Cauldstane - Linda Gillard

Jenny Ryan is a ghost writer. She has written the autobiographies of many famous people but when she has the opportunity to work with Sholto MacNab, adventurer & explorer, she's intrigued. Sholto has specified a male writer but Jenny's pen name is J J Ryan so he & his sons, Alec & Fergus, weren't expecting Jenny when she arrives for the interview. Jenny is fascinated by the castle, by its dilapidated state, by the family motto, "Let fear be far from all", & by the legends that surround the family. Sholto's motive for publishing his memoir is to make some money. The estate is in dire need of cash & Jenny convinces him that she's the right person to help him do that. She agrees to stay at the castle while they work & soon becomes involved with the family & their future.

Jenny is drawn to Alec, a quiet man who runs an armoury business from the castle that brings in much-needed income.  Fergus runs the estate but lack of money is hampering his ideas for the future.  Then there's the curse that hangs over the heads of all the MacNab men. The faithless wife of an MacNab laird was murdered by her husband with the Cauldstane claymore, a massive sword that still hangs in the Great Hall. Her mother was a witch & she cursed the family by declaring that no MacNab wife would live long or bear children if they were not of the MacNab blood. She was condemned as a witch & drowned in the river near a rock called the Blood Stone because of its colouring. Legend says the curse was written on that stone. This curse has blighted the lives of the family ever since. Alec's wife, Coral, had died young, drowned in that same river. Whether it was an accident or suicide is unclear. Fergus had just proposed to his girlfriend but she refused him after she heard of the curse & became frightened. The family is divided over the future of the estate. Should they sell up or work towards some of the ideas that Fergus & Zelda are keen to try to give Cauldstane a future?

Sholto's first wife, Liz, had died in a fall from her horse when Alec & Fergus were very young & his second choice, singer Meredith Fitzgerald, had been a mistake. She'd been Sholto's mistress, one of many, while he was married to Liz, & convinced him to marry her after Liz's death. Meredith was expecting wealth & luxury but Sholto's fame & his ownership of Cauldstane didn't translate to money & soon they were living separate lives. Another faithless wife of a MacNab, Meredith was killed in a car accident after a drunken argument with Alec on his wedding day. Sholto's sister, Zelda, returned to the castle after divorcing her husband & helped to run the house with help from Wilma Guthrie, who has worked for the family since the boys were small.

As Jenny's affection for Sholto & attraction to Alec increases, she becomes determined to break the spell of misery, grief & fear surrounding the MacNabs. However she has not only the legend to conquer but a more tangible threat to overcome. She hears harpsichord music. Messages begin appearing among her notes on her laptop, evil messages filled with jealousy & hatred. Alec knows who the writer is & he's determined that Jenny should leave the castle for her own safety. Jenny realises that she now has to fight not only the legends of the past & Alec's fears but face her own insecurities & the secrets of her past. As Alec withdraws & becomes more distant, Jenny's determination to save the castle & the family increases. Her investigations reveal secrets that will shock the MacNabs but may also set them free.

Cauldstane is a terrific story, a Gothic mystery set in a haunted & cursed Scottish castle. As I read, I was reminded of many of my favourite books, from the romances of Victoria Holt to Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca with echoes of Shakespeare & Elizabeth Gaskell as well. All the characters are beautifully drawn, from Alec, whose life has been burdened by guilt to Sholto, the aging adventurer who is troubled by the consequences of the reckless behaviour of his past & worried about the future of his sons & the estate. Jenny has secrets of her own which are only gradually revealed but she's an undaunted heroine whose love for Alec will give her the strength to fight the evil force threatening the family & her own happiness.

I hope I haven't made the story sound too gloomy as there's a lot of humour as well. Sholto's glee in describing his near-death experiences in the Arctic gives us a glimpse of the dashing adventurer he'd once been until ill-health & regrets about his behaviour to Liz consumed him. As always, Linda Gillard describes the natural world beautifully. The castle is a character in its own right, as evocative as Manderley & a perfect setting for this Gothic tale of love & the struggle between good & evil.

