About Frances Holcombe — Mysteries of Coast, Community & Character

Frances Holcombe — illustrated portrait of a woman writing at a desk overlooking a Cornish harbour

Frances Holcombe writes atmospheric mysteries set on the Cornish coast.

She is drawn to small communities — to the warmth and the watchfulness of places where everyone knows the shape of everyone else's morning, and where the things that go unsaid weigh more than the things said aloud.

The Morning Men Mysteries, a six-book series set in the fictional harbour town of Porthaven, are her first novels. The first, Death at Low Tide, is published by Salt & Anchor Press in July 2026. Readers can also find a standalone Porthaven novella, The Bakery on Fore Street, available free through her newsletter.

About the series

The Morning Men Mysteries

Three retired widowers — a builder, a journalist, and a businessman — meet for coffee each morning at the Harbour Café in Porthaven, a small working harbour town on the north coast of Cornwall. They are not detectives. They are men with time, attention, and a long acquaintance with the place. When something happens in the town that doesn't sit right, they notice. And then they keep noticing.

The series runs to six books, each a complete mystery, together telling a longer story about a town, a friendship, and a number of secrets that take a while to surface.

See the series →

About the town

Porthaven

Porthaven is a small fictional harbour town three miles east of Padstow, on the north coast of Cornwall. Two pubs, one bakery, a bookshop that has been there since before anyone can remember. The boats go out at four and come back at noon. The town watches.

More about Porthaven →

The imprint

Salt & Anchor Press

Salt & Anchor Press is the publisher of the Morning Men Mystery Series and The Bakery on Fore Street. The imprint publishes atmospheric crime fiction exclusively through Amazon, in Kindle, paperback, and (in due course) audiobook editions.

Read the free novella

The Bakery on Fore Street

A standalone novella set in Porthaven. Sign up below to receive the novella, along with occasional letters from Porthaven.

No spam. Roughly one letter a month. Unsubscribe whenever you like.

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