Spotlight & Giveaway: The Vanishing Stone by Christopher Seto

Today, HJ is pleased to share with you Christopher Seto’s new release: The Vanishing Stone

A vanished man. A haunted island. A killer who leaves clues.

Criminology Ph.D. student Theo Chan vowed he’d never get tangled in another murder. But when a cryptic late-night call drags Theo and his shadowy employers, Primrose and Teebin, to a remote island village, he’s forced to confront the one thing scarier than a killer: the secrets people will kill to protect.

The case? Find local legend Edmund Stone, who vanished twenty-six years ago, leaving behind nothing but rumors. It seems benign—until they stumble onto a brand-new murder. Now someone has smashed a dollhouse replica of the island’s most haunted manor, and the killer is teasing them with eerie limericks in a twisted game.

As Theo and his team chase riddles through windswept graveyards, storm-battered cliffs, and long-forgotten locked rooms, every villager becomes a suspect. Who wants the past to stay buried? And what secrets does Primrose conceal in her own shadowy past? In a village where everyone has something to hide, unmasking the truth could turn Theo’s second case into his last.

Perfect for fans of atmospheric mysteries and amateur sleuths with everything to lose, adventure will keep you guessing until the final jaw-dropping twist.

Enjoy an exclusive excerpt from The Vanishing Stone 

PROLOGUE

As is typical of murder mysteries, this story would not exist without death.

The death of leaves, to be more specific.

It was the end of October. The foliage on New Barrington’s campus that year was dazzling, although the word around campus was that to really experience the fall colors, one had to take a trip up the New England coast. As it happened, I had been wanting to take a brief writing retreat around that time anyway, with the (perhaps overly ambitious) goal of finishing the final chapter of my dissertation. So, I packed up my car one Friday and journeyed northeast.

The trees really were magnificent, and my writing sessions were reasonably productive. But none of that is particularly relevant to this story. I recount this excursion because of a chance encounter that took place that weekend at a gas station in rural Maine. A little north of Portland, I think it was.

The woman behind the cash register squinted at me as I stepped forward to pay for my fuel. She was maybe fifty years of age and wore a pink, camouflage-print jacket over a red flannel shirt, with most of her stringy, ash-blonde hair tucked up under a ball cap. Her lipstick was the color of raw tuna.

“Don’t I know you?” she asked as she rang up my purchase. Her voice was high-pitched and breathy.

I smiled politely. “I’m sorry, I don’t think so. I’m not from around here.”

She squinted even harder, as though trying to make out my features through a pane of frosted glass. “No, we’ve definitely met,” she muttered to herself. “I never forget a face. Never. Forget. A. Face.”

I stood in awkward silence for several seconds, wondering when a socially appropriate time might be to leave. Just as I was about to ask for my credit card back and escape to the car, she shrieked in sudden jubilance.

“Eldritch Vale! You were there! That weekend. With the storm!” Then she rearranged her features into an expression of forced solemnity, though her eyes still shone with delight. “Oh! and all those murders, too.”

I remembered her then. I suppose I could have feigned ignorance but, unfortunately, I’ve never been good at thinking on my feet during spontaneous social interactions. Instead, I just said something like, “Oh, um, yes. That’s right.”

“I’m Mia,” she said, a little reproachfully, when it became clear from the expansive silence that I didn’t remember her name. “And you’re Thurbo or something like that, aren’t you?”

“Theo.”

“Well, it’s nice to see you again, Theo.”

“You too, Mia,” I lied, still wishing that she’d give me back my card. “Small world.”

“Isn’t it just!” Mia cried. “You were with that woman, weren’t you? The blind woman. The one who put it all together in the end. Oh, my—what was her name?”

“Primrose,” I said. “Primrose Ghaust-Lee.”

“My, that really was something,” Mia continued, apparently oblivious to my unwillingness to relive an extremely traumatic experience. “Really something to tell the grandchildren about! I felt like I was in one of those detective stories, you know?”

“How is your husband?” I asked, hoping to steer the conversation toward any other topic. “Jamie, wasn’t it?”

“Jeremy,” Mia said coldly. “And damned if I know how he is. I caught him in bed with our financial manager last month. Chucked him out by the ear!”

“Oh.” I was still wishing for a different topic. “I’m sorry to—”

“But those murders!” Mia was not to be deterred. “It really was quite a story, wasn’t it? I tell everyone I meet that I was there—I was there for the Eldritch Vale Murders of ’25. I tell ’em the whole story. Some people don’t believe me, of course, but that’s probably just because nothing exciting has ever happened to them, so they assume it can’t for anyone else either!”

“Yes, that’s probably why,” I said, snatching up my credit card, which Mia had just laid on the counter. “Anyway, I really have to—”

“But what was that man’s name?” Mia interrupted ponderously. “That man who killed Elspeth Crowe, I mean. What was his name? For the life of me, I can’t remember. And I have to say, it takes the wind out of my story a bit. It’s anticlimactic, you know?”

“I don’t remember either,” I lied, walking hastily out the door.

This chance encounter hovered at the edges of my thoughts for the next several days. I can’t say for sure that my conversation with Mia was the cause, but I also started having bizarre and unpleasant dreams. One night I was chased through a labyrinth of caves by a man made out of stone. On another occasion, I was confronted by an army of porcelain figurines, all of whom had black, gaping holes where their eyes should have been.

Finally, after waking from a nightmare in which I was trapped within a burning dollhouse while a terrible storm raged somewhere in the distance, I had an idea.

About a year earlier, I had written a full account of my first adventure, if you will, with the aforementioned Primrose Ghaust-Lee. Although I had yet to do anything with the manuscript (it was, at that very moment, gathering virtual dust on my hard drive), I had found the very act of putting the words together to be therapeutic. At the very least, since finishing my work on The Chocolatier’s Curse (as I had tentatively titled the account) I hadn’t had a single clown-related nightmare. It seemed plausible that writing about the second case of my internship might bring about similar benefits.

As I opened my laptop, I remembered Mia’s words. It really was quite a story. And she didn’t know the half of it.

I took a deep breath and started typing.

One year earlier.

Excerpt. ©Christopher Seto. Posted by arrangement with the publisher. All rights reserved.

Giveaway: An ebook copy of THE VANISHING STONE + one additional Tule ebook of the winner’s choice

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Meet the Author:

Chris earned his Ph.D. in criminology from Penn State and is presently an assistant professor at Purdue University. When not writing about fictional or non-fictional crimes, he enjoys reading, origami, and performing sleight of hand-based magic tricks. Chris lives in Indiana with his wife, daughter, three cats, and one lizard. You can connect with him on Bluesky.

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