Hello! My name is Kate Hamilton—young widow, mother of two college-age children, and fine antiques dealer and appraiser. You can usually find me in my shop in the historic district of Jackson Falls, Ohio. Antiques at the Falls specializes in fine objects from the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries. Today, however, I’m home, packing for a last-minute trip to the Isle of Glenroth in Scotland. Why am I rushing off to the Inner Hebrides in late October? I’m asking myself the same question.

“Are you sure it’s a good idea?” my mother asked when I told her I was going. “Of course I’m not sure,” I answered truthfully. Returning to the island where my husband was born—and where he died three years ago—is the last thing I want to do. Painful memories. But when his sister, proprietor of the island’s luxe country house hotel, called in a panic and claimed she needed my help, how could I refuse?

It’s complicated.

Anyway, I’m off on Thursday, flying from Cleveland to London Heathrow, then traveling by train to Fort William in the Scottish Highlands, from there by rental car to Mallaig on the west coast, and finally by ferryboat to the Isle of Glenroth. Oh, man. I already feel exhausted. Especially since a mere four hours after my arrival, I’ll be expected to appear in something formal and festive for The Tartan Ball, the island’s annual end-of-leaf-season gala.

Tomorrow my mother, Linnea, arrives from her retirement community in Wisconsin. She’s holding down the fort at the antique shop while I’m gone. I learned everything I know about antiques from my parents. My father (he died in a car crash when I was seventeen) was the real expert, but my mother was the scholar and researcher, applying near-Sherlockian principles of investigation and logic to ferret out the historical details her customers adored. Fiona, my sweet Scottish Fold kitty, will be in heaven. My mother shamelessly spoils her, and she has been a bit lonely since her two human siblings left for college.

My son, Eric, is a graduate student in nuclear physics at The Ohio State University. This quarter he’s in Milan, Italy, researching methods of storing nuclear waste. Don’t ask—that’s literally all I know. My daughter, Christine, is a second-year student at Magdalen College, Oxford University. The one bright spot in this trip to Scotland (I almost said ill-fated trip) is an opportunity to spend a few days with Christine on the way home. I hope it works out. Trust me—with Elenor, things are never simple and rarely run smoothly.

In spite of a sense of apprehension about my sister-in-law’s problem—she refused to go into details on the phone—I am looking forward to getting out of town. As my well-meaning friends constantly remind me, a widow of forty-six years (to paraphrase Jane Austen) must be in want of a husband. In spite of my vow never to remarry, they insist on tossing every aging bachelor and grieving widower in Ohio in my path.

At least that’s one thing I won’t have to deal with in Scotland.

What awaits me, I can’t guess. But a promise is a promise—even one I never intended to keep.

You can read more about Kate in A Dream of Death, the first book in the NEW “Kate Hamilton” traditional mystery series, released April 9, 2019.

On a remote Scottish island, American antiques dealer Kate Hamilton wrestles with her own past while sleuthing a brutal killing, staged to recreate a two-hundred-year-old unsolved murder.

Autumn has come and gone on Scotland’s Isle of Glenroth, and the islanders gather for the Tartan Ball, the annual end-of-tourist-season gala. Spirits are high. A recently published novel about island history has brought hordes of tourists to the small Hebridean resort community. On the guest list is American antiques dealer Kate Hamilton. Kate returns reluctantly to the island where her husband died, determined to repair her relationship with his sister, proprietor of the island’s luxe country house hotel, famous for its connection with Bonnie Prince Charlie.

Kate has hardly unpacked when the next morning a body is found, murdered in a reenactment of an infamous unsolved murder described in the novel―and the only clue to the killer’s identity lies in a curiously embellished antique casket. The Scottish police discount the historical connection, but when a much-loved local handyman is arrested, Kate teams up with a vacationing detective inspector from Suffolk, England, to unmask a killer determined to rewrite island history―and Kate’s future.

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Meet the author
Like her main character, Connie Berry was raised by charmingly eccentric antique collectors who opened a shop, not because they wanted to sell antiques but because they needed a plausible excuse to keep buying them. Besides reading and writing mysteries, Connie adores cute animals, foreign travel with a hint of adventure, and all things British. She lives in Ohio with her husband and adorable dog, Millie. Visit Connie at connieberry.com.

All comments are welcomed.