Clara Pembrook

Cozy mysteries with a pinch of magic

Clara Pembrook

The Steepwater Cove Witch Mysteries

Tea, secrets & one very rude raven, in a foggy harbor town where the tea tells the truth.

Get the free prequel story Meet Book 1

About the series

Welcome to Steepwater Cove

Somewhere on the fog-bound New England coast is a little lobster harbor where the bakery opens at five, the diner knows your business by six, and someone has hung a lit lamp on the old iron post on the Green every single night for two hundred years.

At No. 9 Wick Street stands Thackery's Tea & Tincture, est. 1891: two hundred and fourteen tiny apothecary drawers, a brass bell over a green door, and a family recipe for a tea that makes whoever drinks it unable to tell a lie for exactly one hour. Whoever brews it can't lie either, which turns out to be the inconvenient part.

The Steepwater Cove Witch Mysteries are clean, cozy paranormal whodunits with fair-play clues, a found-family town, a slow-burn romance, and original tea blends in the back of every book.

  • A truth-telling teaOne cup, one honest hour, and a price for the brewer too.
  • One very rude ravenThaddeus: ninety-ish, Victorian vocabulary, strong opinions about blazers.
  • A foggy harbor townLobster boats, lamp-lit traditions, and neighbors with secrets.
  • Cozy & cleanNo gore, no bad language, a slow-burn romance and a satisfying whodunit.

Book One

Coming soon

Book 1 · Coming soon

Truth Be Brewed

The Steepwater Cove Witch Mysteries, Book One

Eleanor Thackery spent fifteen years making other people's disasters disappear. Now the disaster is hers.

Burned out and done with Boston, Nell inherits her late grandmother's tea apothecary in foggy Steepwater Cove. She plans to reopen it for one season, sell it and get out. She doesn't plan on Thaddeus, an enormous, opinionated raven who can talk. Or on the family recipe for a tea that makes anyone who drinks it unable to lie for exactly one hour.

Then the developer half the town would like to push off the wharf drops his teacup at her grand reopening and never gets up, and the new shopkeeper with the poison garden becomes suspect number one.

Tell me when it's out

A note from Clara

Pull up a stool

Hello, and welcome in. Mind the bell over the door; it's louder than it looks.

I write the kind of books I want on a gray afternoon: a pot of something strong, a town full of people who know a little too much about each other, and a puzzle that plays fair. I'm a lifelong reader of cozy mysteries and a firm believer that every story improves with a good cup of tea and at least one character who refuses to be impressed.

Steepwater Cove grew out of the New England fog and a single question: what would happen if someone who had spent her whole career shading the truth suddenly couldn't? Nell is still finding out. Thaddeus, for the record, finds the whole thing beneath him.

If that sounds like your sort of town, I'd love for you to stay a while.

Warmly, Clara

P.S. Thaddeus would like it known that he did not approve this letter.

Free prequel story

The Summer of the Silver Spoon

Long before Nell came back to run the shop, she spent one July at No. 9 Wick Street with her gran. When a silver christening spoon vanishes from the Fourth of July church tea, an eleven-year-old Nell, her best friend Josie, Gran Winnie and a raven with opinions set out to find it.

  • A free prequel short story, yours when you join
  • First news on Truth Be Brewed's release
  • Tea blends, cover reveals and a word or two from Thaddeus
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