The Settle

By Lisette Rees-Peel

The settle is the part of a race nobody on the bank ever sees.

Twenty strokes in, a crew comes down off the sprint to the rhythm it means to live at. Cal Ashworth can hear a settle from a launch at sixty metres. He has never managed one of his own.

His third season in charge of Cambridge's men opens with two lost Boat Races behind him and his contract up for review in April. He hasn't mentioned that to Kit. Nor has he told him why, in May, he turned down the job that made him.

Kit Haldane has bought a house on the river at Ely and given Cal a key. The voice the whole country knows goes everywhere with him, and Cal has noticed it comes home too. A streamer has twelve weeks of Kit from February, and on race day the schedule has him on a river half a planet away.

A newspaper is asking a question nobody will answer. The crew know before they're told. And in a locked drawer at Ely is the book: a crew list in the front, and in the back Cal's private pages, where he writes about Kit and has never once written his name.

This time Kit wants it in the front.

Second chances, settled - coach and commentator - one house, two careers - a secret that won't stay kept - explicit - one couple across all three books - the end of the trilogy

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0HMPCZK2Z
• ISBN13: 9798161589618
• Release Date: October 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 254 Pages
• Weight: 0.76 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"