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August 10, 1821 AD
Returning to her bedchamber after her cellar breakdown, Madelyn methodically transforms herself from the wild-haired, dirt-covered creature she's become back into the composed mistress of the manor. As she washes away the physical evidence of her dissolution and prepares to address the household staff, she calibrates exactly how much truth to reveal to Victoria Ashford—whose carriage wheels announce her arrival just as the performance must begin.
August 10, 1821 AD
Victoria thinks she's gone to rest. The household thinks she's sleeping. Instead, Madelyn takes a key her husband pressed into her hand five days ago and slips into the one room in Jeffries Manor that nobody is supposed to enter. What waits inside that room has been waiting since midnight. And Madelyn is not the only one who came looking.
August 10, 1821 AD
Madelyn's desperate search drives her into the forbidden territory of the servants' quarters and finally down into the cellar's darkness, where her frantic composure finally shatters. Alone in the dirt and cold, she confronts the terrible truth that her grief is genuine despite everything William confessed—and that protecting her son will require transforming even this authentic anguish into calculated performance.
August 10, 1821 AD
The kitchen smells indecently ordinary—bread and broth whilst William is gone and nothing will ever be normal again. Mrs Holloway waits behind a closed pantry door with something she's carried since midnight, surrounded by preserves and flour sacks. Voices from the east wing at midnight. A man's voice raised in anger. Another softer, unrecognisable. Then a loud thud. Like something heavy falling. Or perhaps something worse. What if she'd investigated? What if she could have done something?
August 10, 1821 AD
You can wash away dirt. Pin up hair. Button dresses. Until what emerges looks remarkably like the person you used to be. Madelyn stands before the mirror assembling Mrs Jeffries from disparate pieces—the wild-haired cellar creature transformed through methodical application of cold water and willpower. But here's the terrible discovery: she must calibrate exactly how much truth to reveal to Victoria. Truthful enough to satisfy scrutiny. False enough to protect secrets. A middle path built on strategic honesty.
August 10, 1821 AD
Victoria has moved from the settee. This displacement is telling—a seated woman rests, a woman standing at a window thinks. And Victoria, gazing out at search parties moving through frost-touched grounds, has been doing considerable thinking during Madelyn's absence. When Thomas appears in the doorway with his gentle counsel, Madelyn feels walls pressing inward. Her oldest friend from one side, her most trusted servant from the other. Between them, no room left to stand except where they've chosen.
August 10, 1821 AD
Sometimes the mask doesn't crack—it shatters. Alone in the cellar's absolute darkness, surrounded by wine meant for celebrations that will never come, Madelyn discovers something terrible: her grief is genuine. Despite everything William confessed five days ago. Despite the revulsion that drove her to flee. Despite knowing their entire life was built on lies. She mourns him. Which means even this authentic anguish must become performance. Even truth must serve deception.
March 27, 2026 AD
A boy who is not yet two years old reaches for his mother in a corridor and says one word. "Papa." She kneels. Her legs ache. She has already spent this morning screaming, searching, and weeping into the dirt floor of a cellar. She has found a hollowed-out book stuffed with damning financial records. She has learned that her cook heard voices and a thud in the east wing at midnight. She has washed the evidence from her face, smoothed her dress, reassembled herself into the mistress of a colonial manor, and she is holding — by a thread — the appearance of a woman who is merely concerned rather than a woman who is terrified. And now her son is looking at her with his father's blue eyes and asking where Papa is. She lies to him. That's the moment.
August 10, 1821 AD
The kitchen smells of bread and broth — indecently ordinary for a morning like this. Mrs Holloway is waiting behind a closed pantry door with something she has carried since midnight, and Madelyn descends into the servants' world for the second time today, though this visit bears no resemblance to the first. What the cook heard in the east wing changes the shape of everything — and raises questions Madelyn dare not ask aloud.
August 10, 1821 AD
A hand on her shoulder. Victoria's voice, sharp with an urgency Madelyn has never heard from her before. The constable has been spotted on the Hobart Town road. There is no time to prepare — only time to stand, to smooth what can be smoothed, and to descend the staircase into whatever waits below. At the bottom of the stairs, a stranger's voice is already asking questions.
August 10, 1821 AD
Between the kitchen and the drawing room, the corridor offers no sanctuary — only a small boy with his father's blue eyes and a question no mother should have to answer. He reaches for her. He asks for Papa. And Madelyn must kneel on aching legs and lie to the one person in this house who still believes the world is simple. Beside him stands a nanny whose composure raises questions of its own.
August 10, 1821 AD
Broadmoor sits opposite Madelyn with a worn leather notebook and blue eyes that miss nothing. The questions begin simply — when did she last see her husband, what time did they retire — but each one narrows the space between what Madelyn can say and what she must not. Victoria intervenes from behind her shoulder. The constable writes. And somewhere between the careful answers, something shifts that even Madelyn's oldest friend can see.
August 10, 1821 AD
Between the kitchen and the drawing room, the corridor offers no sanctuary. Just a small boy with his father's eyes and a question that has no good answer. He still believes the world is simple—that Papa will appear if only the right words are spoken. Madelyn kneels on exhausted legs and speaks the first lie she'll tell to protect him. Children's resilience won't last. Soon he'll notice the whispers. And what will she tell him then?
