In 1852, Jane Inglis loses her job as a maid in Quebec City. In desperation, she rashly decides to follow a young man she barely knows on a five-month voyage to the other side of the world. She soon learns that the stories James Houghton has told her are not all true.
In Australia, Jane decides to make her own fortune. But nothing turns out to be as she easy as she hopes it will be: not panning for gold, nor cooking for gold fossickers, not even marrying the man she loves. After many trials and adventures, she boards a ship for another five-month voyage home alone, completing a circumnavigation of the globe.
In Quebec, she must face the consequences of her past rash acts. But a new life awaits her, unlike any she has dared to dream of.
Maid of Gold is a historical novel based on the lives of the author’s great-great-grandparents, Jane Inglis and James Houghton.

The Serpentine Garden Path is the first book in a series of novels called "The Compleat Gardener." It is based on the true story of the author's ancestors. Susan Dean falls in love with her father's gardener John Dean and begins a saga that spans four novels. This first book, set in eighteenth century England and Scotland, relates her "riches to rags" romance.

Letters from the Gardener takes place during the French Revolution when Belfast was awash with republican ideals. Into this cauldron come John Dean, a Scottish gardener, and his wife Susan Kirk, a former English lady. John is a gardener for Henry Joy, the editor of the Belfast News-Letter. When his wife meets Joy's nephew and namesake, the handsome revolutionary, Henry Joy McCracken, and comes under the influence of his feminist sister Mary Ann, the Dean's marriage is in for a rocky patch. The growing unrest in Ireland spurs John to insist on emigration to the New World, but not before he confronts his wife's "lover" and learns the truth.

The second book in the Compleat Gardener Trilogy, the story of John and Susan Dean continues when they move with their growing family to Scotland. John finds work at Ellon Castle and learns that his employer is not the Earl of Aberdeen but rather the Earl's mistress, Penelope. Susan, cut off from her family and in an unfamiliar land, becomes friends with Penelope. Their growing friendship threatens to destroy John and Susan's marriage in an unexpected way. This trilogy is based on the lives of the author's ancestors who, in the 18th century, traveled from England to Scotland and Ireland, and finally to Nova Scotia.