The Hearthwyrm Orchard

AN ORCHARD THAT RIPENS IN WINTER SHOULD BE A BLESSING. At the first hard frost, the pears at Rook Orchard are warm in the hand. Blossom, ripe fruit and blackened seeds appear on the same trees, and Wren Ashcombe knows the season has gone wrong. Beneath the roots, a hearthwyrm is moving warmth through the old roads. It can store heat. It can carry it. It cannot create it. So every warm root is leaving something else colder. The orchard depends on its harvest. The hearthwyrm needs a winter of its own. And the farther Wren follows the imbalance, the clearer it becomes that there is no painless answer—only a choice about who will bear the cost. For readers who love magical creatures, found family and gentle fantasy with grown-up problems, The Hearthwyrm Orchard returns to Thistlewick Hollow with a mystery about care, scarcity and the difference between abundance and enough. Come back to the Hollow. Winter has arrived, and Rook Orchard has forgotten how to sleep.