Keeper of the Lantern Wood

Ferry Kettle makes the best masala chai in Bristol, runs an indifferent tea shop, and moonlights as keeper of a lantern that keeps two worlds from mixing after dark. By day, Bellwether Park is pigeons and dog-walkers. By night, it is the Lantern Wood — a tangle of slow-talking trees, polite foxes, and doors that should never be left open. When a young woman is found sleeping beneath the oldest oak with a week missing from her life, Ferry knows a door has been propped. Across the street, a new coffee bar opens, run by a smiling stranger who knows far too much about the boundary. He is selling entrances. He has a buyer's list. And one of the names on it belongs to Ferry's sister, who vanished twenty-two years ago. A cosy fantasy with a twist, a tea shop, a talking fox, and a midnight festival where the wick burns both ways.