The Lantern Reader

Mei Lin does not tell fortunes. She reads consequences. By day, she works as an archivist in a quiet private library in modern London. By night, anxious strangers bring her palms, old floor plans, family photographs, and objects wrapped in red cloth. Mei treats the old Chinese arts as pattern-reading, not magic. Yet each pattern leads her closer to a hidden crime, a broken family, or a room someone has tried to erase. When a woman from the powerful Vale family arrives with a photograph linked to Mei's missing father, Mei is pulled into the mystery of a cursed London house, nine sealed doors, and a feng shui commission that may have cost a man his life. This is an atmospheric mystery series with slow-burn supernatural suspense, morally complicated families, and Eastern metaphysical elements used as fictional storytelling devices.