A Covenant of Ash and Ink

Eleanor Shaw has spent thirty years waiting to matter. At fifty-two, she's still an adjunct professor-passed over for tenure, overlooked by colleagues, invisible to the academic world she's devoted her life to. Then she discovers a medieval manuscript in the university archives that could change everything. A text so remarkable, so unprecedented, it will finally prove she's someone worth remembering. But the manuscript holds more than ancient words. Brother Matthias, the monk who created it eight centuries ago, bound something dangerous into its pages-a curse that has consumed every scholar who tried to translate it. Now Eleanor feels its pull: the hunger for knowledge that never stops, the compulsion to keep seeking, the slow erasure of everything except the work. Her only allies are a kind theology professor who's been bringing her coffee for two years (and quietly falling in love with her), and the ghost himself-who has been trying to warn scholars away from his creation for eight hundred years. To break the curse, Eleanor must sacrifice the very thing she's spent her life chasing. But in letting go of achievement, she might finally discover what truly matters. A cozy dark academia tale of obsession and redemption, featuring a slow-burn later-in-life romance, a judgmental cat named Chaucer, and a ghost who just wants to rest. Perfect for readers who love the atmospheric settings of The Secret History with the warmth of A Man Called Ove. Book One of The Whitmore Archives