The Flowers o' the Forest are a' wede awa'." Fleeing an academic scandal and a broken marriage, Jean Fairbairn has come to Scotland to work for an Edinburgh-based history and travel magazine. Writing about the Scottish national pastime of playing illusion off reality is just the quiet, scholarly pursuit she needs to soothe her burned-out emotions. But when Jean heads for the Highlands to investigate the 18th century mystery of Bonnie Prince Charlie's lost treasure, she finds herself involved in a contemporary murder case—and not as an innocent bystander, either. Alasdair Cameron, the police detective in charge, has his own perspective on reality and illusion. The American dot-com millionaire living out his tartan fantasies in a restored mansion is the loosest of loose cannons. His trophy wife isn't necessarily standing by her man. Their housekeeper knows what's going to happen before it does. And their youth piper is a kilted daydream, even though his parents are nightmares. At Glendessary House, old wounds and old glories aren't distant memories evoked over a glass of single-malt, to the skirl of the pipes. Here, they are up close, personal, and deadly. It's a good thing Jean has back-up in Edinburgh, including Michael and Rebecca Campbell-Reid from Ashes to Ashes and Dust to Dust, returning in cameo roles. Because if butting heads—not to mention hearts—with Cameron isn't enough to do her in, then a killer is waiting and watching, with a motive for murder not hidden nearly deeply enough in the past.

Deep water . . . Jean Fairbairn is off to write a story about the haunted waters of Loch Ness. She has an appointment with American scientist Roger Dempsey, who is using his latest gadgets to try and prove that the legend of the monster, Nessie, is true. Jeans business is checking out legends. Some hold water, some don't, and some are about much more than H2O. But the troubled water she finds at Loch Ness is colder than its snow-melt and darker than its peat-stained depths. Sonar and other remote-sensing tools might find Nessie, but what scientific instrument can plumb the mysteries of death? Troubled, too, are the waters that run between Jean and Detective Inspector Alasdair Cameron. Will another encounter bridge the depths that lie between them? Or will their story end at the hands of a murderer, in the icy water of a loch that never gives up its dead?

Isabel Sinclair died at Ferniebank Castle 400 years ago on her way to a lover's tryst. Now Jean Fairbairn is on her way to write Ferniebank's story - and to her own tryst with ex-cop Alasdair Cameron, a caretaker of historic properties.

Beneath the hanging tree… Witches weren’t burned in the colony of Virginia. They were hanged. But in the twenty-first century no one should be hanged from the trees of Colonial Williamsburg. Jean Fairbairn’s significant other, ex-Scottish cop Alasdair Cameron, might sometimes wish he could pass judgment on the dingbats Jean writes about. Especially when her current subjects, a set of batty conspiracy theorists, may be involved in the theft of a Williamsburg-crafted replica of the sixteenth-century Witch Box. It was stolen from a Scottish castle for which Alasdair has been supervising security—even though the original Witch Box is safe in a Williamsburg museum. The charm stone went missing from the original Witch Box two hundred years ago. Perhaps it was not a traditional healing stone at all but a cursing stone. Perhaps it was lost somewhere in the colony of Virginia. Perhaps someone will kill to find it. Can Jean maintain her resolve to abandon the academic battlefield forever, or will she be tempted back into combat by an appealing former colleague, Matthew Frost? And what about Alasdair, who is supposedly retired from the rigors of law enforcement, but who is now confronted not only by a theft but two murder cases—and by Stephanie Venegas, the detective in charge. Amid the falling leaves and autumn shadows, Jean and Alasdair must deal again with murder most grotesque, its roots deep in history and myth. With ghosts only they can see. And with things going bump in the night of their own relationship. It’s All Hallows Eve, in Colonial Williamsburg.

Alasdair Cameron and Fergus MacDonald were childhood friends. Their fathers? caps carried a blue hackle, the badge-feather of a distinguished Scottish regiment. Now the feather in Fergie?s cap is the decaying Dunasheen Estate on the Isle of Skye. His desperate schemes to save his home depend on a collection of historic artifacts and a handful of paying guests who expect a traditional Scottish New Year celebration. For Jean and Alasdair, the bells of the new year are also wedding bells—their rings are ready, their guests are invited, and the Gothic folly of Fergie?s chapel is waiting. Then a guest is found murdered, lying in blood that?s thicker than seawater.

The lights went out... A mortsafe is an iron cage locked over a grave to deter body snatchers. They haven’t been seen in Scottish kirkyards for almost two centuries. So why is a mortsafe lying next to a pair of decayed bodies in one of Edinburgh’s infamous underground vaults? Newlyweds Jean Fairbairn and Alasdair Cameron are called out on the cold case, in the coldest part of the year, brightened only by the red paper hearts of Valentine’s Day in the shop windows. It's when living, beating hearts are stopped too soon that memories can become cages stronger than iron. No deaths are ever entirely forgotten, not when businessmen from ghost hunters to restaurateurs can profit from them. Not when earning a living can sometimes become secondary to simply staying alive. It's February in the ancient city of Edinburgh, where footsteps echo in secret passages, and lovers don't always have the time to make memories together.

Archaeologist Maggie Lauder has personal reasons for proving Farnaby Island is the Avalon of Arthurian legend. But when she opens a tomb in a medieval chantry chapel, her plans go awry. The story Jean Fairbairn planned to write is shadowed by a contemporary investigation. Her husband, ex-cop Alasdair Cameron, has a history with the investigating detective, if not as long a history as Maggie does. They are stranded on Farnaby, caught in the conflicting loyalties of its inhabitants, trusting only each other—until they find themselves on opposite sides of a cold case turned scorching hot. Northumbria, between England and Scotland, the uncertain shore where this world fades into the next, bagpipers play laments on their chanters, and ghostly plainchant echoes in the fog. It's April in Avalon.