I was lucky enough to be sent a pre-publication copy of Cauldstane by the author.
Cauldstane is available as a Kindle ebook from Amazon & will be published in paperback soon.

Linda Gillard's Untying the Knot - now in paperback

Linda Gillard is one of the most successful indie authors around. Her books are intelligent, romantic, involving, with a great sense of place & gorgeous heroes. Linda has also shown that indie authors can use social media to great effect to build up a community of readers & her sales are a testament to her success. After publishing several books as Kindle e-books, Linda has started to produce paperback editions as well. The latest is Untying the Knot. Here's the review I wrote when it was first published a couple of years ago. Have a look at her website for more information.

I understood Magnus. I loved him. But in the end, I just couldn't live with him. A familiar story, you might think, but some friends and family saw things differently. Wives are meant to stand by their man - Army wives particularly. And I didn't. I walked away. I walked away from a war hero.

It was a long, at times agonising walk. It wasn't as if I was walking into the arms of a new love. I couldn't even persuade my teenage daughter to come with me. I felt like the loneliest woman in the world. I think I was only able to do it because Magnus understood why I was going. That was possible the hardest part. The lack of recriminations.

But Magnus knew all about The Long Walk. And feeling like the loneliest man in the world.

What do you do when you love someone but can no longer live with them? That's the dilemma facing Fay McGillivray when she leaves her husband, Magnus. Magnus has been a career soldier, working in bomb disposal. His postings have been to Northern Ireland, the Falklands, the Gulf. Fay lived with the tension of being an Army wife for years, wondering if she'd ever see Magnus again every time he went back on duty. Then, the call came that Fay had always dreaded, Magnus had been badly injured in a bomb blast in Derry. And it wasn't just the physical scars, it was the mental torment that tore them apart. Magnus suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The flashbacks, the nightmares, the blank spots where he doesn't remember where he is or what he's done.

As part of Magnus's recovery, he decides to buy Tullibardine Tower, a rundown ruin of a medieval tower house, & restore it. (The picture, courtesy of Linda, is of Balvaird, to give you an idea of what Tully would have looked like). Hard physical work & solitude begin to heal Magnus but they drive Fay to the edge. Two years in a caravan on a windswept building site is more than Fay can stand. Their daughter Emily stays with her father & Fay begins a new life.

Fay starts again. She begins working seriously as a textile artist & finds some success. Her relationship with Emily suffers but she has a warm friendship with Magnus's mother, Jessie, a woman with secrets of her own. Her relationships with men are pretty disastrous because she compares them all to Magnus - & no one can compare. Magnus is still at Tully Tower, living with Nina, a young teacher who longs for a commitment from Magnus that he's not able to give. When Magnus turns up at an exhibition of Fay's work, she has to confront her feelings about him, their marriage & the reasons why she left.

Untying the Knot is a complex novel. Fay & Magnus are both damaged people. They suffer from guilt - Magnus because he's still alive & because of the way his illness has impacted on his family. Fay because she left. She was there to look after Magnus & she couldn't do it. She was so busy trying to be the buffer between Magnus & Emily, making Magnus feel secure & shield Emily from the worst of Magnus's symptoms. In the process, she lost herself. But Fay & Magnus both discover that the physical & emotional knots that tie them together will take a lot of breaking.

This is a romantic novel in the sense that Fay & Magnus have a great love for each other & the reader wishes that they could find a way to be together. Their love is encapsulated in a letter Magnus wrote to Fay to be delivered in the event of his death. He kept it with him always as a talisman but didn't have it with him on the day of the Derry explosion. He finally reads the letter to Fay in one of the most moving scenes of the novel & that's the point where I thought there was a chance that they would be alright. But there's more than romance in the book. It's harrowing to read the descriptions of Magnus's PTSD, the terror he suffers, the flashbacks. It's also very funny. Poor Nina & her gorgon mother, pushing Magnus into an engagement that ends almost before it's begun when the engagement party descends into violent farce & recriminations.

Untying the Knot is now available from Amazon as a paperback or as an e-book.

