Raymond Kidd is a time traveller. Only he doesn't want to be. He has no say in when or where he goes, or to which time.

Plus, he has to die to do it.

In The Flaw in the Fabric, the first book in Jim Lindsey's trilogy A Travellers Guide for Lost Souls, a shortcut through a cemetery during a hurricane takes Raymond Kidd the long way around through another century and another identity. In 1860 Halifax, he's ship's captain Oliver Cole, just released from the madhouse. While he's away from 2003, the ghosts of two brothers who died in 1860 come back to life in Raymond's house in the future. What ensues is a tragi-comic romance of errors that involves wives and lovers from different lives and results in a spiritual showdown with a rock demon.

Minor characters? Swamp spirits, a queen who lives in a castle in a tree trunk and lures people in to become her statuary, a cemetery guardian who would also like to be reincarnated but must first satisfy an agreement with a certain dark power, a mad Tibetan monk wandering in India who hexes Captain Oliver with a truth he cannot fathom, and two magical instruments he cannot master.

There's a flaw in the fabric of time and space. The two appear to be wearing out. It's Raymond's job, ultimately, to find out why.

He doesn't like it at all.