Standing

His family have come to ask him a question he has been avoiding for twohundred years.Marit Onn is four inches shorter than her brother and has none of hispatience. She arrives on a Tuesday with news: Ollie is being released. Heasked in the autumn. It took him twenty years to ask.Nobody says the obvious thing to Halvard. Nobody has said it since 1890.Nora has been careful not to ask about the letter on the chest of drawers.She has spent fourteen months being asked how she is doing, and she knowsexactly what that costs.But Ingrid is in this house too — in the gate Hal fixed, in the beech in thesecond field, in two hundred and three years of a standing that nobody canend but him.This is the week he stops rationing himself.THE STANDING is Book Three of SECOND WINTER, a complete five-part cozymonster romance.✔ Explicit and unapologetic — no fade to black✔ A heroine in her forties who knows exactly what she wants✔ He asks. Every single time.✔ Nobody dies on the page. The dead stay respected.Book Three of five. Approximately 4,800 words. Books One and Two areavailable now.Contains explicit sexual content and depictions of grief and bereavement.Intended for adult readers.