Catriona McPherson Books in Order

Bored after the First World War, Dandy Gilver starts snooping into missing diamonds and stumbles into a seaside death that does not look accidental. Her first investigation brings old family secrets and a new calling into view.

At the Queensferry Fair, the Burry Man collapses dead in front of the crowd, and nearly everyone has access to the whisky he was drinking. Dandy finds herself in a village mystery knotted up with tradition, piety, and local grudges.

Dandy follows a kindly minister to Fife, where village women whisper about a mysterious attacker who appears under the full moon. Whether the threat is real or manufactured, the fear behind it is deadly serious.

Janie Lawson tells her husband she's leaving and wakes up back in 1981, fifteen years old again. A second chance sounds appealing until every attempt to fix the future makes the past more chaotic and dangerous.

After her husband leaves, florist Verity Drummond writes a novel and heads to Los Angeles when film people want to adapt it. The trip blurs truth, fiction, and reinvention until her own life becomes as messy as the story she invented.

When a circus winters near Gilverton, Dandy's sons are thrilled and the local social scene turns curious. Then nasty tricks and a performer's death force Dandy behind the bright canvas facade of circus life.

During the 1926 General Strike, Dandy goes undercover as a maid after Lollie Balfour becomes sure her husband means to kill her. Below-stairs gossip, class tensions, and a house full of watchers turn the job into her first real professional case.

Called to Dunfermline to find a runaway heiress, Dandy expects inconvenience rather than danger. Then a possible suicide is joined by another death, and the missing-girl case collapses into chaos.

Remembering one perfect summer, Dandy agrees to help the Lipscott sisters find Fleur, now hidden away as a schoolmistress in a seaside girls' school. Going undercover as a teacher, Dandy finds vanishing staff, mounting corpses, and no easy way out.

With flu sweeping through the Gilver household, Dandy escapes to a hydropathic hotel where a family's doubts about their mother's death need answers. Ghost stories, dubious healers, and a suspicious corpse make the retreat anything but restful.

Thirteen years after running away, Opal Jones returns to the neighborhood she escaped as a child. Her mother's death and a long-ago disappearance force her to face what the place has been hiding all along.

Jessie Constable has built a small, careful life, so Gus King and his needy children feel almost too good to be true. They are, and as money, threats, and grief swirl together, Jessie realizes she has stepped into real danger.

Dandy and Alec spend Christmas on the Banffshire coast after grim finds turn up in barrels of herring. Between fishing traditions, family tensions, and a thick fog of misdirection, the case grows darker by the page.

Far from Tokyo, student Keiko Nishisato lodges above a butcher's shop in a seemingly friendly Scottish town. As the warmth around her starts to feel wrong, she uncovers the sort of menace outsiders are not supposed to notice.

Gloria Harkness lives beside the abandoned grounds of a disgraced progressive school, still haunted by what happened there. When a man from her childhood appears with trouble at his heels, old loyalties pull her into a strange and dangerous mystery.

In dance-mad Glasgow, Dandy steps into a world of public ballrooms, backstreet dancehalls, and fierce competition. A suspicious death among the hopeful champions suggests the music is hiding something deadly.

Jude flees to a sleepy book town and takes refuge in a rambling old bookshop with a cheap cottage attached. The place feels safe until buried histories, whispered stories, and someone else's secrets begin threatening her fragile new life.

Dandy and Alec reach bleak Lanark Moor after an asylum breakout and a convent fire leave the district in panic. Among frightened nuns, villagers, and patients, they face a case full of superstition, confusion, and very human malice.

Ali McGovern is already stretched thin by family strain and a new job at a psychiatric hospital when a body is found across the street. As her son grows more secretive and danger closes in, everyday life turns claustrophobic and terrifying.

Dandy and Alec head to Castle Bewer to solve a missing-person case tied to a family curse and a lost ruby. With Macbeth rehearsals, old feuds, and too many secrets backstage, the castle becomes a perfect place for murder.

Ali McGovern is already stretched thin by family strain and a new job at a psychiatric hospital when a body is found across the street. As her son grows more secretive and danger closes in, everyday life turns claustrophobic and terrifying.

Dandy arrives in Wester Ross for a birthday celebration and a possible family marriage, but the host is found murdered in her knot garden. Folklore, local silence, and tangled loyalties make the case more treacherous than it first appears.

