Mark Owen and Hilary Chase, who met at the excavation of a medieval Scottish priory, get back together in Fort Worth, Texas. He's excavating an eerie turn of the century house owned by a prominent local family. She's working at an art gallery on medieval artifacts recovered from the Nazis by the same family. Mark's and Hilary's relationship is rocky enough without someone resorting to murder to keep a century's worth of skeletons locked in the old house's closets.

LSC: Garden of Thorns is a spin-off of Dust to Dust. For once I set a story close to where I live in Texas, which gave me a chance to use a lot of local color in addition to my usual bits and pieces of European history.