Amanda Witham's new job at an eighteenth-century manor in Colonial Williamsburg is a career move in the history business, nothing personal. Then archaeologists find a skeleton buried behind the house. That night James Grant's ghost introduces himself to her. And a handsome and charming ghost he is, in the tartan kilt and scarlet coat of King George's Highland Regiment. Suddenly Amanda finds history to be very personal indeed. She promises James she'll reveal the truth about his death-just as soon as she figures out what the truth is. But by the time she arrives at James's ancestral castle in Scotland, his past has caught up with her present, and Amanda's future is held at sword's point. There's more than one glint of scarlet in the shadows of the past-and in the shadows of the heart as well.(source: Bol.com)

First print-published by Five Star/Cengage in 2010.In a stately home, no one can hear you scream . . .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, a handful of paying guests expecting a traditional Scottish New Year celebration, and the help of Alasdair and Jean Fairbairn.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 the sea that carried generations of Scots to distant shores even as their descendants' hearts turn homeward.The police crash the party, and Alasdair and Jean find themselves...

Mystery. 87119 words long.

First print-published by Five Star/Gale in 2007.Fire in the BordersThe rolling hills of the Scottish Borders have seen centuries of fire—Scots, English, battling kings, feuding lords, rampaging clansmen, raiding, looting, killing. But the fire at brooding Ferniebank Castle wasn't set by an enemy. Isabel Sinclair died there four hundred years ago, on her way to a lover's tryst, in the conflagration kindled by her own burning-glass.Or so the story goes.Now Jean Fairbairn is on her way to write Ferniebank's story—and to her own tryst with ex-cop Alasdair Cameron, who is now a caretaker of historic properties. He has at last lowered his personal drawbridge for Jean, and they plan to set decaying Ferniebank alight.But they're not alone. Ciara Macquarrie, a New Age mythobabbler from Alasdair's past, plans to transform the castle and its chapel into a bright new conference center and spa. Especially since the chapel was built by the same long-dead hands as...

First print-published by Five Star/Gale in 2006Deep 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.Jean's 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?

A grave mistake . . .Small Farnaby Island lies just beyond the holy isle of Lindisfarne, off the coast of Northumberland. Farnaby-born archaeologist Maggie Lauder has personal reasons for trying to prove the island is the Avalon of Arthurian legend. When she opens a tomb in a medieval chantry chapel, she plans to cause headlines. And cause headlines she does, for all the wrong reasons.The story that Jean Fairbairn planned to write about Maggie's historic discovery is shadowed by a contemporary investigation. Her husband, Scottish ex-cop Alasdair Cameron, discovers he has a history with the investigating detective—if not as long a history as Maggie does.But does history trace a direct line from past to present? Or is it interlaced like the patterns decorating the Lindisfarne Gospels, generations of men and women weaving destiny with desire?Jean and Alasdair are stranded on Farnaby, caught in the conflicting loyalties of its inhabitants, in memories lost and secrets laid bare. They...

First print-published by Berkley Publishing Group, 1991The sequel to Ashes to AshesAfter months of long-distance phone calls, Rebecca Reid is thrilled to be working with Michael Campbell again, this time on a dig at Rudesburn Priory in the Scottish Borders. It's rumored that Robert the Bruce's heart was buried there, and that the abbey's last prioress, Anne Douglas, still haunts its ruins.Michael and Rebecca have to work with a self-important archaeologist, Jeremy Kleinfelter, whose reputation is on the line after he was accused of salting his previous dig. They also have to deal with the townspeople, who want the dig to be successful—-and who don't know about Jeremy's shady past—-and four volunteers working on the dig, loose cannons, every one, each with a secret in his or her past.Then Sheila Fitzgerald, Michael's ex-girlfriend, appears, intent on filming a documentary about the dig.Uncovering a medieval murder mystery makes...

In The Muse and Other Stories of History, Mystery, and Myth, Lillian Stewart Carl conducts a tour through the mystery, the magic, and the myth of history.Thirteen short stories take place at the end of the British colonization of America and the beginning of the British colonization of India, in medieval England and revolutionary Scotland, in Shakespeare's timeless Illyria and the very real twenty-first century.From St. Thomas Becket to Thomas Jefferson, from Charles Dickens to Bonnie Prince Charlie, from Elizabeth I at her height to Ann Boleyn, her mother, at her depth, from slaves to soldiers to sorcerers to sinners—and even to a striped cat or two—the characters are often detectives and are always good company.Greed, love and hate, and the rights of man—and woman—provide motives for murder and more. The odd touch of fantasy illuminates several lives. And along that shore between the present and the past, nothing is certain.The Muse and Other Stories includes twelve short...

Fantasy. 125844 words long. First published by Five Star/Gale, September

First print-published by Berkley Publishing Group, 1992Mark Owen and Hilary Chase, who met at the excavation of a medieval Scottish priory in Dust to Dust, get back together in Fort Worth, Texas, his home town.Hilary is working at a museum, curating a set of medieval artifacts recovered from the Nazis by famous explorer and writer Arthur Coburg. Only when he recently died did the existence of the artifacts come to light. Now his much younger wife, Dolores, wants to sell them to the museum.Mark is helping British archaeologist Jenny Galliard excavate the Coburgs' eerie Victorian house, Osborne, a place scarred by two unsolved Jack-the-Ripper style murders.The emotional scars of Hilary's past are still healing, much to Mark's sympathy and frustration combined. Putting together a relationship is hard enough without being drawn unwillingly into the dark secrets of the Coburg family.No surprise Osborne is haunted. But Mark and Hilary are dismayed to...