The Quiet Room (Book One)

When Mara Voss's sister Elle dies leaving a note that doesn't sound like her, Mara — an investigative writer for a regional magazine — comes home to Cutter's Notch and finds the journal: eight months of meetings at a grief group called the Quiet Room, and $23,500 wired to a shell company for something called a Release.

The group meets in a church fellowship hall, passes a wooden bowl, and teaches grieving people that their pain has a price. Its leader, Simon Ward, is warm, practiced — and already managing her. When a witness agrees to talk on the record and is found dead the next morning, Mara publishes fast. Too fast.

Because Ward isn't the architect. He's a franchisee. Eleven towns. Eleven circles. One builder, still unnamed — and now he knows her name.

The Quiet Room is the first book in a psychological thriller trilogy about the businesses built on grief — and the woman who refuses to look away.