Kate Ashford

The Restoration

A debut psychological thriller

Some secrets can't be fixed.

Free to read with Kindle Unlimited.

The Restoration by Kate Ashford, book cover: cracked painted hands holding a split pomegranate

A billionaire husband who is always kind. A wife no one is allowed to speak to. An isolated mansion where every door records who walks through it. And a woman with a forger's past, hired to restore the one wall in the house that keeps changing.

The story

Every door in the house knows her thumbprint.
Every door tells him where she is.

Clara Reyes can make old paint look as if no one has touched it in four hundred years. It's the talent that once turned her into a forger, and it's why she still owes a dangerous man everything.

So when tech billionaire Arthur Voss offers her a fortune to restore an Italian fresco inside his remote New England mansion, she signs.

There is only one rule. Never speak to his wife.

Vivienne Voss is recovering. Nobody sees her. Nobody mentions her first husband. And Arthur is always kind. Always patient. The house is always watching.

Then the fresco begins to change.

A weeping woman appears where there was nothing before. A broken pomegranate. Six missing seeds. And every night, through the vent beside her bed, Clara hears someone breathing.

She thought she was hired for her talent.
She was hired for her past.

And Clara is about to learn exactly why she was chosen.

Some things are painted over.
Some things are waiting to be found.

Get it on Amazon

How it begins

“The pen Amherst slides across the table is brass and heavier than it needs to be. It tells me what the room costs before the paper does.”
Read the first chapter

Book details

Format
Kindle eBook
Length
238 pages
Published
September 23, 2026
Kindle Unlimited
Yes
Genre
Psychological thriller
Setting
A remote mansion in rural New England
Author
Kate Ashford (debut novel)

Questions readers ask

Get it on Amazon