The Black Wing Secret

Releases November 27, 2026.
Some secrets aren't kept by monsters. They're kept by the people the whole town trusts most.
When Pelican Cove's beloved town historian is found dead at the bottom of a dark staircase, everyone agrees it was a tragic accident — a woman in her seventies, a bad step, a run of terrible luck. Shop owner Winifred Baxter isn't so sure. Agatha Winthrop had just told her she was three days from revealing the biggest discovery of her career, and Winifred's crow, Copernicus, has started reacting to a mark she's seen only once before: a black wing, carved into the foundation stone of the town's most respected charity.
The deeper Winifred digs, the more she uncovers about the Founders' Trust — generous, beloved, and quietly threaded through every institution in town — and about a woman named Constance Ashworth, who vanished without a trace sixty-three years ago and was never spoken of again.
As pressure mounts on everyone Winifred loves, she'll have to prove that Pelican Cove's most cherished secret isn't a ghost story at all. It's an institution, run by someone the whole town — including Winifred — has every reason to trust.
The Black Wing Secret is Book Four in the Winifred Baxter Mysteries, a paranormal cozy series full of small-town charm, fair-play clues, a crow with better instincts than most people, and one very determined shop owner who has stopped believing that comfortable stories are always true ones.
Perfect for fans of cozy mysteries with a paranormal edge, amateur sleuths with animal sidekicks, and small towns that turn out to be hiding a great deal more than casseroles and church socials.