Excerpt – The Hanged Man by Jane Brookwood
Synopsis
In small-town Pineridge Hollow, Fiona Miller runs a metaphysical gift shop where she reads tarot, sells crystals, mixes tea, and generally minds her own business alongside her cat and familiar Rosie. But when she pulls The Hanged Man tarot card moments before learning her long-lost friend’s son has turned up dead, she vows to uncover the truth. Accident? Suicide? Murder? The town has already decided, but Fiona’s tarot deck isn’t so sure. She follows the cards into buried grudges, old money, and secrets the town spent decades hiding. On top of everything, The Hanged Man keeps making himself known. Can you make sense of The Hanged Man’s meaning?
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Excerpt
The next morning dawned grey and dull, the light outside flat as old tin. Fiona’s face felt pinched, a storm brewing behind her eyelids that sleep hadn’t touched. She dragged herself downstairs to the hush of the waiting shop, craving the comfort of her usual morning brew of imported single-estate Assam tea.
As it steeped, she drifted through The Raven without purpose, lifting an item only to set it back down again. Nothing seemed to settle. Not her hands. Not her thoughts.
Rosie, meanwhile, was a blur of motion. She zipped around Fiona’s ankles, tore into the packages waiting to be stocked, and sent a crystal spinning off a shelf in her careening madness. Fiona clenched her fists, drew a slow breath in, then out. “Rosie, would you please, for the love of goodness, just stop?” she asked tightly.
Her cat did not stop.
Her final leap carried her straight into the Reading Room, where she landed squarely on the tower of new books waiting to be shelved. Fiona watched in slow-motion horror as the four-foot stack wavered, tipped, and slid off the table entirely, glossy covers skidding and scattering across the floor in every direction. Before she could move, Rosie bounded again, this time straight onto the tarot deck. Cards burst into the air, fluttering like startled birds. When they settled, three lay face-up on the table’s surface.
Knowing exactly when to make an exit, the cat vanished from the room. Fiona didn’t follow. She couldn’t.
Her gaze locked on the cards as the blood drained from her face. A sudden feeling of dread gripped her, making her knees give way. She caught herself on the nearest chair, breath shallow, pulse loud in her ears. The morning’s dread seemed to grow and expand.
Silence fell heavy over the shop. Fiona remained where she was, breath coming too fast, her hands trembling as they hovered over the first card. The Wheel of Fortune reversed. She moved her hand to the next card. The Tower. The image of the books spilling from their unstable stack immediately came to mind, Rosie communicating as only she knew how. Her fingers hesitated before the final card, reluctant now, as though it might burn.
The Hanged Man. Again.
The figure stared back at her, serene and suspended, peaceful in a way that felt entirely wrong. Rosie reappeared as if summoned, padding silently into the room and settling beside
the inverted figure. Gone was the frantic whirl of moments before. She sat perfectly still, her solemnity underscoring the warning more clearly than any words could.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Fiona whispered.
Rosie only stared back, woman and cat stuck in a shared, wordless foreboding.
The phone rang.
About the Author
Jane Brookwood writes cozy mysteries steeped in tarot symbolism, intuition, and the quiet magic that lingers in small towns. Though she lives just outside the fictional Pineridge Hollow, she knows its back roads and hidden corners by heart. Its shop windows, whispered rumors, and moonlit secrets inspire much of her work — and often feel as real to her as any place on a map. Jane has always been drawn to the moment when an ordinary day tilts into something strange, meaningful, or unexpected. She writes to capture that shift — the sense that something powerful is moving just beneath the surface, waiting for the right person to notice. When she’s not writing, she’s reading tarot, wandering through forests, visiting cafés that remind her of The Velvet Fig, or sharing quiet evenings with her cat, Rosie, who insists on chiming in whenever a mystery gets tense. Jane lives in British Columbia, where Pineridge Hollow grows a little more vivid with every sunrise.