Top Ten Books of 2012

Here's my list of the best books I read in 2012. No rereads & I've cheated a little by including two series & lumping two books by the one author together. There is no order to the list & it's a mixture of Fiction & Non Fiction. Follow the links to my reviews.

In the year of the Bicentenary of the birth of Charles Dickens, it was inevitable that I would read something by the great man. I read the last two of his novels that I had never read before, Barnaby Rudge & Martin Chuzzlewit. Put off by the stodgy names & reputation for unreadability, I was surprised at how much I loved both books. Knowing very little about the plots was also an advantage. I was eager to find out what happened to everyone. I also reread Great Expectations, The Mystery of Edwin Drood & A Christmas Carol.

Staying with Dickens, Michael Slater's The Great Charles Dickens Scandal was much-anticipated & didn't disappoint. A drily witty, succinct account of the lengths that Dickens went to to hide his relationship with Nelly Ternan & the efforts everyone else has gone to ever since to find out what really happened.

The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard was the most harrowing book I've ever read. The story of Scott's last expedition to find the South Pole, this is a beautifully-written account of hardship & determination by one who was there.

Almost as harrowing was Germinal by Emile Zola. Like all Zola's novels, this is an absorbing journey into the lives of the working people of 19th century France. The scenes in the mines are unforgettable & chilling in their horror.

I'm including a couple of series in my Top 10 because I can't choose just one book & I read them as a whole so it's easier to just nominate all of them. Bloomsbury have re-released many of Ann Bridge's novels as POD paperbacks & e-books. I loved the Julia Probyn series which I started last year & finished reading in August with Julia in Ireland. Julia is a female James Bond - beautiful, intelligent, well-connected & resourceful. I loved her adventures, set in exotic locations in Europe such as Emergency in the Pyrenees.

Martin Edwards has also benefited from the e-book revolution. After being out of print for some years, his Harry Devlin series is now available in paperback or as e-books. I've read the first two books, All the Lonely People & Suspicious Minds, & I have the third downloaded & ready to go. Harry is a lawyer in 1990s Liverpool & the atmosphere of the city & Harry's dogged pursuit of justice make the series compelling reading. Harry's adventures will keep me happy while I wait for the next Lake District mystery, The Frozen Shroud, to be published next year.

Catherine Aird's standalone novel, A Most Contagious Game, was a delight with its echoes of Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time. I loved the way that research was still done in libraries & newspaper archives (it was first published in 1967) & the historical aspect to the modern-day mystery was fascinating.

More history in Linda Gillard's The Glass Guardian. The legacy of WWI combined with a romantic ghost story set in wintry modern-day Skye was the most all-consuming reading experience I had this year. I read it virtually in one sitting, just wonderful.

I read very little historical fiction these days but Hilary Mantel is the exception. Bring Up The Bodies continues the story of Thomas Cromwell begun in Wolf Hall & brilliantly retells the story of the fall of Anne Boleyn. We all know how the story ends but this novel read like a thriller. An amazing achievement.

Queen Victoria's Letters to her daughter Vicky, Empress of Germany are touching, opinionated, gossipy & compelling. Vicky left England when she was only 17 & the letters selected here cover history, politics & family matters. The Folio Society edition is also beautifully produced with some gorgeous plates as well.

Well, that's it for 2012. I'm looking forward to plenty of good reading in 2013 & will be back in a couple of days with some thoughts about reading plans for the year. Happy New Year!

Linda Gillard's The Glass Guardian now available in paperback

One of my Favourite Books of 2012, Linda Gillard's The Glass Guardian, is now available in paperback from Amazon. I loved Linda's book & I'm very excited to be quoted on the back cover of the paperback.

The Glass Guardian is available for £7.99 from Amazon UK & $10.99 from Amazon US so everyone who was tempted by the many positive reviews but didn't have an e-reader can now buy themselves the perfect New Year's present.

Here's my review,

The Glass Guardian is a very difficult book to review. It's almost impossible to review it without spoilers. The author herself admits this so I'm not just trying to avoid writing a review! I could just say "I loved it, trust me, it's unputdownable." but that would make for a very short post. I think I summarised the book pretty well in my teaser on Monday, the story is about love, loss, grief, music, WWI, Skye, family secrets, loneliness & a ghost who will break your heart.

