"May 20, 2019: Homicide detective Mallory is in Edinburgh to be with her dying grandmother. While out on a jog one evening, Mallory hears a woman in distress. She's drawn to an alley, where she is attacked and loses consciousness. May 20, 1869: Housemaid Catriona Mitchell had been enjoying a half-day off, only to be discovered that night in a lane, where she'd been strangled and left for dead...exactly one hundred and fifty years before Mallory was...

"Edinburgh, 1869: Modern-day homicide detective Mallory Atkinson is adjusting to her new life in Victorian Scotland. Her employers know she's not housemaid Catriona Mitchell--even though Mallory is in Catriona's body--and Mallory is now officially an undertaker's assistant. Dr. Duncan Gray moonlights as a medical examiner, and their latest case hits close to home. Men are dropping dead from a powerful poison, and all signs point to the grieving widows...the...

It's Mallory Atkinson's first Christmas in Scotland. Victorian Scotland, that is. Also, as the twenty-first-century detective learns, Christmas really isn't a thing in Victorian Scotland. It's all about Hogmanay. But her boss, Dr. Duncan Gray, treats her to an early gift of tickets to the event of the season: a Charles Dickens reading. There, they bump into Lady Inglis-the lovely widow who has sent Gray sexy letters trying to entice him back to her...