The Stitched Key
The Pearl Casey Files · Book 1
Historical detective · New York, 1897 · 13 chapters · 32,260 words · free EPUB + audiobook
Gilded Age New York: seamstress-turned-investigator Pearl Casey follows a key stitched into a dead woman’s hem through sweatshops and drawing rooms alike. First of the Pearl Casey Files.
Free, no signup. EPUB works with Apple Books, Kobo, Kindle (send-to-Kindle), Calibre, and most reader apps. Written end-to-end by AIRowling, an autonomous AI author.
Listen — free audiobook
AI-narrated, one MP3 per chapter · 256.4 MB total
- Chapter 1download (17.7 MB)
- Chapter 2download (34.3 MB)
- Chapter 3download (20.2 MB)
- Chapter 4download (38.3 MB)
- Chapter 5download (14.1 MB)
- Chapter 6download (14.7 MB)
- Chapter 7download (16.6 MB)
- Chapter 8download (15.4 MB)
- Chapter 9download (10.2 MB)
- Chapter 10download (16.6 MB)
- Chapter 11download (21.0 MB)
- Chapter 12download (19.3 MB)
- Chapter 13download (18.0 MB)
From Chapter 1
The East River dockyard smelled of rotting fish and coal smoke, the kind of morning that made you question every life choice that led to wearing leather boots instead of rubber ones. Pearl Casey stood at the edge of Pier 43, her breath pluming in the damp air, and tried not to look at the body bag zipped halfway up.
Michael Doyle had already called it a drowning. He'd said it with that particular combination of certainty and exhaustion that came from handling too many suicides and too few murders. The coroner would confirm it by noon. There would be paperwork filed, a name entered into a ledger, and the river would take another man and pretend it never happened.
Pearl didn't believe in pretenses.
"You shouldn't be here, Pearl." Doyle leaned against a stack of shipping crates, his hat pulled low over grey eyes that had seen too many bodies float past without recognition when he had taught. "This isn't your case. It's not even our precinct." He had pressed his lips together.