The Handler's Inventory Series

Six novels · Season 1 · Available June 15, 2026

Book 1

The Coffer Seal

Book 2

The Finisher’s Grip

Book 3

The Second Hand

Book 4

The Hearth Seal

Book 5

The Waking Collection

Book 6

The Breach

The Novels

Book 1

The Coffer Seal

Some inheritances come with instructions. Some come with warnings.

When Tom Salk inherits his uncle’s estate sale business in a small Illinois river town, he expects dusty furniture and old paperwork. Instead, he finds a coded ledger, a warehouse full of objects that shouldn’t exist, and a community that knows more about his uncle’s work than they’re willing to say. The first full-length novel in the Handler’s Inventory series.

Book 2

The Finisher’s Grip

An unfinished object with a compulsion toward completion has no off switch.

A retired engineer spent four years building a blanket chest by hand. He died before he could finish it. Now his daughter can’t stop completing things, his projects, his arguments, his unresolved grudges. Her husband is signing deals he knows are wrong. Her son is saying things that should have stayed thoughts. Tom Salk knows the chest is the source. But an unfinished object with a compulsion toward completion has no off switch, unless someone can finish it right. The second novel in the Handler’s Inventory series.

Book 3

The Second Hand

Two sets of hands built this containment. One of them is Harlan’s.

A condemned church thirty miles from Kettle Springs is being torn down, and its century-old pipe organ is being broken apart for salvage. When the demolition begins, the organ’s stored resonance starts to discharge, and townspeople begin reliving memories that don’t belong to them. Tom Salk is hired for the job. What he finds hidden inside the organ’s cabinet changes everything he thought he knew about his uncle’s solitary work. Two sets of hands built this containment. Two sets of initials in the blue binder. One of them is Harlan’s. The third novel in the Handler’s Inventory series.

Book 4

The Hearth Seal

Fixing it means telling a friend the truth about the world he lives in.

Moffatt’s restaurant has been the warm center of Kettle Springs for three generations. When a renovation exposes the original foundation, a sealed iron box is pulled from the cornerstone, and the warmth goes cold. Customers leave mid-meal. Conversations die. Craig Moffatt, who has never been anything but steady, starts losing his sense of where the walls are. Tom Salk has to fix what’s broken. But fixing it means telling a friend the truth about the world he lives in. The fourth novel in the Handler’s Inventory series.

Book 5

The Waking Collection

Then someone he’s been looking for walks through the door.

A storage unit in Dubuque. Fourteen iron-sealed objects arranged in a pattern that hums. A folding chair. A journal filled with forty years of research, and what reads increasingly, like conversations. Tom Salk has been tracking the Buyer for four books. Now he’s standing in her workshop, reading her argument, and he can’t dismiss it. The objects respond to his presence. One of them goes quiet when Mo touches it, as if listening. Then someone he’s been looking for walks through the door, alive, clear-eyed, and not interested in being rescued. The fifth novel in the Handler’s Inventory series.

Book 6

The Breach

The question is what you do when the villain might be right.

Fifty-one sealed objects on a limestone bluff above Kettle Springs. A configuration designed to cascade. A boundary between worlds that’s been thinning since before the town existed. Maren Voss asks Tom Salk to do one thing before he decides: listen. He listens. And he hears something. The question was never whether to stop the villain. The question is what you do when the villain might be right, and the cost of finding out could break the only instrument you have. The sixth novel and Season 1 finale of the Handler’s Inventory series.

Short Stories

Free companion stories available to newsletter subscribers.

Free download — Coming soon

Harlan’s Yard

A Handler’s Inventory Prequel · ~9,000 words

Summer, 1984. Twelve-year-old Tom Salk spends a week with his Uncle Harlan in a small Illinois river town, sorting inventory in a warehouse full of other people’s things. One brass candlestick feels different from the rest, warmer, heavier, present in a way he can’t explain. Harlan notices. He doesn’t explain it either.

“It sat in my hand with a seriousness that the other candlesticks hadn’t had, as if it had opinions about being held and was concentrating on them.”

Download FreeComing soon

Bonus story — Coming soon

Mo’s Hands

A Handler’s Inventory Bonus Story · ~6,000 words

You’ve read the dampening scene through Tom’s eyes. Now hear it through Mo’s, the expert on the other end of the phone, listening to a man she trained attempt the most dangerous procedure she’s ever witnessed, with three weeks of practice where her mentor had forty years. A story about skilled hands with nothing to do, fear managed through discipline, and the cost of staying on the line.

“The specific restlessness of skilled hands denied their function.”

Read Mo’s Side of the StoryComing soon

Join the newsletter

Get early access to new releases, and a bonus story from the Handler’s Inventory world, delivered to your inbox.