Media kit

Short synopsis

A restorer with a forger's past is hired to restore a Renaissance fresco inside a tech billionaire's isolated New England mansion. The pay will clear her debt. There is one rule: never speak to his wife. Then the painting begins to change, and Clara realizes she was hired for her past, not her talent.

Long synopsis

Clara Reyes has the steadiest hands in her profession. Years ago, those hands made a drawing good enough to pass as a seventeenth-century original, and she has been paying for it ever since: to a man named Vance, at a rate he invented the day she tried to stop.

Then a lawyer in a Boston tower offers her a way out. Tech billionaire Arthur Voss needs a restorer for the Renaissance fresco set into the wall of his remote New England home, and the fee would clear her debt in a single stroke. The contract has one clause she reads twice: she may not speak to Mrs. Voss.

Aldercroft has no staff and no mobile signal. The house runs itself. Every door opens to a thumbprint and remembers whose it was. Arthur is gentle, generous and endlessly patient. His wife, Vivienne, is "recovering", and keeps to her wing.

But the fresco behind the scaffold is not the painting in the photographs. A weeping woman appears where there was nothing before. And Clara begins to suspect that she was hired for her past, not her talent.

Author bio

Kate Ashford is a novelist. She wrote The Restoration, her debut psychological thriller, in the early mornings and late nights around a full-time job.

Book details

Format

Kindle eBook

Length

238 pages

Published

September 23, 2026

Kindle Unlimited

Yes

Genre

Psychological thriller

Setting

A remote mansion in rural New England

Author

Kate Ashford (debut novel)

Comparison titles

The Housemaid, The Silent Patient, Verity, Rebecca, Gone Girl.