A romance set in Edinburgh, Russia and the Scottish Isles. Serena MacKenzie is haunted by a secret from her dysfunctional upbringing in the Hebridean village of Balvaig. Nowadays, she's a successful TV journalist, based in Edinburgh, but still in thrall to the obsessions that have held her since childhood: fairy tale heroes, and all things Russian. It's 1997, and she's newly divorced - though Fergus Learmonth, her ex-husband, continues to play a pivotal role in her life. He's keen to get her back; is she still under his spell too? When a friend persuades Serena to join a cruise to St Petersburg, it seems just the treat she has told herself she deserves. Over the space of a few heady days in the queen of Baltic cities, she meets Russian musician Max Grigoriev and brings him home with her, illegally. But Max has his own agenda, and life with him turns out to be anything but a fairy tale...