Lily Brooks-Dalton

What if everything we believed about the origins of civilisation was wrong? Professor Ember Agni is an ambitious archaeologist whose career has stalled and whose marriage is quietly falling apart. For years, she has pursued evidence of a lost civilisation that the academic world refuses to acknowledge. Just as she begins to abandon her quest, a message arrives from a former student overseas: he may have discovered an extraordinary artefact that could rewrite humanity’s history. Determined to uncover the truth, Ember risks her reputation and personal life to embark on an expedition into a remote wilderness. But the deeper she ventures into the past, the more complicated her discoveries become. The civilisation she seeks may hold secrets that challenge not only established history, but also the beliefs on which her own world is built. Blending archaeological mystery, speculative fiction, and adventure, Ruins explores how societies construct their histories—and what happens when the stories we inherit begin to crumble. As Ember searches for the remnants of a forgotten world, she must confront the ruins of her own life and decide what truths are worth sacrificing everything to uncover.