Free to join · Six archive files
A case file on Grace Penrose, an original scene from her ward, a coded transmission, a schematic of the route, the real history of occupied Jersey, and the opening chapter of the next mission. The material that cannot fit between a novel’s covers.
File 01
The Grace Penrose Case File
A fictional dossier on the ward sister at St. Brigid’s: who she was before the occupation, what the Germans believed about her, and what the network knew.
File 02
The Missing Ward Log
An original bonus scene from the world of The Island Nurse’s Secret. One night in the ward that never made it into the novel.
File 03
Silent Harbor Transmission No. 1
A coded exchange between the harbour and the mainland, with the plain reading underneath it. Fiction, written the way the real traffic was written.
File 04
Behind the Story: Occupied Jersey
The history the novel is built on, sourced to Jersey Heritage and the Jersey Archive, with the line between record and invention marked in the open.
File 05
The Silent Harbor Route
A story-world schematic of the relay: safe house, hospital, tunnel, cove, boat. Not a chart of Jersey, and not a navigational guide.
File 06
The Convent at Blue Lantern — opening chapter
The first chapter of Book Two, from the finished manuscript. Best saved until after you have read The Island Nurse’s Secret.
The files arrive one at a time over twelve days, in the order above. You can stop at any point, and nothing you have already downloaded goes away. We use your address only to send you the Silent Harbor Reader Archive and the occasional note when Clara Ashford has a new book out.
Clara Ashford writes emotionally gripping WWII women’s historical fiction about courage, secrecy, sacrifice, and the hidden networks that carried hope through occupied Europe. Her stories focus on women forced into impossible choices, nurses, couriers, teachers, widows, and ordinary civilians who discover that survival is rarely clean and resistance often begins with a single dangerous act of mercy. Her fiction is built around intimate settings under wartime pressure: island hospitals with concealed radio lines, convent schools hiding children, harbor routes watched by patrols, and blackout streets where one whispered name can condemn a life. Rather than centering the battlefield, Ashford writes about the quieter war fought through forged papers, coded messages, ration queues, locked wards, and women who learn to lie with steady hands. Her series The Silent Harbor Network follows a covert rescue line operating through occupied territory, with each book centered on a new mission and a heroine whose bravery comes at a personal cost. Readers can expect suspense, moral ambiguity, emotional restraint, and endings that leave room for grief while still carrying hard-won hope. Clara Ashford is a pen name created for serious, character-driven historical fiction with strong commercial appeal for readers of wartime women’s stories.
claraashford@edenrootpress.com