Preservation Of Secrets

An Adirondack Mountains Paranormal Cozy Mystery

By: Hattie Orr

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Maren Calloway didn’t come to the Adirondacks looking for a fresh start.

She came because there was nowhere else to go.

The inheritance was simple on paper: a crumbling lakeside lodge, left behind by a grandmother she barely knew. What it actually came with was something else entirely—rooms that feel wrong in ways she can’t explain, a past no one in town wants to talk about, and a white crow that watches her like it’s waiting for her to understand something.

She hasn’t. Not yet.

When a group of preservation experts arrives to evaluate the property, it feels like a practical step forward. The lodge needs work. The land needs answers. And Maren needs a plan.

Then one of the guests is found dead in the boathouse.

The official explanation is easy. Too easy.

Natural causes. Case closed.

But Maren was there. She touched the doorframe. And for a moment, the world didn’t feel like the present anymore. Something lingered in that room—fear that wasn’t hers, a fragment of something that shouldn’t still be there.

And the crow hasn’t stopped screaming since.

Now the lodge is full of people with reasons to lie.

A protégé with something to lose.
A collector who sees value in everything but truth.
A writer chasing a story that doesn’t want to be found.
And a quiet local contractor who knows the land better than anyone—and asks the fewest questions.

The more Maren digs, the clearer one thing becomes:

This place wasn’t just built to stand.

It was built to cover something.

And whatever was meant to stay buried is starting to surface.

Because the past here doesn’t stay in the past.

It waits.