Rhys Maren Novels & Novellas
- Cost: £9.99
- ASIN: B0HC7G12Y8
- Publisher: Independently published
- Publication date: 30 July 2026
- Language: English
- Print length: 190 pages
- ISBN-13: 979-8189879357
- Book 1 of 1: Rhys Maren
Archives of Ash
A seventeen-year-old boy is accused of murder after a recorded confession appears to prove his guilt. The voice is his. What it proves is another matter.
In this British mystery novel, investigator Rhys Maren follows the digital evidence behind the recording into the world of synthetic voices, artificial intelligence, forgotten archives and a wartime research programme that officially ended more than eighty years ago.
As the evidence unfolds, the investigation becomes deeply personal. Hidden among the missing records is the story of Margaret, Rhys's grandmother, whose service during the Second World War left questions she never answered.
What follows is not simply an investigation into a single piece of technology, but a mystery about memory, family history and the ways the past continues to shape the present. As forgotten lives emerge from historical records and archives, Rhys discovers that evidence survives in places no one thought to look and that some truths can be documented without ever being fully resolved.
Archives of Ash introduces Rhys Maren and the world he inhabits, where history, technology and evidence come together to uncover the hidden stories of the people behind them.
Buy Archives of Ash
The Welsh Archive
When an impossible photograph leads Rhys Maren to a forgotten private archive in North Wales, he discovers a lifetime of images that challenge accepted history and reveal the hidden lives preserved behind the camera.
The Transmission
When a forgotten BBC recording is discovered inside the wall of a demolished broadcasting centre, Rhys Maren is asked to determine whether it is simply an overlooked archive or evidence of a secret Cold War operation that was never meant to survive.
Forget Me Not
When an unexplained act of remembrance at a village war memorial leads Rhys Maren to a forgotten wartime story, he uncovers the quiet determination of one woman to ensure that a life history almost overlooked would never truly be forgotten.
Investigating the Lives Hidden in the Evidence
A recording that cannot be explained. A forgotten photograph. A document discovered decades too late. An archived record that raises new questions. A digital file that seems impossible. Each piece of evidence appears to tell a simple story. It rarely does.
These are the mysteries that interest me. By the time I become involved, the important events have usually already taken place. What remains are the traces people leave behind: photographs, documents, recordings, digital evidence, archives, memories and fragments of lives that have survived long after the people themselves.
My task is to follow that evidence into the past and discover the human story behind it.
No single piece of evidence is ever enough. A photograph needs a history. A letter needs a writer. A recording needs a voice and a context. An old document may establish what happened without explaining why. Only when those pieces are brought together does an investigation begin to reveal the people hidden behind the records.
History and technology often meet in unexpected ways. Modern tools can recover a damaged recording, examine a digital file or help connect records scattered across different archives. But technology is never the story itself. Every record was created by someone, preserved by someone and eventually discovered by someone else. Understanding those lives matters far more than understanding the machine that stored them.
I have learned that certainty is rare. Historical evidence is often incomplete. Memories fade. Archives are damaged. Records disappear. Digital evidence can be altered or misunderstood. Yet even the smallest surviving trace can reveal a remarkable story when it is examined carefully and placed alongside everything else that survives.
That is why these investigations are ultimately about people rather than evidence.
History is not built by famous names alone. It is also built by ordinary people whose choices, work, families and memories survive quietly in photographs, recordings, documents and archives. Sometimes those records are all that remain to tell us they were there.
Finding them is only the beginning.
Understanding the people behind them is where the real mystery lies.
Human Stories, Digital Shadows
Every investigation begins long before I arrive. A photograph has been kept. A letter has survived. A recording has been forgotten. Someone has preserved a small piece of the past without realising what it might one day reveal.
My journal explores the real ideas behind those investigations, where history, memory, archives and technology meet. It looks beyond the stories to the people, events and discoveries that inspired them, reminding us that the most remarkable evidence is often left by ordinary lives.
Cecil Atley
Grounded in careful research, the Rhys Maren novels explore memory, identity, family history and the search for truth through the lives of ordinary people. Each investigation follows evidence across archives, historical records and modern technology, gradually revealing the people and events hidden behind it.
Rather than relying on conventional detective work or action, Cecil's fiction focuses on observation, research and the patient examination of evidence. At the heart of every Rhys Maren story is the same idea: even the smallest surviving record can uncover a forgotten life and change the way we understand the past.