Ruth has suffered more grief in a very short time than anyone should have to bear. She's lost her lover, her father & her aunt. Her Aunt Janet's death has hit her hard. Janet virtually brought Ruth up after her mother's death & the time she spent at Janet's house, Tigh na Linne, on Skye, represents Ruth's happiest memories. Ruth inherits the house & travels to Skye to decide what to do with her life. Her career as a television gardener has come to an end. Maybe Skye represents a new beginning?

Ruth begins working on the garden & looking through Janet's archive. She was a well-known composer & a Canadian musicologist, Athelstan Blake, wants to write her biography. Ruth's discoveries cause some concern. The manuscript of Janet's most famous work, In Memoriam, based on a poem by Andrew Marvell, is in three different hands. In Memoriam is very different from Janet's work before & after. Could she have appropriated someone else's work?

Ruth also finds a childhood friend still living on Skye. Tom & his mother had spent summer holidays in a rented house near Tigh na Linne & now, after his mother's death, Tom has returned, working as a general gardener & handyman. Ruth feels an immediate attraction to Tom & as he begins to help her get the house ready for a possible sale, Ruth begins to realise that a childhood friendship may not necessarily be the best basis for a relationship with a man she doesn't really know.

Ruth gradually realises that she's not alone at Tigh na Linne. The house is haunted & the ghost is not entirely a stranger to her. As winter envelops the house & Ruth's loneliness & confusion increase, it becomes apparent that her future is intimately entwined with her family's past & her passion for a man who died one hundred years ago.

Atmosphere is so very important in any supernatural story. Linda Gillard has created a completely believable world in The Glass Guardian that spans the real & the unreal, the past & the present. The best ghost stories take place in winter, illuminated by cosy fires & flickering candlelight. Skye is the perfect setting, the bare wintry landscape mirroring Ruth's despair & grief when she first arrives at Tigh na Linne. Ruth is a vulnerable & very believable character. She has few warm memories & all of them are bound up with Skye & her Aunt Janet. Her determination to discover all she can about Janet's life & the earlier family history is a fascinating part of the story.

I can't say too much about the romantic hero of the book as it would spoil the story. I'll just say that if you've loved the heroes of Linda's earlier books, you won't be disappointed. The love story is tender & romantic but tinged with the grief & regrets of an earlier age. If you don't know Linda's books, what are you waiting for?! Click on the link to my teaser post above, & you'll find links to my reviews of Linda's books & to her website.

As usual with Linda's novels, I read The Glass Guardian in almost one sitting, I couldn't wait to find out what happened next. I was completely caught up in Ruth's journey. If you enjoy a love story with atmosphere, intelligent, multi-faceted characters & a touch of the supernatural, I think you'll enjoy The Glass Guardian.

Linda Gillard's House of Silence now available as a paperback

One of my Top 10 books of last year, Linda Gillard's House of Silence, has just been released as a paperback, available from Amazon. Linda has been very successful as both a traditionally published writer & an indie author. Over the past year her e-books, House of Silence, Untying the Knot & The Glass Guardian, have sold thousands of copies. Linda's success just goes to show that the major publishers don't always know what will sell. Linda's commitment to writing the books she wanted to write & then getting out there & selling them, helped along by fantastic word of mouth & positive reviews, has been well-rewarded. Now, for all those readers who have been longing to read Linda's books but didn't have a Kindle, the first of Linda's e-books is now available in paperback. The story of how Linda published House of Silence herself as an e-book is here. And here's my review of House of Silence,

Gwen Rowland is an independent, self-contained young woman in her mid twenties. Christened Guinevere by her drug-addicted mother because she was conceived at Glastonbury, Gwen’s life has deliberately taken the opposite track to that of her mother, aunts & uncles, all now dead from drink, drugs & misadventure. Gwen studied art, fell in love with textiles & works as a wardrobe assistant on film & TV sets. While working on a Regency drama, she meets Alfie Donovan, an actor who seems strangely familiar. Alfie’s childhood has been just as dysfunctional as Gwen’s. His mother, Rae Holbrooke, is the author of the wildly successful series of children’s books, Tom Dickon Harry. Alfie had been the inspiration for the boy in the books, a much-loved son after the birth of four daughters. A documentary on his mother’s work when he was young had just augmented the legend & led to a distance, both emotional & physical, between Alfie & his family. He only goes home, reluctantly, for Christmas.