August 10, 1821 AD
Madelyn has barely stitched herself back together when the one person capable of unravelling her arrives at the door. Victoria Ashford — oldest friend, sharpest observer, most dangerous comfort — settles into the drawing room with tea and sympathy and eyes that miss nothing. Every pause is noted. Every hesitation catalogued. And when a breathless summons arrives from the kitchen, even the excuse to flee feels like another thread pulled loose.
August 10, 1821 AD
When your world collapses, you have two choices: shatter or perform. Madelyn Jeffries chooses performance. As Victoria Ashford arrives for their weekly tea, the drawing room becomes a stage where every word must be measured, every expression controlled. But Victoria has always been observant—dangerously so. How do you hide a catastrophe from someone who reads you like a book? How do you grieve whilst playing hostess?
August 10, 1821 AD
Victoria stands at the window now — no longer the comfortable guest but something sharper, more purposeful. When Madelyn returns from the kitchen with new information, she walks into a conversation that has already been decided without her. Victoria from one side, Thomas from the other, and between them a single inevitable conclusion: send for the constable. Madelyn resists. But some doors, once opened by the people who love you, cannot be closed again.
August 10, 1821 AD
Victoria thinks she's sleeping. The household thinks she's resting. Instead, Madelyn takes a key William pressed into her hand five days ago and slips into the one room nobody is supposed to enter. The east wing feels colder than the rest of the house. The door at its end has been maintained whilst everything else gathered dust. Inside waits evidence of what happened at midnight. And Madelyn is not the only one who knows this room exists.
August 10, 1821 AD
The door opens. The person standing on the other side is not a stranger — but neither is this a meeting Madelyn could have anticipated. What follows is a conversation conducted almost entirely in the margins, where household language masks something far more dangerous, and two people discover they have been standing on the same ground all along.
August 10, 1821 AD
The service stairs present themselves with sudden inevitability—a path with no choice but to follow. A mistress of standing does not venture into servants' territory beyond occasional formal inspection. But propriety holds no meaning this morning. The boundaries governing movement through the house have dissolved along with everything else. So Madelyn descends into the working heart of the manor, barefoot in her wrapper, like some disordered ghost haunting spaces where she has no business.
LockedAugust 10, 1821 AD
Some discoveries shatter the world in an instant. When the familiar becomes suddenly, terribly wrong, and a few written words transform everything you thought you knew—that's when you learn what you're truly made of. At Jeffries Manor, the carefully constructed façade of respectability is about to crack wide open. And the most dangerous secrets aren't always the ones being kept from you.
End of list
Men are vanishing across Tasmania, and Detective Senior Constable Karl Jenkins is running out of time, patience, and sanity. Every lead points to Luke Smith—but proving it means crossing lines Karl can't uncross. He breaks into houses without warrants. He sees faces in windows that shouldn't be there. He chases the wine-soaked Gladys Cramer through high-speed pursuits only for her to slip away. His partner becomes collateral damage. His sergeant's warnings go ignored. Karl knows something monstrous is happening on this island, and he'll tear through every boundary to expose it. Even if it destroys him.
Joel Gibbons had never been anywhere. Hadn't finished school. Hadn't met his father. Hadn't done much except show up for his mum and hope that counted for something. A passport application changed everything—a name on a birth certificate, a coincidence that put him in the wrong place, and a death he didn't see coming. Joel should have stayed dead. Instead, he woke in glowing water—claimed before he even drew breath—gasping back to life with three words branded somewhere deeper than skin. You are mine.
When a series of disappearances grips Tasmania’s remote edges, Detective Sarah Lahey is drawn into a case that threatens to unravel her—professionally and personally. As tensions flare with fellow detective Karl Jenkins, trust becomes a gamble neither can afford. In the search for truth, they’ll find the shadows run deeper than they imagined. Into the Dark is a haunting thriller about loyalty, obsession, and the cost of stepping beyond the light.
Gladys Cramer wasn’t looking for trouble—just a quiet glass of red and maybe a cat that actually came when called. But when a Portal opens, a body turns up, and a man with too many secrets begs her trust, Gladys is pulled into something vast, strange, and far too dangerous. She doesn’t know the rules. She doesn’t want the job. Dryly funny, quietly furious, and not at all qualified—Gladys is about to learn that staying out of it doesn’t mean staying safe.
Thrown into an unfamiliar world with nothing but her medical kit and a backlog of questions, Dr. Glenda De Bruyn never asked to lead. But when strangers start arriving—wounded, lost, and dangerous—triage becomes survival. Each decision risks more than a life; it tests what remains of her logic, loyalty, and control. As the lines blur between science and myth, Glenda must confront not only the fractures in her patients—but the ones inside herself. In Clivilius, everyone bleeds. Not everyone gets patched up.
Jamie Greyson was shoved through a Portal into a dimension that shouldn't exist, by a partner he no longer trusts. In the dust and desperation of Clivilius, the son he'd only just begun to know arrives with a slit throat and no heartbeat. The lagoon brings Joel back. But when Jamie begs for a second miracle, Clivilius answers with silence. Some debts, it seems, are only paid once.
Luke Smith's world transforms with the discovery of a cryptic device, thrusting him into the guardianship of destiny itself. His charismatic charm and unpredictable decisions now carry weight beyond imagination, balancing on the razor's edge between salvation and destruction. Embracing his role as a Guardian, Luke faces the paradox of power: the very force that defends also threatens to annihilate. As shadows gather and the fabric of reality strains, Luke must navigate the consequences of his actions, unaware that a looming challenge will test the very core of his resolve.
