The Seal of the Keeper: a corded seal ringed with five beads and tied in a knot, its centre holding a point of light above dark water.

Seal of theKeeper

J.P.M. Mertens

A decade in the writing. The Thread Between Us — and the two novels that came before it.

The Novel

The Novel

Cover of The Thread Between Us by J.P.M. Mertens — a man facing a burning skyline, a single gold thread running from his back into the distance.

The life's work  ·  Coming soon

The Thread
Between Us

Literary & speculative fiction·Fifty chapters·393 pages

Jeriel Wice has spent thirty-four years watching his own life from one step back. Catelin is the exception — two bright years he keeps waiting to deserve. Then, one November evening at their kitchen counter, she holds out the whole future at once. He hesitates. And in the weeks that follow, something in her begins to go out — the hum beneath her days, the light behind her eyes — until the evening she packs a small bag, tells him the gentlest lie in the world, and walks out of their life at an even, unhurried pace.

Weeks later he sees her on a winter street and calls her name. Once with love. Once with strength. Once with everything he has.

She doesn't turn. She walks through the sound of her own name like weather.

Some people, when the last of their hope gives out, cross over. Jeriel follows — through dark water, onto the shore of a city the colour of the hour between day and night. The sky there never moves. The sea repeats one sentence, forever. The streets belong to the emptied: warm, beautiful, unreachable — and somewhere among them is Catelin, joined to him by a thin bright thread only he can see.

To bring her home, he must become the one thing he has never been: a man who moves.

For everyone who has ever stood at an edge and chosen to stay.The dedication

In the writing
10+ yearsbegun as a nightmare that would not fade
Drafts
Uncountedrewritten more times than he can count
Length
393 ppfifty chapters, 6×9 cream

For readers ofMatt Haig's The Midnight Library, Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife, and Haruki Murakami's Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World.

Proof copies are with the author. It goes on sale as soon as they pass.

From the Opening

The cold arrived without announcement.

It did not bite, the way cold sometimes bites. It crept, finding the gaps between fabric and skin with the patience of something that had been waiting a long while for the chance, settling into the fine country of nerve and capillary, working through the layers he wore until it reached the deeper structures of him and began to feel, in its completeness, less like weather than like a property of the world.

He stood at the lip of the building.

The Thread Between Us — I. Opening

Also by J.P.M. Mertens

Cover of Five Coins for the Keeper by J.P.M. Mertens — a stone orphanage at the end of a pale path, under an aged parchment sky.

Five Coins for the Keeper

Dark literary horror  ·  The debut

The road to the orphanage runs between hedgerows so old they tangle overhead like fingers laced in prayer. Dillon is twelve, and the woman from the council leaves him at a green door with a small cloth bag and five bronze coins.

Inside there are no adults, and a hooded stone statue with five slots cut into its mouth. Five coins for the Keeper. Five coins, and the steel door opens.

Then evening comes, and Dillon counts what he has. He has four.

The door does not open.

For readers ofNeil Gaiman's Coraline, Jonathan Auxier's The Night Gardener and Andrew Michael Hurley's The Loney.

Cover of La Cura by J.P.M. Mertens — a woman's form emerging from a dark island rimmed in gold light above black water.

La Cura

Upmarket literary thriller

Freyja Piuma restores furniture in Palermo and answers to no one — until Enzo Ferrante walks into a bar with a book of poems and a voice that makes her feel, for the first time, like she has arrived somewhere.

His love is a recruitment. She earns a crew. She earns a name — Valchiria. She earns kills she never lets herself count.

Then he sends her crew into a sunlit piazza, and the job is a massacre, and the massacre is a disposal. Bound and hooded, Freyja is taken to the island where the Ferrantes have drowned their dead for three hundred years, and walked to the water to join them.

She does not drown.

For readers ofTaylor Jenkins Reid, Elena Ferrante and Delia Owens — Evelyn Hugo meets My Brilliant Friend, with the gravity of The Godfather.

About the Author

His books begin as dreams that refuse to be set down.

J.P.M. Mertens is a Dutch novelist writing in English. He is the author of Five Coins for the Keeper, La Cura and the forthcoming The Thread Between Us — three standalone novels that share no world, no characters and no genre shelf, but do share a preoccupation: the things that wear the shape of love, and what is kept beneath them.

Each began the same way. A dream that would not fade with daylight, held onto until it had been written down. The Thread Between Us was held onto the longest — begun a decade ago, rewritten more times than he can count, finished only once he stopped waiting to be ready.

Stories are not endpoints. They are not the conclusions to a life but the continuations of it. Finishing something does not empty you. It makes room for what comes next.From the author's note to The Thread Between Us

Press & Rights

Bibliography and press kit

Review copies, interviews and rights enquiries are all welcome at the address below.

Title
Category
Editions
Five Coins for the Keeper
Dark literary horror · adult with crossover appeal
Ebook · Paperback · Hardcover
La Cura
Upmarket literary thriller · ~460 pages
Ebook · Paperback · Hardcover
The Thread Between Us
Literary & speculative fiction · 393 pages
Forthcoming
Author
J.P.M. Mertens — writes in English, based in the Netherlands
Bio (short)
J.P.M. Mertens is the author of Five Coins for the Keeper and La Cura. His books begin as dreams that refuse to be set down. The Thread Between Us is his third novel.
Formats
Ebook, trade paperback (6×9, cream) and hardcover · available worldwide
Review copies
EPUB or print available to reviewers, booksellers and bloggers on request — including advance copies of The Thread Between Us
Rights
Translation, audio and screen enquiries by email
Cover art
High-resolution jackets and author assets supplied on request

Contact

Readers, reviewers, rights.

Serious enquiries welcome. I answer everything.

jochemertens@hotmail.com