Vicky and Tony (her significant other) engage in a little friendly competition to solve locate a centuries-old work by Bavarian artist and sculptor Riemenschneider. They are not the only ones in search of the piece, however, and they find more danger and excitement than they bargained for at romantic old Schloss Falkenstein.

What did it mean? The note with the hieroglyphs was found in the pocket of a man lying dead in an alley. The only other item of interest was a piece of jewelry, a reproduction of the Charlemagne talisman. It was good, so good that Vicky Bliss thought she was being shown the real jewel. The goldwork was done by a master; the jewels weren't glass but top-quality synthetic stones. What did it mean? Vicky didn't know ... yet. But on the sunbathed streets and in the moonlit courtyards of Rome, she was going to find out - if the dangerously exciting young Englishman didn't get in her way...

When American art historian Vicky Bliss receives a one-way plane ticket to Stockholm from her former lover, the stage is set for a rendezvous with danger. Suddenly Vicky finds herself being courted by a dashing Viking, but she never suspects that her life may depend on finding a long-lost Nordic treasure . . . before it's too late.

A picture is worth a thousand words, but the photograph Vicky Bliss has just received gives rise to a thousand questions, and the answers to some of them are deadly. A quick glance at the bloodstained envelope is all the proof Vicky needs to know that something is very wrong. The picture itself is familiar: a woman dressed in the gold of Troy. This isn't the famous photograph of Frau Schliemann, though. The picture is contemporary. The gold, as Vicky and everyone else knows, disappeared at the end of World War II. And because they all know it, they all gather to renew the search. All of them - including the mysterious John Smythe and a very determined killer ...

When Vicky Bliss, assistant curator of the National Museum in Munich, learns of a plot to rob the treasure-filled Cairo Museum, she joins a cruise up the Nile in order to prevent the crime and identify the thief, master of disguise and her occasional lover, Sir John Smythe. First, she must deal with the fury of seeing Sir John with his new flame.