Alfie & Gwen’s friendship becomes a relationship &, when Gwen asks if they’ll spend Christmas together, Alfie reluctantly invites her to his family home, Creake Hall. Gwen is entranced by Creake Hall, an Elizabethan mansion kept going by Viv & Hattie, Alfie’s two sisters who still live at home. They care for their mother, Rae, who has had a breakdown & now rarely leaves her room. Viv is in her fifties, works hard in the house & the garden. She seems to have no inner life at all, never having had a relationship of her own. Hattie has also been damaged by her past. She’s a little fey, a little fragile, but she is a wonderful seamstress & makes gorgeous quilts, using vintage fabrics from the trunks & wardrobes of Creake Hall. This forms a bond between Gwen & Hattie when they meet. Viv tries to explain this odd family to Gwen,

Well, I think all you really need to know about us as a family, Gwen, is that we’re... fragmented. We aren’t close. Never have been, never will be. Oh, I’m fond of Hattie, but she’s only a half-sister and I’m old enough to be her mother. Ours is a strange relationship... We’re an odd bunch of siblings altogether! The only thing we have in common is Rae. Our ambivalence towards her. And our concern for her... Alfie comes to see her once a year and we’re all very grateful to him for that. It keeps Rae going. He’s her obsession now – has been since the last breakdown. He’s her precious son. But she was never a mother to him. Never a proper mother to any of us, if truth be told.

Gwen becomes uneasy when she starts to realise that Alfie hasn’t told her the truth about his background. She notices things. The photo of a boy playing cricket left-handed when Alfie is right-handed. The scraps of letters she finds in Hattie’s scraps bag that Alfie supposedly wrote home from school. The details don’t add up & Alfie’s story becomes just one of the secrets hidden in the past of this family & this house.

Gwen’s life is also shaken by her meeting with Marek. Marek is working as the Holbrooke’s gardener. He’s known as Tyler because Rae always calls the gardener Tyler, just as the dogs are always Harris & Lewis, although the original Harris & Lewis died years before. Gwen is immediately attracted to Marek, a man with secrets of his own. Half-Polish, half-Scottish, Marek practiced as a psychiatrist until five years ago when he left his profession & became a gardener. Marek is strong, sensitive & he plays the cello like an angel. He’s also a good listener, the product of his former life as a therapist,

‘I’m not wise,’ he replied, ‘just a people-watcher. If you watch enough people and watch them carefully, patterns emerge. From those patterns you can glean a few truths about human behaviour. It’s not wisdom, just observation. So, no, it’s not exhausting, it’s fascinating. Sometimes satisfying. I don’t do it intentionally any more. In fact, my intention is not to do it, but it still happens. It’s who I am. What I am.’

Linda Gillard’s heroes are always gorgeous, sexy & irresistible. I’ve read all her novels & loved all her heroes but Marek is very special. He can even make old, grey pyjamas sexy. As Gwen & Marek fall into bed & begin to fall in love, Gwen realises that she has never really known Alfie at all. Gwen becomes the catalyst that exposes the lies & deceit at the heart of the Holbrooke family.

I think Linda Gillard is a wonderful writer of contemporary fiction. I’ve known Linda for several years now. We were both members of the same online reading group for a while & we’ve kept in touch via email ever since, so this is my disclaimer! House of Silence is a compulsively readable book. It’s a compelling story of family secrets & lies, set in a crumbling Elizabethan mansion at Christmas in the depths of a freezing Norfolk winter. The heroine is smart, independent & compassionate. The hero is, quite frankly, gorgeous. You would think that publishers would be falling over themselves to publish this book. Well, they’re not.