Donna Weaver opens a beautifully restored guesthouse, then watches her carefully chosen visitors realize they have all been there before. As old connections surface, the weekend turns into a tense reckoning with buried guilt and revenge.

This multi-author crime anthology takes on voter suppression from several angles, from present-day cases to historical struggles. Ann Parker's contribution heads to 1870 Wyoming, where a woman fights to cast her ballot.

Freshly divorced and broke, Scottish therapist Lexy Campbell is about to leave California when her last client is jailed for killing her husband. Lexy stays to clear the old woman's name and finds a scruffy found family, plus a very real killer, at the Last Ditch Motel.

Lexy Campbell throws a Halloween party on her houseboat hoping for a little fun and maybe a fresh start. Instead she ends up with a dead guest, a missing ring, and another murder to untangle with her motel friends.

Finnie Doyle and Paddy Lamb move to a small valley town for a clean start, only to witness the aftermath of a savage killing. Because both are hiding parts of their past, one bad decision pulls them into a web of murder, secrecy, and dread.

The second anthology gathers crime stories around the idea that every stolen vote is a crime. Ann Parker's story follows a young homeless woman trying to make her vote count against a system stacked against her.

Dandy Gilver and Alec Osborne are called to Cramond after a ferrywoman behaves strangely and seems to confess to a drowning. A quiet waterside village, tight-lipped millers, and dangerous undercurrents make this one of their murkiest cases.

Ivy Stone thinks she has finally found family when a woman claims to be her long-lost sister. As more women are drawn toward a seemingly cosy Scottish refuge, Tash Dodd realizes something deeply wrong is hiding inside that fairy-tale cottage.

When the bronze statue of local heroine Mama Cuento is stolen, Lexy Campbell lands in a bizarre ransom case that quickly turns dangerous. What starts as small-town outrage opens onto bigger secrets and a chase for the truth.

Dandy Gilver looks into a plagiarism complaint in Dundee and finds a puppeteer murdered behind a Punch and Judy booth. The trail leads through publishing, theatre, and old secrets that refuse to stay buried.

In 1948 Edinburgh, newly trained social worker Helen Crowther fights family disapproval, class prejudice, and the limits placed on working women. When a suspicious death is brushed aside, she starts digging and steps into a much darker city.

The third collection widens the series with stories that move from cozy to noir and from history to the near future. Ann Parker's contribution adds a lighter, four-footed spin to the theme of voting rights.

Thanksgiving at the Last Ditch Motel brings a new baby and high spirits, but the celebrations do not last. When a death sours the holiday, Lexy and the gang spend the long weekend sorting through leftovers, alibis, and murder.

In March 2020, Lexy Campbell helps the Last Ditch Motel turn itself into a refuge as lockdown closes in. Bringing strangers together for safety also brings secrets, strain, and murder to their little patch of California.

Lexy and the Last Ditch crew head to Scotland for Christmas and end up at Mistletoe Hall in the village of Yule. A decades-old disappearance, a skeleton in the basement, and family chaos make it a holiday to remember.

After losing almost everything, Tabitha Muir returns to her remote childhood home in Hiskith hoping the worst is over. Then a dam explosion and her cousin's suspicious death force her to look beneath the calm surface of family and place.

Lexy's wedding plans are already fraying nerves when the celebrant is found dead behind the cake, strangled with fairy lights. Her big day becomes a crime scene, and the run-up to marriage turns into a comic, messy murder case.

In spring 1939, war worries are the last thing Dandy wants to add to with detective work, but an old friend begs for help finding her vanished husband. The search ends in a village murder and a wall of silence.

Easter in Cuento should mean parades and egg hunts, but Bill and Billie Miller vanish and their blood-smeared Mustang is found abandoned. Lexy Campbell has to figure out whether she is chasing a double murder, a scam, or something stranger.

Helen Crowther wants to focus on her welfare work in postwar Edinburgh, not another scandal. But when a well-dressed stranger dies near her and her father starts lying, class secrets and violence drag her back into investigation.

Newly widowed Lindsay Hale goes back to her Scottish hometown for comfort, only to find grief twisting memory and reality. When a friendly widow disappears and familiar faces start slipping from her mind, refuge turns frightening.