Materializing Everywhere November 15th! !

They say the dead should rest in peace. Not all the dead agree.

 

One night, Silas Umber's father Amos never comes home from work. Devastated, Silas struggles to understand what could make an ordinary mortician disappear from the face of the earth. But he's about to learn that Amos was no mere mortician: he was the Undertaker of Lichport, charged with bringing The Peace to the dead trapped in the Shadowlands and Mist Homes, those states of limbo binding spirits to earth. With Amos gone, Silas and his mother have no choice but to return to Lichport, the crumbling seaside town and necropolis where they all were born, and move in with Amos’s brother, Charles, the town's former funeral photographer.

 

Even while Silas eagerly explores his father’s town and its many abandoned streets and overgrown cemeteries, he grows increasingly wary of his uncle. There is something not quite right going on in Charles Umber’s ornate, museum-like house—something, Silas is sure, that is connected to his father’s disappearance. Determined to find his father, Silas’s search leads him to his father’s old office, where he comes across a powerful artifact: the Death Watch, a four hundred year old Hadean clock that allows the owner to see the dead.

 

With the Death Watch in hand, Silas begins to unearth Lichport’s secret history—and discovers that he has inadvertently taken on his father’s mantle as Lichport’s Undertaker. Now, Silas must embark on a dangerous path into the Shadowlands to embrace his destiny and discover the truth about his father, no matter the cost.
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Early Praise for Death Watch

                                             

“Ari Berk writes deftly about loss and love, mining a rich vein of ghostly folklore with vivid prose, style and wit. A marvelous tapestry of a book.” 

— Holly Black, New York Times bestselling author


“This truly gothic novel is imbued with hauntingly beautiful prose and vividly drawn characters set in a town just as intriguing as its inhabitants. Death Watch will linger with you long after you lay it to rest.” 

— Tony DiTerlizzi, New York Times bestselling author of The Search for Wondla

                               


"...thought-provoking gothic fantasy...[A] genuinely eerie tale.  Berk’s setting is atmospheric and creepy, fleshed out with a wealth of funereal traditions and folklore...an intriguing opener." 

— Publisher's Weekly


"This is the most elegantly terrifying book I have ever read. A beautifully crafted story that brings myths and legends of life and death into a very real place, Death Watch is certain to keep you up at night because you can't put it down and you don't want to close your eyes. Berk's phenomenal skill as a master storyteller shines through on every page."

— Nancy Berman, author of Crescent Empire


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SOME NEWS OF OLD LICHPORT



 From a printed advertisement distributed along the coastal and inland 

towns between 1792 and 1802 Written by Samuel Umber, Undertaker, Lichport


"Ye mournful folk, be ye of Goode Cheere! In the comforting soyle of Lichport, your dead shalle finde peace. We shalle give every consideration to the speedy restfulness of your dead and/or departed. Let us minister to your grief in the venerated and accustomed manner of Lichport, a town well known for its verie full knowledge relating to every ancient and worshipfull ritual that shalle bring peace to all deceased or wandering folk. Walk abroad upon the peaceful lanes of Lichport and finde at every turn goode ground for your kin’s eternal rest. Here shall they be made welcome. Here shall they come to the sweete comfort that only our goodlie earth may give. Come ye! Come ye! To Fayre Lichport where the Dead and the Living find an Ende to Life’s Toil and Worldly Troubles Are No More!"



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Torn from Gormlette’s Guide to Fallen Places, 2nd edition, 1943


"The adventurous traveler will find that once proud Lichport is no longer a town you may travel through. You may only go to it or leave from it (which has long been the more usual). In 1924 the Salt Marsh Bridge, part of an ancient highway connecting many of the coastal ports with the north and west, collapsed, killing six people. Six people who, if such accounts are to be believed, still haunt the site of the collapse. Then, in 1931, a large wedge of the cliff above the highway came crashing down, perhaps due to erosion, and destroyed a great portion of the road, tumbling all down into the sea. No plans to restore either the bridge or that fallen portion of the highway were ever even discussed. By that time, most sensible folk considered the town beyond saving. Its shipping has all but collapsed, most of the shops that might appeal to outsiders have long been closed, and if the bereaved or the memorially inclined wish to visit their dead in one of Lichport’s numerous cemeteries, well, they shall need to make a pilgrim’s progress of it, coming around the long way on the inland road. In and out, both on the same path:  a long, featureless road running next to the wide, quiet marshes. On that byway, you’ll have plenty of time to think about your deeply planted kin and how long it has been since the last time you visited them—the time when you left those cheap silk flowers on their grave. Don’t worry. They’ll still be there, right where you left them."


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Historical photos of Lichport and environs, courtesy 
of the archives of The Lichport Crow newspaper