Torrey Tunet is a thief. At least she was, when at the age of fourteen she and her best friend, Donna, stole from a suitcase of dirty money the town psychiatrist had collected. Fourteen years later, Torrey has left her past behind and is now a high-powered translator, working for some of the most important people in the world. But the crime still haunts her. While preparing for an assignment in Dublin, Torrey meets wealthy American Desmond Moore, who invites her to stay the week with him at his castle just outside of the city. Castle Moore is straight out of a fairy tale: eighteen rooms, extensive grounds, stables, and a cottage sitting at the edge of the property from where fresh, home-baked bread is delivered daily. Torrey is joined by three other guests: Winifred Moore, Desmond's cousin, in town to receive the Irish Women's Poetry Award for the year; her publisher, Sheila Flaxton; and Luke Willinger, the landscape artist hired by Desmond to design the castle's gardens. All seems well in the charming village of Ballynagh, and the guests happily enjoy Desmond's hospitality. But there are secrets lurking beneath the town's old-fashioned appeal, and more than a little ill will among members of the group. Suddenly murder strikes. A stranger is found dead in the swamp surrounding the castle, and another death follows soon after. To make matters worse, a priceless heirloom is stolen, and Torrey looks like the obvious suspect.  

Ever seeking peace and quiet for her writing, Torrey Tunet believes she has found it in the quaint village of Ballynagh, nestled in the hills of rural Ireland. But something-she can't quite put her finger on it-is awry. With every change in the wind comes some strange news. First, her closest friend, Rowena Keegan, tries to run over the esteemed Dr. Ashenden, her own grandfather and master of the biggest manor in town. Why, Torrey wonders, would anyone want to kill him, least of all his favorite granddaughter?Torrey wants to believe that Rowena's attack on the doctor was a simple fluke, but when the old man later turns up dead in the forest, and Rowena confides a pressing secret to her, Torrrey can no longer stay intentionally ignorant. An outsider, Torrey looks on in bewilderment as mysteries crop up one after another in her beloved Ashenden family, which has taken her under its wing. And when the grandfather's will is read and a gypsy, shrouded in purple, arrives on the scene, family secrets fifty years old reveal themselves just as new ones begin to arise, capturing the attention of young and old townspeople alike. Ballynagh might never be the same.

It is mid-October and unexpectedly cold in Ballynagh, the small Irish village that Torrey Tunet, the young American translator and sometime amateur sleuth, calls home. She has just built a fire of peat and coal to warm her cottage when a window frame collapses, letting in drafts of icy air. Asking around for the services of a carpenter, she hires local teenager Dakin Cameron to do a few repairs. Dakin is an unusually helpful and likable young man with something on his mind. When he receives a threatening phone call at the cottage, Torrey resolves to try to help him. It seems that Dakin is the son of Natalie Sylvester Cameron, a beautiful heiress whose husband died tragically two years before. Dakin is distressed because someone is trying to blackmail Natalie-and even more distressed when the blackmail attempts lead to a case of murder. At times like these, Torrey gets what her friend Winifred calls a "dragon-slaying look" in her eyes. Determined to uncover...

When American translator and sometime sleuth Torrey Tunet returns home to the Irish village of Ballynagh, she wants nothing more than to relax in front of a peat fire in her cottage. But when she finds an eight-year-old girl at the bus stop, waiting forlornly in the gathering darkness, Torrey reluctantly takes charge of delivering the child to the country house where her usually dependable aunt serves as housekeeper. What they find at Gwathney Hall, however, is not a warmly welcoming Auntie Megan: it's cold-blooded murder. Historian John Gwathney has been brutally shot in his own house, and the immediate suspect is none other than his housekeeper-the girl's aunt-Megan O'Faolain.Certain that her friend Megan is not a killer-and unable to resist a good mystery-Torrey vows to track down the murderer herself. As she digs deeper and deeper into Gwathney's research, looking for clues, she gets caught up in a whirlwind of theft, intrigue, and scandal. Is the...