Isla Renee Brooks

When grief claws deeper than time can heal, even love may become a doorway to darkness.

Two years after the drowning of their young daughter, Evelyn and Mark Grayson are trapped in the brittle silence of their coastal home. Mark tries to move forward. Evelyn cannot let go.

Then an anonymous package arrives—a doll that is too perfect, too knowing. Crafted in the exact likeness of their lost child, it seems to breathe with life. It speaks. It remembers. And it offers a devastating hope that Evelyn cannot resist.

But Mark senses something older and colder lurking beneath its porcelain skin—a presence that feeds on love and grief alike. His search for answers leads him deep into a forgotten folklore of cursed trades and a Dollmaker’s ancient tax: one life for another.

As the bond between Evelyn and the doll tightens, Mark races against a fate woven through ritual and blood. Around them, strange traces emerge—delivered notes, haunted sketches, ledgers inked in red—each one a step deeper into a truth they were never meant to see.

To save the woman he loves, he must confront the shadows both around them—and within.

But some debts cannot be repaid.

How far would you go to bring someone back... and what if the price was everything?

Twist & Tether Press

Whispers Beyond the Veil

The Dollmaker’s Tax: Each Doll Carries a Memory—and a Debt

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