The Isle House Ghost

A bonus release! Two Red Wine Agency prequel stories in one release; The Idle House Ghost, a 40K word novella, and Nine Again, a 9K word short story.

Redinal Hu, in his gentleman for hire guise as Mr Redinal Wine, is proposed as a detective to a wealthy industrialist by his inquiry agency friend, Roghy VonEv. The industrialist, Mr Colmara, is being plagued by a self-styled Compliance Agent Nine who is entering into his country home to leave a series of notes urging Mr Colmara to sign a petition for changes in government policy. Which, on the surface, seems innocent enough, except that they are being delivered at night despite the fact that the house is locked up tight. Besides being greatly annoyed by the notes and break ins, Colmara fears that the visits may soon become more than merely leaving notes. These are the days when the old order is slowly dying and the new order has yet to be determined. This struggle to define the new age within the Great Houses of Lorria, has become rather cutthroat. And thus, Mr Colmara wants these break-ins stopped and the intruder brought to justice. To this end, Red finds himself a rather unwelcomed guest at Isle House, the Isle of Autumn country home of Mr Colmara charged with capturing this Agent Nine.

Red quickly discovers that who the elusive Agent Nine is may be the more critical problem. Indeed, Mr Colmara's son suggests, jokingly, that Agent Nine is a ghost. Red doesn't believe in ghosts, but he's at a loss to discover just how the notes are being delivered – a classic locked room mystery to solve. Though, at the moment, there is no body in the room. Yet.

In the bonus short story, Nine Again, Red discovers that no good deed goes unpunished. A powerful and ruthless old nemesis returns to demand that Red somehow "fix" what he did to solve the Idle House Ghost mystery in this direct sequel to The Isle House Ghost. A demand he dare not refuse.

These stories are written as a prequel to a series of fictional novels of intrigue known as the Red Wine Agency books, which played a role in the novel Chateau Clare. These two, along with the Darval-Mers Dossier, The Founders' Tribunal, and a forthcoming new story chronicle how Redinal Hu, an ex-attorney, now majordomo of one of the Great Houses of Lorria, comes to create the Red Wine Agency, a shadow agency serving the Great Houses, or their opponents, in the secret struggles to shape the future of the Lorrian Commonwealth.

C. Litka spins tales of adventure, mystery, and travel set in richly imagined worlds with a cast of colorful, fully realized characters. If you seek to escape your everyday life, you'll find no better company, nor more wonderful worlds to explore, than in the stories of C. Litka.