Genealogist Lucy Lancaster loves nothing more than tracking down her clients' long-dead ancestors, and her job has never been so exciting as when she discovers a daguerreotype photograph and a journal that prove Austin, Texas, billionaire Gus Halloran's great-great grandfather was murdered back in 1849. Lucy is able to narrow the suspects down to two nineteenth-century Texans, one of whom is the ancestor of present-day U.S. senator Daniel Applewhite. But when Gus publicly outs the senator as the descendant of a murderer, and her former co-worker is murdered protecting the daguerreotype, Lucy finds that shaking the branches of some family trees proves them to be more twisted and dangerous than she ever thought possible. -- Adapted from book jacket.