THE ST ORISON NOVELS
The Stories of St Orison
The St Orison novels are currently unpublished.
Across different decades, generations and mysteries, the series explores the lives, loves and secrets of one Cornish coastal town — a place shaped by the sea, its history and something harder to explain.
The Returning Light
Book One · Contemporary St Orison · Unpublished
Elliot Vale arrives in St Orison intending to spend three months away from his old life. The Cornish harbour town is new to him — a place to step back, take stock and decide what comes next.
Then continue into the mystery and the questions surrounding his father Daniel’s disappearance in 1995.
The Intended Choice
Book Two · Contemporary St Orison · Unpublished
As St Orison begins to reveal more of itself, the choices made by those closest to the town become harder to separate from the forces that have shaped it for generations.
The Intended Choice deepens the mystery surrounding St Orison, following familiar lives into more personal territory as past decisions, hidden loyalties and long-held secrets begin to surface. What seems like coincidence increasingly feels connected — not by fate, but by patterns people have chosen either to follow or resist.
At its heart, The Intended Choice is a story about choice, consequence, love and the difficult question of how much of a life is truly our own to decide.
The Sisterhood of St Orison
Book Three · Contemporary St Orison · Unpublished
As old stories begin to overlap with the present, the deeper history of St Orison comes into sharper focus.
The Sisterhood of St Orison follows Elliot and those around him as a series of discoveries draws attention back towards the priory, the town’s ancient markers and the women whose knowledge has survived quietly across generations. What first appears to belong to folklore begins to reveal a more complicated relationship between memory, landscape and the forces that have shaped St Orison for centuries.
At its heart, The Sisterhood of St Orison is a story about inheritance, belonging, community and the things a town chooses to remember — or protect.
The Sirens of St Orison
Book Four · Contemporary St Orison · Unpublished
The Sirens of St Orison brings the town’s hidden research history into clearer view, revealing the significance of SIREN — Special Investigation and Research into Environmental Neurology — and the work that began long before later government programmes took shape. As old records, captured images and unexplained locations begin to connect, the people of St Orison are forced to confront how much has been observed, recorded and concealed over the years.
The St Orison Effect
Book Five · ST ORISON · 1958
Historical prequel · Unpublished
Summer, 1958. When journalist Alex Lanyon and photographer Harry Pascoe are drawn to St Orison by reports of a disturbance in the town, what appears to be an unusual local story begins to develop into something far harder to explain.
Witnesses describe moments that do not quite agree. Photographs preserve details people remember differently. Watches stop, behaviour changes and incidents around the High Street, coast and ancient priory suggest that St Orison itself may be influencing those who live within it. As Alex and Harry begin assembling accounts from residents — including a young Edmund Bell — they uncover traces of earlier events and evidence that others have already taken an interest in the town.
The deeper they investigate, the more difficult it becomes to separate coincidence, folklore and observable fact.
The St Orison Effect reveals the beginnings of a mystery that will shape the town for generations — and the first attempts to understand what St Orison is capable of doing to those who experience it.
The Lore of St Orison
Book Six · ST ORISON · 1986-1987
Historical prequel · Unpublished
In 1986, geologist Caitlin Richards returns to St Orison after inheriting her grandmother’s cottage at Smugglers Rise. What should be a new beginning instead draws her back towards something she has sensed since childhood — an instinctive connection to the natural world that her grandmother called the Knowing.
Working under the public cover of priory preservation, Caitlin becomes involved with SIREN — Special Investigation and Research into Environmental Neurology, a government research programme whose interest in St Orison stretches back through the unexplained events of 1958 and the wartime disturbance of 1941. As Caitlin begins documenting increasingly unusual changes in the town, patterns emerge across its animals, vegetation, minerals and coastline.
At the same time, Caitlin reconnects with Bethan, while the ambitious Cain Fairchild becomes increasingly fascinated by what may lie beneath St Orison. As the natural order begins to shift and the sea itself behaves in ways no one can easily explain, Caitlin must decide whether understanding St Orison means studying it — or learning when to listen to it.
The Lore of St Orison explores the origins of SIREN, the meaning of the Knowing and the relationship between the town, its people and the landscape that has shaped them for generations.
ONE TOWN. SIX STORIES
St Orison Is Always There
Across different decades, different lives and different mysteries, the town remains the constant — its harbour, its history and the questions that never entirely go away.
The six St Orison novels are currently unpublished.