Linda's Books
EMOTIONAL GEOLOGY
Rose Leonard is on the run from her life.
Taking refuge in a remote island community, she cocoons herself in work, silence and solitude in a house by the sea. But she is haunted by her past, by memories and desires she'd hoped were long dead. Rose must decide whether she has chosen a new life or just a different kind of death. Life and love are offered by new friends, her lonely daughter and most of all Calum, a fragile younger man who has his own demons to exorcise.
But does Rose, with her tenuous hold on life and sanity, have the courage to say yes to life and put her past behind her?
“Lyrical, intriguing and haunting, .” Isla Dewar
“An un-put-downable page-turner” WELL? magazine
"A hymn of praise to the damaged, to the incomplete, a wonderful thing of hope." www.BookCrossing.com
"One of the most outstanding first novels I believe I've ever read."
Lisa Guidarini, The Bluestalking Reader
THE WAVERTON GOOD READ AWARD
EMOTIONAL GEOLOGY was shortlisted for the 2006 Waverton Good Read Award, given by the readers of Waverton village in Cheshire to the best first novel by a UK author.
(In 2007 another Transita book, GANG OF FOUR by Liz Byrski also made the Waverton shortlist.)
PURE PASSION
North West Libraries chose EMOTIONAL GEOLOGY as one of 20 books on their PURE PASSION - Recommended Reads booklist promoting the best of romantic fiction in its many forms. Linda's off-beat love story was runner-up for the PURE PASSION award. (The winner was Christina Jones' LOVE POTIONS.)
See the News section for more details of the promotion.
A LIFETIME BURNING
‘I think I was damned from birth,’ Flora said, staring vacantly into space. ‘Damned by my birth.’
Greedy for experience but determined to be good, Flora Dunbar spends a lifetime seeking love, trying to build a future out of the wreckage of her past - an eccentric childhood spent in the shadow of her musical twin, Rory; early marriage to Hugh, a clergyman twice her age; motherhood, which brings her Theo, the son she cannot love; middle-age, when she finds brief happiness in a scandalous affair with her nephew, Colin.
‘If you asked my sister-in-law why she hated me, she’d say it was because I seduced her precious firstborn, then tossed him onto the sizeable scrap-heap marked “Flora’s ex-lovers”. But she’d be lying. That isn’t why Grace hated me. Ask my brother Rory...’
“The emotional power in these novels makes this reviewer reflect on how
Charlotte and Emily Bronte might have written if they were living and writing now.”
Daisy Mackenzie, Northwords Now
"Disturbing themes, sensitively explored … An emotional avalanche.”
Lochcarron Reading Group
"I can heartily recommend Linda Gillard. Her two novels, EMOTIONAL GEOLOGY
and A LIFETIME BURNING are excellent reads."
Adele Geras, author of FACING THE LIGHT and HESTER'S STORY (Orion)
"[Gillard] wrote well in her first novel; she writes even better in her second.
A LIFETIME BURNING is hugely more ambitious."
West Highland Free Press
"I loved it. Skye-domiciled Gillard joins an ever-growing number of marvellous
and courageous writers who have chosen the Highlands as their home."
Kevin Crowe, bookseller
A LIFETIME BURNING was chosen by Chicago book blogger The Bluestalking Reader as one of
her Top Ten Books of 2006.
"Books that force you to look at things in a different light, and force you out of your comfort zone, do what fiction was meant to do. No light or easy read, not to mention not a comfortable one, A LIFETIME BURNING addresses some very controversial subject matter. Yet, Gillard finds the absolute perfect line to tread, not condoning the actions of the characters but still presenting them as fallible yet worthy human beings. A truly skillful novel, and one that deserves a much wider audience."
www.bluestalking.typepad.com
Published by Piatkus... STAR GAZING
Linda's 3rd novel published in
May 2008 by PIATKUS
Linda Gillard's third novel, STAR GAZING, a thought-provoking romantic comedy set in Edinburgh and on the Isle of Skye, was published in May by Piatkus.
Blind since birth, widowed in her twenties, now lonely in her forties, Marianne Fraser lives in Edinburgh in elegant, angry anonymity with her sister, Louisa. Marianne’s passionate
nature finds solace and expression in music, a love she finds
she shares with Keir, a man she encounters on her doorstep
one winter’s night.
Keir makes no concession to her condition. He is abrupt to the point of rudeness, yet oddly kind. But can Marianne trust her feelings for this reclusive stranger who wants to take a blind woman to his island home on Skye, to ‘show’ her the stars?
From a review at www.LoveReading.co.uk:
"This was a joy to read from the first page to the last... Romantic and quirky and beautifully written."
From a review in CANDIS magazine:
"This wonderful novel is by turns passionate, funny and truly moving - a compulsive page-turner to the very end."
Coming in May 2009...
Linda Gillard's fourth novel FAMILY SHADOWS, to be published by Piatkus
"My friends describe me as frighteningly sensible, not at all the sort of woman who would fall for an actor. And his home. And his family.”
Orphaned by drink, drugs and rock n’ roll, Gwen Rowland is invited to spend Christmas at her actor boyfriend Alfie's family home - a ramshackle Tudor manor in Norfolk. She's excited about the prospect of a proper holiday with a proper family, but soon after she arrives, Gwen notices something isn't quite right. Alfie acts strangely towards his family and is reluctant to talk about the past. There's the enigma of an old family photograph and Alfie's mother, a celebrated children's author, keeps to her room, living in a twilight world between past and present, fact and fiction.
When Gwen discovers fragments of forgotten family letters sewn into an old quilt she starts to piece together the jigsaw of the past and realises there's a lot more to the family history than she's been told.
And a lot more to Alfie.
