Aaron Michael Lynn

Begotten by Bay Aaron Michael Lynn

Lilly by name; petunias at heart. It's been a year since the worst day of Lilly Laventhorp's life. The day her late husband, Miles Laventhorp left on his schooner, Lilly By Name - and disappeared. Declared lost at sea. Since then she has shut herself away from the world, from the boating business The Five Legion Ferry Co. that she had built with Miles and his twin brother, Andrew to isolating herself away from loved ones on Hermit on the seemingly calm and peaceful tides of the Isle of Troika. 'It's wondrous what a familiar face and a drink can do...' One evening, Andrew appears at her door after a full year of no communication, and the tiniest ray of sunshine peeks through her dark world. The happiness is short-lived when Lilly By Name is found on the remote island of Ebb by two of the resident troublemakers nicknamed 'The Bozos' with its masts skewered in half and no sign of Miles's body. The 'cold case' is now opened, and Detective Angus Fogg along with his partner (and daughter) Amphelice Fogg conclude that Miles's death was not a tragic drowning accident - but murder. Lilly struggles to regain her life back, trying to bond with Miles's twin brother, Andrew, but as the brutalised body of Bentley Burgess is found in his home and a disturbing message written in a familiar hand finds its way into Lilly's home; she doesn't know who to trust. Nor does she dare to look at her sweet petunia garden. People have been keeping secrets, some life-long resentments and the entire Troika community is drawn into finding the origin of a cult, a poetically acute murderer with a thirst for revenge, and an abductor just as rampaging storms weather the horizon. 'Here on a hill, begotten by bay, may souls rise anew.'