Cambridge is sweltering, during an unusually hot summer. Jackson Brodie, former police inspector turned private investigator, has never felt at home in Cambridge, and has a failed marriage to prove it. Surrounded by death, intrigue and misfortune, he attempts to unravel three case histories and begins to realise that everything is connected.

Ruby Lennox was conceived grudgingly by Bunty and born while her father, George, was in the Dog and Hare in Doncaster telling a woman in an emerald dress and a D-cup that he wasn't married. Bunty had never wanted to marry George, but here she was, stuck in a flat above the pet shop in an ancient street beneath York Minster.

On a peat and heather island off the west coast of Scotland, Effie and her mother Nora take refuge in the large mouldering house of their ancestors and tell each other stories. But strange things are happening. Why is Effie being followed? Is someone killing the old people? And where is the mysterious yellow dog?

Once it had been the great forest of Lythe. And here, lived the Fairfaxes, visited once by the great Gloriana herself. But over the centuries the forest had been destroyed. The Fairfaxes have dwindled too. But Isobel Fairfax knows about the past. She is waiting for the return of her mother whose disappearance is part of the mystery.

What is the real world? Does it exist, or is it merely a means of keeping another reality at bay? This collection offers a vision of another world which lurks just beneath the surface of our consciousness, a world where the myths we have banished from our lives are present and where imagination has the power to transform reality.

It is the Edinburgh Festival. People queuing for a lunchtime show witness a road-rage incident - an incident which changes the lives of everyone involved. Jackson Brodie, ex-army, ex-police, ex-private detective, is also an innocent bystander - until he becomes a suspect.