The dreadful day is approaching for the Napiers in Ballater: Hippolyta Napier's mother is coming to stay. But Mrs. Fettes is not just in Aberdeenshire to visit her youngest daughter: she has other reasons, and one will draw the whole family in, with deadly results.

The distant Scottish spa town of Ballater seems a world away from the stylish and familiar streets of Georgian Edinburgh, but recently married Hippolyta Napier is making a new life amidst its dark woods and pure, flowing waters. But suspicion, intrigue and death await both inside and outside her new home, and the forces of nature take few prisoners.

A red dawn breaks over winter woodland, where two men stand, pistols drawn. Political strife has come to peaceful Ballater, bringing death in its wake, and Hippolyta Napier is once more drawn to find out more - even when her own life is in danger. This is the third in the Hippolyta Napier series set in 19th. century Scotland.

The sun is shining, Ballater is full of wealthy visitors, and Mrs. Kynoch's school for young ladies is flourishing - until one pupil, the daughter of a slave-owner, vanishes. Has she eloped with a rich man, or is something more sinister afoot? Hippolyta Napier needs to know, before a vulnerable local man is accused of something he could not have done.

'Uncle!' The man lay with his head propped against the standing stone - what was left of his head. Hippolyta swallowed hard. 'I'm a doctor's wife,' she told herself. 'I can manage.' No one can think why this man has been murdered, nor why passing farmer has also been attacked. But as Hippolyta Napier does her best to assist the sheriff's man in damp, autumnal Ballater, they gradually unfold a web of violence, past tragedy and present crisis, threatening anyone who comes near it. A Lochgorm Lament is the fifth in the Ballater Murder series, set in 1830s Scotland.