Returning from her European honeymoon, Delaney Nichols is eager to get back to the Cracked Spine, the bookstore where she works. But as she hurries toward the shop she and a woman named Mary collide, and they notice that they bear an uncanny resemblance to one another. Even stranger, Mary believes she is the reincarnation of Mary, Queen of Scots. But in this fifth case (after The Loch Ness Papers), the Edinburgh city council wants to close the Cracked Spine, and Mary's husband dies in a car explosion. The meeting with Mary wasn't an accident, and now Delaney is determined to get to the bottom of this mystery while saving the bookstore.