Jane Ross Potter

Book 1

Margaret’s Mentor

Portland, Maine attorney Hamish and his young protégé Margaret share an admiration for the famous English writer Dr. Samuel Johnson. Hamish and Margaret find themselves together in northern Scotland, and only they can prevent an imminent death. Can Samuel Johnson’s moral teachings from the eighteenth-century help avoid a twenty-first century crisis, and get the two home safely for Christmas?

Book 2

Symbol Stones

Book Two of the Birsay Trilogy picks up sixteen months after Book One, Margaret’s Mentor, ends. Portland, Maine attorney Margaret Milford travels home to Scotland to visit an uncle who has suffered a stroke. Margaret accompanies her cousin Jeannie on a trip through northern Scotland and to Orkney, at the same time trying to recover from the break-up of her relationship with colleague Henri. Jeannie and Margaret’s Orkney trip takes on a new dimension when a visiting American joins them in Orkney. Margaret resents the intrusion at first, but friendship develops as they explore Orkney. All goes well until Margaret disappears, and Jeannie and Margaret’s new friend conduct a frantic search with the help of some intrepid birders.

Book 3

The Secret of Finlay Village

Margaret Milford, an attorney in Portland, Maine, learns that her late uncle has left her an unusual bequest, and the more Margaret learns, the more she is drawn into the mysterious life of Finlay Village, the location of her uncle’s isolated seaside cottage. Initially the village residents resent Margaret’s presence, and she is equally anxious to get back to Portland and help her mentor Hamish with a major lawsuit. Although Margaret gradually overcomes the village’s antagonism, she gets no closer to learning why the village seems trapped in the 1960’s: no internet, no cell phones, no tourists. With private investigator and new boyfriend Alistair at her side, she tackles the challenge of clearing the cottage under the critical eyes of the village. But on top of her work and her family duty, before Margaret goes back to Maine, she must return to Birsay in the Orkney Islands to solve one final mystery.

Book 1

It Began with the Marbles

Kilvellie-by-the-Sea, an outwardly quiet seaside town on the northeast coast of Scotland, has hired a new senior police officer, Helen Griffen. Hardened by a career spent policing in the city of Edinburgh, Helen looks forward to a peaceful last posting before retirement.

But within her first few weeks on the job, Helen discovers that she’s inherited a police sergeant who lives in the police station under an assumed name; a seven-year-old missing person case, or maybe a death; an American ballet troupe about to descend on the town, the ballet star a secretive enigma; and the mention of DNA tests sending a local family into a panic. Clearly, there is more to Kilvellie than sea glass, ice cream, and fish and chips.

Helen finds her moral compass shifting: not just hers, but that of her private investigator son Adam who she brings in to make discreet inquiries about the missing person, a teenage girl. With Helen’s predecessor fled to sunny Spain, she has no one else to trust. Together they learn that behind the town’s calm exterior hides the story of a World War One-era German soldier, the Scottish nurse he married, and how they established a successful glass business and set in motion a cascade of events and side-taking that still resonates.

Adam’s suspicion falls on an elderly man who often hobbles out to a cliffside bench to gaze at the North Sea, lost in memories; he is a well-known presence in the town. Helen learns that the man lives in a nearby luxury care home, but how he pays for it is another mystery. She has to tread lightly, though. To complicate matters for Helen, the elderly man’s son is Helen’s predecessor at the police station, and his grandson is her sergeant: both are implicated in the teenager’s disappearance.

The innocent-seeming sea glass that people travel from afar to collect has its own hidden story. That weathered red glass was once a poppy in a war memorial window, and that lettered piece was once the base of a unique glass vase. How the glass reached the beach in the first place, Helen learns, is the true tragedy. But seeking justice for decades-old misdeeds could simply prolong an ancient dispute.

Book 2

It Continued with the Cowries

Kilvellie-by-the-Sea, an outwardly quiet seaside town on the northeast coast of Scotland, is the setting for this sequel to It Began with the Marbles. The story begins with the sudden death of an elderly man who served during World War Two as a guard at the town’s famous glass factory. Local police officer Helen Griffen treats the death as an accident, but questions are raised that lead her to wonder if the death was not an accident. By then, physical evidence has been compromised.

Aided by a visiting American private investigator, Alistair Wright, and his lawyer fiancée Margaret Milford, Helen starts to quietly investigate the man’s background. She soon learns there may be a number of people who could have wanted him injured or dead. Meanwhile, her son, also a private investigator, is alarmed that Helen is handling the case herself: she has a personal relationship with the dead man’s son, and the dead man’s grandson is her sergeant.

Gradually, Helen learns that the outwardly peaceful town harbors deep secrets from the war years, and that the dead man might have been implicated in the death or disappearance of evacuee teenagers who were sent to Kilvellie as war broke out, to escape the risk of bombing in the cities. Powerful forces in the town are trying to keep the truth from Helen. Yet, when she finally learns what she now believes to be the sad truth, a surprise confession provides yet another interpretation of the events during Kilvellie’s war years.

It Ended with a Wedding

It Ended with a Wedding is the third in the sea glass trilogy. It Ended with a Wedding begins where It Continued with the Cowries left off. Margaret Milford, a young Maine-based attorney, is on a remote Scottish island helping with a beach clean-up project. Her fiancé Alistair Wright, a Portland, Maine private investigator, is working in their temporary Scottish home on the Fife coast, north of Edinburgh. The book begins with a tragedy at Margaret’s law firm in Portland, and soon Margaret, Alistair, and two of Margaret’s colleagues, junior lawyers like herself, are drawn into investigating. Was it a personal attack? Or does it tie in with the theft of valuable patent information from one of the law firm’s biggest clients? Meanwhile, the clock is running out on Alistair’s visitor visa in Scotland. One solution: marry Margaret, a British citizen. But is that a good reason to get married soon, or should they wait until they return to Maine…. if they return to Maine? Before they can reach a decision, a rival for Margaret’s affection shows up and complicates everyone’s plans.

Sharkbait

“Jaws” meets global warming? An inconvenient tooth? Based on real science, and just in time for summer beach reading, “Sharkbait” throws two mismatched scientists together, risking their lives to learn how sharks can venture on shore for food. Climate change, toxins in the ocean, or something more sinister? Sharon is a Maine-based marine biologist who learns of the attacks when she visits Hawaii for only the second time in fifteen years. Johann is an eccentric shark expert in Waikiki who blames Sharon for a near-fatal shark injury that ruined his chances for a normal life. Sharon and Johann wrestle with their past while they risk their lives to find out how sharks are able to attack on land. Can the attacks be stopped before it’s too late?

Seeking the Medicine Buddha