THE LOST LETTERS OF BRAMBLEWOOD

WW2 November 1940

FREE HISTORICAL FICTION SHORT STORY PREQUEL — Bramblewood Mysteries

Some secrets were never meant to survive .

Viola grew up in Bramblewood. She knows the village, she knows its people, and she knows her family; or thinks she does.

When her grandmother asks her to fetch the Christmas decorations from the attic, Viola finds more than she was looking for. Tucked inside an old chest is a bundle of letters, tied together and unopened. Addressed to her mother, in her maiden name, the postmarks read 1917 and. the return address to a Private W. A. Gardner.

That isn’t her father’s name.

When Viola asks her grandmother about the letters, the old woman goes pale, snatches them away, and tells her it is nothing. But Viola has grown up in a village where everyone knows everyone’s business, and she knows when someone is lying.

What she uncovers changes everything she thought she knew about her mother, her grandmother, and the family she grew up in. Because the letters were never lost. They were hidden. And the reason they were hidden is a secret that has been carefully protected for over twenty years, at a cost that nobody fully reckoned with.

The Lost Letters of Bramblewood is a free short story prequel to the Bramblewood Mystery series. It introduces Viola, the village of Bramblewood, and the family secrets that will set everything in motion in Book 1.

COMING 2026

This story is for you if you love:

  • Character-driven mysteries with emotional depth
  • WWII fiction rooted in the lives of women
  • Stories about ordinary people capable of extraordinary things, good and bad
  • Stories of family secrets and generational betrayal
  • Mystery books full of twists
  • Short reads that pull you straight into a new series world
  • Layered plots with hidden clues
  • A historical village setting




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