A Game of Sorrows

by S. G. MacLean Book 2 in the Alexander Seaton Series series.

First published 2010

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4.3(2,315)

Aberdeen, 1628. Alexander Seaton is approached by Sean O’Neill, a cousin who closely resembles him and carries a summons from their formidable grandmother in Ulster. A poet has pronounced a curse on the O’Neill family, and a sequence of threatening verses appears to be predicting the deaths of its members.

Alexander travels to a household divided by inheritance, religion and resentment, where displaced Irish families, Scottish settlers, fugitive priests and agents of the Crown compete for influence. When murder turns the supposed curse into an immediate danger, he must identify who is manipulating fear and family history before suspicion falls on him as an outsider with a concealed claim of his own.