythm: The River Between Us Book VI (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798255745449)

Woodbridge, Suffolk. Three years since St John Maltravers came back from London - dismissed from his firm, his life quietly dismantled at a Christmas party when someone saw what they weren't meant to see. Three years since Jost Dekker offered him a drawing board and, eventually, something neither of them had a name for at first.

When a commission arrives for a racing yacht - high-performance, built for Cowes Week, with national press attached - they say yes. It's the opportunity that could transform their small Suffolk yard into something significant. But visibility cuts both ways.

The New Rhythm is a quiet, tender novel about two men navigating what it means to be seen. St John, sharp and careful, discovers he moves easily through the professional world that racing opens up - sponsors, press, presentations with floor lights. Jost, who builds boats with his hands and knows the Kestrel better than anyone, finds himself watching from the outside, unsure whether the version of St John that belongs in those rooms still has room for him.

The novel is set in the early 1990s, when being visible was still a calculation, still a risk - but when some things were quietly, stubbornly beginning to change. It's a story about partnership and fear, about craft and recognition, about the slow work of building a life that doesn't require you to be smaller than you are.

Literary, unhurried, and deeply romantic - without a single easy resolution.