Taking on the running of her niece's deli while Cat is attending a wedding in Italy, Isabel Dalhousie encounters a recent heart transplant patient who is troubled by memories of events that never happened to him.

Isabel's son, Charlie, is now of an age, eighteen months, to have a social life, and so off they go to a birthday party, where, much to Isabel's surprise, she finds Minty Auchterlonie, the high-flying financier she first encountered in The Sunday Philosophy Club. Minty had seemed to Isabel a woman of ruthless ambition, but the question of her integrity had never truly been answered. Now, when Minty takes Isabel into her confidence about the complicated...

When friends from Dallas arrive in Edinburgh and introduce Isabel to Tom Bruce, a bigwig at home in Texas, several confounding situations unfurl at once. Tom's young fiance?e's roving eye leads Isabel to believe that money may be the root of her love for Tom. But what, Isabel wonders, is the root of the interest Tom begins to show for Isabel herself? And she can't forget about her niece, Cat, who's busy falling for a man whom Isabel suspects of being...