The Tinkeeper of Gullmere: Book One of the Gullmere Chronicles

By Isabella Monroe

A compass whispers a dead man's name. A music box refuses to play. And beneath the cobblestones of a harbour island, something ancient is failing.

Mara Thistle came to Gullmere to start over. A former Guild hunter carrying twenty years of grief in a salt-worn satchel, she wants nothing more than to repair broken clocks and rusted hinges in her quayside shop, Thistle & Tinker. Simple work. Honest work. The kind of work that doesn't whisper back.

But the objects on Gullmere don't stay quiet. When she fixes a fisherman's compass, it speaks a name no one recognizes - Rook - and shows its owner the face of a man long dead. A retired mapmaker brings her a fragment of an old chart bearing the same word. And the island's midwife entrusts her with a music box that is mechanically perfect and utterly silent, as if the song inside has been removed.

Mara discovers that Gullmere sits atop the Weave - a crystalline network that stores the island's collective memory. It is cracking. Fading. And as it fails, the islanders are losing pieces of themselves they don't even know are missing. The only way to repair it is through Tidework: the dangerous, half-forgotten art of channelling emotional resonance through broken things. An art that requires Mara to confront the one object she has refused to touch for two decades - a locket belonging to someone she loved and lost.

With an equinox ritual called Remembering Night approaching and a charming rival tinker whose quick fixes may be accelerating the damage, Mara must do what she does best: mend what others have abandoned. Even if the most broken thing on the island is herself.

The Tinkeeper of Gullmere is a cozy fantasy novel for readers who love:
# Found family on a magical island
#A capable, grief-tested heroine over 40
# Slow-burn romance with a steady, kind love interest
#Craft-based magic systems (think repair work, not fireballs)
# Small-town mysteries with emotional stakes

Book One of the Gullmere Chronicles. A complete, standalone story with series potential.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0GP1VWG1J
• ISBN13: 9798248595617
• Release Date: February 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 262 Pages
• Weight: 0.58 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.0" x 8.0"