The Crowded Hearth: Deepwood Sanctuary: Book 3

She kept the doorway open. Now everyone's come through it.Lindsay Ashwood has earned a rest. Two years of keeping Deepwood Sanctuary have given her a dryad, a gargoyle with opinions, and a threshold nobody believed could be anchored. This autumn she has one promise left to keep. After that she plans to spend the winter in her own house with the fire lit and nothing happening at all.Then something goes wrong in the water up north, and the creatures start coming down the coast.First it's a few water-creatures, then a few more. Then fourteen household spirits arrive on foot after walking two hundred miles, led by Fettle, an elderly hearth-warmer with impeccable manners and a plan for everything. Then her old friend Gwendolyn steps off the afternoon ferry with eleven charges, a farm cart, and a sanctuary that now lies under the sea.The only deep water belongs to the kelpie, which is dangerous, honest about it, and not in the habit of sharing. The brownie has kept Lindsay's kitchen for fifty years and can't say a word about the crowd in it, so it has started rearranging the spice shelf. Robin's paintbrushes have been evicted from the study. And the village of Stillmere keeps turning up to help, whether anyone asks or not.How do you ask a dangerous water spirit for a favor? How do you apologize to a brownie? And what do you do when the thing you want most is the one thing you're too kind to say out loud? Lindsay is wonderful at making room for everyone. Nobody knows she's been counting the days until they leave, and she'd rather die than admit it. The Crowded Hearth is the final book in the Deepwood Sanctuary trilogy. It's a warm, funny cozy fantasy about full houses, good neighbors, and the surprising difficulty of wanting your own home back.