Death on Briarwood Heath by J.P. White

Death on Briarwood Heath

Their third case starts with a terrified client and a local legend: hear the Phantom Hound of Briarwood Heath while you’re on the heath, and legend says you have three days left. Then the evidence turns up — sixteen-inch paw prints, a snapped iron chain, a death on the moor the report can’t explain. With a contested estate, two feuding heirs, and a town on edge, consulting detectives Cressida Vale and Miles Stone have three days to find the truth inside two hundred years of legend.

Book 3 of the Vale & Stone Consulting Detective Mysteries.

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CASE SUMMARY

Cressida Vale and Miles Stone have solved two cases in Blackvale. The third one comes looking for them.

Nessa Rosewood arrives at Vale House Inn with a story most detectives would laugh out of the room: she heard the Phantom Hound howl while she was on Briarwood Heath, and legend says that gives her three days to live.

Cressida doesn’t laugh. Miles starts measuring. And the evidence is hard to argue with — sixteen-inch paw prints in the mud, a century-old iron chain snapped by something enormous, and a death on the heath the official report doesn’t explain.

The Hound has stalked the Ravenholt family for two hundred years, surfacing before every ruin, tied to a land feud nobody alive started and nobody’s allowed to forget. Now Edmund Ravenholt is dead, his crumbling Gothic manor is up for grabs, and two feuding heirs have very different plans for it. The town is spooked. The sightings are multiplying. And someone in Blackvale knows more than they’re saying.

With the clock running on their client’s three days, Cressida and Miles dig into family records, town gossip, and the mist-covered heath itself — where the howling is getting closer.

Death on Briarwood Heath is Book 3 of the Vale & Stone Consulting Detective Mysteries, a cozy gothic mystery series set in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Ebook, paperback, and free on Kindle Unlimited.

Cressida Vale

Observant to a fault and unimpressed by social niceties, Cressida notices what others overlook—and remembers what they wish she wouldn’t.

Miles Stone

Methodical, quietly incisive, and dangerously patient, Miles understands that people reveal the truth when they believe they are still in control.

Meet the Slueths

Layered mountain ridges covered in autumn forest colors, with misty blue peaks and a clear sky above a scenic valley.

Ridge-Line, Raven, and the Thin Night: Appalachian Folklore on Samhain Eve

When the last of October bleeds into November in the Blue Ridge Mountains, the dark comes differently. Not just earlier — though it does come early, the ridges cutting the light off at angles that don't make sense until you've lived with them for a season. It comes with a weight to it. The kind of weight that makes you check the window latch before you sit down to dinner. The kind that makes you leave a candle burning in the room where the old photograph sits. The mountains a

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Misty teal book promo for Death on Briarwood Heath by J.P. White, with Coming Early 2027 and a spooky house cover

Three Days, One Client, One Legend: the Death on Briarwood Heath Blurb

Every book eventually has to introduce itself in a few hundred words — one short stretch of prose that has to do the whole job at once. Death on Briarwood Heath has reached that point. Here is the official description for Book 3 of the Vale & Stone Consulting Detective Mysteries, J.P. White's cozy gothic mystery series set in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Cressida Vale and Miles Stone have solved two cases in Blackvale. The third one comes looking for them. Ness

Ink & Aether Studios

Dark teal promo for Death on Briarwood Heath, a foggy mystery novel cover with Coming Early 2027 and J.P. White.

Cover Reveal: Death on Briarwood Heath — Book 3 of Vale & Stone

A good cover tells you what kind of book you're holding. This one tells you what coat you should have worn. This is the cover of Death on Briarwood Heath — Book 3 of the Vale & Stone Consulting Detective Mysteries, J.P. White's cozy gothic mystery series set in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. And the first thing worth mentioning about it isn't the title treatment. It's the temperature. Look long enough and the tall grass stops being still. The fog isn't decoration

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