Merritt Whitcomb · The Bellhaven Ledger
A small town on the Atlantic keeps score.
An auditor from the mainland arrives to find out why.
Book 1 of The Bellhaven Ledger · Coming June 30, 2026
Nora Kincaid came to Bellhaven to audit the books of a marine salvage company. The books aren’t wrong. They’re keeping track of things that don’t exist in any accounting framework she knows. She has a return ticket. The assignment is two weeks. Bellhaven has other ideas.
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About the book
The Bellhaven Ledger, Book 1
Bellhaven is a small coastal town on a rocky Atlantic peninsula. It has a bakery with one table that gets morning sun, a harbor that remembers what it’s owed, and an obligation economy with its own record-keeping and no name anyone in town will give you directly.
Nora Kincaid arrives not knowing any of this. She’s here for the books. Specifically, the books of Callum Wren’s marine salvage company, which her firm was retained to make legible to an insurance underwriter. The books balance, but they’re tracking things that don’t correspond to any financial category she has. Favors. Harbor time. Mediated obligations entered without monetary value, each one settled on paper, none of it presentable to her office.
She’ll give it two weeks. She’ll understand it eventually. She has a twelve-year record of understanding things eventually.
A novel about the gap between what a ledger can hold
and what a town keeps track of.
Publication date · June 30, 2026
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About the author
Merritt Whitcomb
Merritt Whitcomb writes slow-burn novels about small New England towns, the things people owe each other, and what a good coat can get you through. All Merritt Whitcomb novels are clean – the romance is present, the door stays closed.
Book 1 of The Bellhaven Ledger series publishes June 30, 2026.
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