MURKMIRE MANOR:
Families are just obligations with better marketing.
A darkly funny mystery set between a salt marsh and a swamp,
where the Families of List and Toes
weaponize language, inheritance, and each other.
“If you’re reading this, then I’m dead. And no, it wasn’t an accident”
Letters from the dead, buried photographs, missing siblings, and a murderer keep Rea List spinning right from the moment she arrives home.
Murkmire Manor, along with both the List and Toes Families, haven’t changed much, but Rea has. A decade away has given her a new perspective.
Enter the Families: defined by their Names, some used their heads, while others are guided by their hearts, or lack thereof.
Rea, along with her brother Nove List, David the Cook, and Winkle, a galah cockatoo, work to solve the mysteries before the murderer strikes again!
THE ARCANE INDEX
A Canera Book Club Mystery
A cozy, magical mystery about five people, a magic book, a ghost owl and an unnatural storm that won’t .
An ancient book, found in the basement of the library, is brought to book club. Five people discover magical words that give them power to change reality. But at a cost.
Sharp-eyed readers will spot anagrams throughout the book, some are hints, some are red herrings, while others are just there for fun. You’ll have to figure out which is which.
The series explores the concepts of family and obligations, balancing more than two alternatives as a solution. Order and chaos are never simple opposites here; each book demonstrates that control without empathy decays into cruelty, while freedom without structure becomes noise. WordBound cheerfully dismantles the usual binaries of order and chaos, reason and feeling, truth and theatrical fraud, on the grounds that two-sided arguments are for people with limited imagination. Memory and architecture become indistinguishable in Murkmire Manor like a nervous system made of stone and sentiment.
Thank you for visiting Murkmire Manor, the home of the List and Toes Families.
Frogs & Fog: A Murkmire Mystery is the first book in the series WordBound. It’s about the power of words and Names. In this world, Names shape a person, defining them. Perhaps even constraining them. Rea List, returning home to Murkmire after a decade away, is the spark that sets events in motion. Events that will change everyone in both Families as they learn of the power of resonance – magic – and how they have always had it.
Further books explore the entire world and introduce us to other Named Families. These Families have always known of resonance and tones, using them in ways defined by their Names. Dulci More is a songbird; Viri Lity is a fitness fanatic; Mo Ment carries a pocket watch and recites haikus; Guid Ance always provides direction; Pati Ence remains ever calm; Dar Ling and Char Ming are a dangerous pair who can win over almost anyone. Against our heroes stands the Spiral, a two-thousand-year-old society set on – what else – world domination.
Everything was going just fine for the Spiral until Rea became involved. She brought her Family, her friends, a sarcastic cockatoo and a ghost in a jar of lemon marmalade. The Spiral had no idea what they unleashed at Noctavira. Enter the Harmonic Wild, an organization opposed to the Spiral, and perhaps to Rea and her friends. The Wild imposes their own order, by freeing chaos from any bindings. Now, both organizations are active. Both have their own agenda, neither of which aligns with Rea’s. Cacophony, the third alternative, started by this group of twenty-somethings, must now face off against these two ancient rivals. What hope do they have, except for maybe Winkle, the marmalade, and re-discovering the Lost Skills of resonance?
Books 2 and 3 Coming in 2026
Book Two takes Rea and her team to the deep jungles of South America where she struggles to complete the mysterious Trials. In the process she makes friends of some Families, enemies of others.
Book Three brings the danger back to Murkmire Manor as the diverse Families congregate, deciding their next moves. Teams are dispatched – a remote African rainforest, a deserted Alpine monastery, dark sewers of Buenos Aires, a series of lost islands, and even deep below Murkmire itself. Cacophony begins as they all discover clues that will help decipher the hidden secrets of the Spiral. But will the teams survive locating the clues?
FROGS & FOG: A MURKMIRE MYSTERY BEGINS HERE!
After a decade away, a funeral calls Rea List back to Murkmire Manor, home of List and Toes Families.
Once home, she finds a mystery involving a box of photos, a missing triplet, and a murder. The suspects are myriad, from naysaying Aunt Ve Toes to the Poison Twins Pota and Toma Toes. And even her own family members; Sty List the fashionista with a grudge, Aunt Mystica List who foresees the future, but does she tell it all?
With the help of Cook, her brother Nove List, Winkle the cockatoo and the lemon marmalade ghost, Rea must discover the history that has been hidden from both Families. History that introduces the Spiral, an organization two thousand years old with an agenda.
And they are watching Rea…
