The Salt Room

$2.99

A Saltmarrow Bay Mystery. Fifteen years ago, five kids bolted a door. Now someone is finishing the story.

The Story

Saltmarrow Bay has one road in, and the sea closes it twice a day.

Detective Rhea Calloway left town the night she turned sixteen and never went back. Then a plain white envelope turns up in her desk drawer in Sacramento, with one line in blue ballpoint: COME HOME. THE DOOR IS STILL LOCKED.

Days later, her childhood friend Julian Ashby is found hanging in the abandoned cannery, inside a circle of thirteen candles, with salt packed into his mouth. Rhea knows what the salt means. Years ago, on Halloween night, five kids locked a boy named Danny Reyes in the cannery’s brine room as a joke. Then they ran, and nobody went back to open the door.

Now every one of them has a letter, one of them is dead, and Lantern Night is a day away. To find out who killed Julian, Rhea has to go back into the brine room before the king tide does.

What You’ll Experience

  • A tide-locked town: a causeway that floods on schedule, and an alibi that depends on it.

  • A fair-play mystery: every clue is on the page, and a full case file at the end lays out the night minute by minute.

  • Eight illustrated scenes: moody full-page art at key moments, from the causeway to the brine room.

  • A guilt that never washed out: a story about what a small town buries, and what the tide brings back.

Reading Experience

  • Length: a 12-chapter novella, about 11,500 words (66 illustrated pages)

  • Reading time: about 1 hour, ideal for one sitting

  • Genre: dark murder mystery, small-town suspense

  • Content note: a murder, the death of a teenager, and a near-drowning

Perfect For Readers Who Love

  • Locked-room and small-town mysteries

  • Coastal gothic atmosphere and secrets that resurface

  • Short, twisty reads you can finish in an evening

  • Old sins catching up with old friends

What You Get

  • The complete illustrated novella, with the case file

  • PDF for reading on any screen or printing

  • EPUB for Apple Books, Kobo, Google Play Books and most e-readers

  • Kindle-ready EPUB to send to your Kindle

  • Instant download, DRM-free

  • Also available in Spanish: El cuarto de sal