Adding image link breaks jquery slider, please help!

I am working on a site for a friend and am trying to add a link to every image in a slideshow. The slideshow uses jquery and a script called easySlider1.7.js. Everything works fine if the images are left alone, but when I try to wrap the images with a link, the slides no longer advance as they should. Here is a live site that displays the problem ...

http://www.splits59.com/

Here is the html code for each of the slide images ...

<div class="covercontent2box">
<div class="covercontent2">
<div id="slideshow">
 <a href="/ashton-jacket-p-107.html"><img src="img/homepagesummer2010_2.2-cut.jpg" class="active" /></a>
 <a href="/carly-coverup-p-106.html"><img src="img/homepagesummer2010_3.2-cut.jpg" /></a>
 <a href="/shop-online-bottoms-c-15_14.html"><img src="img/homepagesummer2010_1.2-cut.jpg" /></a>
</div>
</div>
</div>

      

        
        
        
      

    

And here is the jquery code on the page that controls the slider ...

<script type="text/javascript">
function slideSwitch() {
    var $active = $('#slideshow IMG.active');

    if ( $active.length == 0 ) $active = $('#slideshow IMG:last');

    // use this to pull the images in the order they appear in the markup
    var $next =  $active.next().length ? $active.next()
        : $('#slideshow IMG:first');

    $active.addClass('last-active');

    $next.css({opacity: 0.0})
        .addClass('active')
        .animate({opacity: 1.0}, 1000, function() {
            $active.removeClass('active last-active');
        });
}

$(function() {
    setInterval( "slideSwitch()", 4500 );
});
  </script>

      

        
        
        
      

    

Does anyone have any ideas why adding a link tag to images breaks the slider? Any help or direction that is provided would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Devin