Charles Abell takes a journey into the past. This Dean of Southern Maryland College, who debuted in the novel, Cuckold Creek, becomes immersed in a family mystery after he listens to an oral history tape recorded by his mother before her death. As though she is speaking from the grave, his mother's words haunt him, launching him on an investigation of an incident in his family's past. The family mystery, revealed in a painting, sends Charles on a search for truth about life at Elysium, the family farm overlooking the historic Port Tobacco Valley. The story revolves around a lynching in 1896, planned at a baseball game and carried out by upstanding members of the community. While he is caught in an undertow of problems at the institution he has helped to build, Charles is brought to the brink of personal and professional failure when Southern Maryland College faces devastating financial loss. It could lose its accreditation and be forced to close; Charles is helpless to stop it until a postcard arrives in the mail with a cryptic instruction that alters the course of his life.

Thomas Thistlewood (1721-1786) was a British estate overseer and small landowner in western Jamaica. He arrived in Jamaica, the most important of the British sugar colonies in 1750, when he was 29 years old. He became the overseer or manager of the Egypt sugar plantation near the small port of Savanna la Mar. He stayed in Jamaica until his death in 1786. He wrote a diary, which eventually ran to some 10,000 pages, and this diary became an important historical document on slavery and history of Jamaica.

Thomas Littlejohn investigates a murder committed by the glow of a lighthouse The waterfront pub is closing up and the sailors are staggering home. World War II means a blackout in the English port town of Werrymouth, but the locals have no trouble finding their way over the Halfpenny Bridge, where a small toll shaves a mile off their drunken walk. A group of them are about to cross when a ship comes into the channel, and the lighthouse snaps on to guide its way. As the beams rake across the harbor, the sailors see two men struggling by the shore. One overpowers the other, killing him in the surf. The murderer escapes, and Detective-Inspector Littlejohn ventures down from London to find him. Two more murders follow, bringing this center of shipping to a halt just when England needs it most.

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