"Isabel becomes involved in a delicate paternity case in the twelfth installment of the beloved Isabel Dalhousie Series. Isabel finds herself befriended by Patricia, a single mother whose son, Basil, goes to school with Isabel's son. Isabel discovers that Basil is the product of an affair Patricia had with a well-known Edinburgh organist, also named Basil, who was, rumor has it, initially reluctant to contribute financially to the child's upkeep....

Just before the French Revolution, in a forest outside Berlin, a band of libertines expelled from the court of Louis Xvi rendezvous with the legendary German seducer and freethinker, the Duc de Walchen, to convince him to join in their mission: the rejection of authority and all moral boundaries. What begins as an evening of strategizing on the proliferation of libertinage, descends into a Sadean night of pansexual one-upmanship.

"A vibrant portrait of four college friends-Iris Murdoch, Philippa Foot, Elizabeth Anscombe, and Mary Midgley-who formed a new philosophical tradition while Oxford's men were away at war"-- Four college friends-- Iris Murdoch, Philippa Foot, Elizabeth Anscombe, and Mary Midgley-- came of age during years of tumultuous events: Nazism, the Holocaust, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The philosophy of the day struck them as inadequate for this new human reality...

"Our favorite moral philosopher is caught up in a delicate dispute between members of a prominent family as her husband, Jamie, is dragged into his own internecine rivalry. Isabel accepts an invitation to serve on the advisory committee of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, but soon finds herself swept up in an all-too-familiar dilemma. David is the grandson of a Scottish clan chief and is supportive of Scottish nationalism. But his fervent beliefs...