The Frost Orchard: A Blue Ridge Romantasy (The Bellwether Trilogy) - Softcover

King, Elven

Softcover

ISBN 13: 9798184024301

Publisher: Independently published, 2026

Synopsis

She can taste a lie. She just can't taste her way out of this one.

Flavor chemist Nell Hazelwood has spent thirteen years running from the gift that broke her family: one taste, and she knows what's true. Grief, weather, a lie going soft on the tongue. When her grandmother dies and leaves her a failing cider orchard in the Blue Ridge mountains, Nell comes home to a place that remembers her, a town that needs her, and a bloom that carries the luck of the whole valley.

Then the bank sends an appraiser. Eli Mercer is steady, infuriating, and the last of the family that broke the valley's oldest promise ninety years ago. They call it Mercer luck: everything he loves forecloses. He has a job to do, a clock that is already ticking, and no patience for orchard superstition. Nell has six weeks, a debt older than the town, and a feud she never started.

To save the orchard, they will have to mend all three. Falling for each other turns out to be the easy part. The land keeps its own ledger, and it has never once forgiven a Mercer.

A grounded, slow-burn romantasy for readers of Practical Magic and Sarah Addison Allen. Enemies to lovers, deniable folk magic, and a small town with a very long memory.

Book One of The Bellwether Trilogy.

Edition details

• Publisher: Independently published
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 13: 9798184024301
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 173