Author · Storyteller
@harrietmercer
Speculative Fiction writer drawn to flawed characters, unexpected consequences and the small details that make imagined worlds feel real.
Behind the stories
Harriet Mercer writes across speculative fiction and literary fiction, with a particular interest in character, atmosphere, revision and the details that turn a manuscript into a finished book.
A book is made from hundreds of decisions nobody sees.
Books and story worlds
On the writing desk
Later first draft
In a near-future Lancashire where public libraries are being quietly folded into a civic memory system, a cataloguer discovers that certain borrowed books are returning with passages altered, as if the town itself is revising what it once meant. As she traces the changes through readers, shelving notes and half-forgotten local histories, she begins to suspect the library is not only storing memory but deciding what should be kept. The result is a slow, uneasy novel about loss, record-keeping and the ordinary machinery of forgetting.
Around The Globe
Your public Globe identity