Edina: A Novel

In the wind‑swept hills of Cornwall lies Trennach, a tight‑knit mining hamlet where soot‑blackened pits give way after a short walk to gentle pastures and woods. The village street is a row of modest shops – a baker with his pickles, a linen draper who also sells brushes, and a druggist whose window glows with coloured globes and who rents a tiny circulating library to the local folk. Amid the hum of labor the druggist, Edmund Float, is a frail man kept company by the keen‑eyed apprentice Blase Pellet, whose habit of peering into neighbours’ doors hints at a restless curiosity.

Opposite the druggist stands the modest home of Dr. Hugh Raynor, the village's sole physician, whose open door and brass plaque mark a quiet authority in the otherwise rugged community. As midnight approaches, a strange sound drifts through the still air, stirring whispers among miners and drawing the attention of both the doctor and Pellet. The early chapters weave everyday life, a hint of unseen tension, and the promise that something buried beneath Trennach's surface will soon surface.