Linda Gillard has published three other novels. Emotional Geology & A Lifetime Burning were published by Transita & Star Gazing by Piatkus. All three novels are award winners (Star Gazing was shortlisted for the Romance Writers Association award for Best Romantic Novel in 2009) but Linda has been trying to get House of Silence published for over two years. So, Linda decided to take advantage of the move towards e-books & e-publish. 

House of Silence has just been released exclusively as an e-book for the Kindle through Amazon. The reasons for Linda’s decision to publish in this way will be revealed tomorrow in a special guest blog that Linda has written for I Prefer Reading. In the meantime, have a look at Linda’s website & at the Amazon US listing for House of Silence (if you're anywhere in the world except the UK). If you're in the UK, you can buy House of Silence at Amazon UK. If you have a Kindle or can read Kindle e-books on your e-reader or PC, please have a look at Linda's book on Amazon.

Sunday Poetry - Andrew Marvell

This week I've chosen a poem by Andrew Marvell (picture from here), one of my favourite poets. The Definition of Love is quoted in Linda Gillard's absorbing new novel, The Glass Guardian, which I reviewed yesterday.
I knew the first & last verses but it was a lovely opportunity to read the rest of the poem again. It's a difficult poem to understand but the melancholy of an impossible love is so beautifully described that I don't feel I have to understand all the metaphysical conceits.

My Love is of a birth as rare
    As 'tis, for object, strange and high ;
It was begotten by Despair,
    Upon Impossibility.

Magnanimous Despair alone
    Could show me so divine a thing,
Where feeble hope could ne'er have flown,
    But vainly flapped its tinsel wing.

And yet I quickly might arrive
    Where my extended soul is fixed ;
But Fate does iron wedges drive,
    And always crowds itself betwixt.

For Fate with jealous eye does see
    Two perfect loves, nor lets them close;
Their union would her ruin be,
    And her tyrannic power depose.

And therefore her decrees of steel
    Us as the distant poles have placed,
(Though Love's whole world on us doth wheel),
    Not by themselves to be embraced,

Unless the giddy heaven fall,
    And earth some new convulsion tear.
And, us to join, the world should all
    Be cramp'd into a planisphere.

As lines, so love's oblique, may well
    Themselves in every angle greet :
But ours, so truly parallel,
    Though infinite, can never meet.

Therefore the love which us doth bind,
    But Fate so enviously debars,
Is the conjunction of the mind,
    And opposition of the stars.

The Glass Guardian - Linda Gillard

The Glass Guardian is a very difficult book to review. It's almost impossible to review it without spoilers. The author herself admits this so I'm not just trying to avoid writing a review! I could just say "I loved it, trust me, it's unputdownable." but that would make for a very short post. I think I summarised the book pretty well in my teaser on Monday, the story is about love, loss, grief, music, WWI, Skye, family secrets, loneliness & a ghost who will break your heart.

Ruth has suffered more grief in a very short time than anyone should have to bear. She's lost her lover, her father & her aunt. Her Aunt Janet's death has hit her hard. Janet virtually brought Ruth up after her mother's death & the time she spent at Janet's house, Tigh na Linne, on Skye, represents Ruth's happiest memories. Ruth inherits the house & travels to Skye to decide what to do with her life. Her career as a television gardener has come to an end. Maybe Skye represents a new beginning?

Ruth begins working on the garden & looking through Janet's archive. She was a well-known composer & a Canadian musicologist, Athelstan Blake, wants to write her biography. Ruth's discoveries cause some concern. The manuscript of Janet's most famous work, In Memoriam, based on a poem by Andrew Marvell, is in three different hands. In Memoriam is very different from Janet's work before & after. Could she have appropriated someone else's work?

Ruth also finds a childhood friend still living on Skye. Tom & his mother had spent summer holidays in a rented house near Tigh na Linne & now, after his mother's death, Tom has returned, working as a general gardener & handyman. Ruth feels an immediate attraction to Tom & as he begins to help her get the house ready for a possible sale, Ruth begins to realise that a childhood friendship may not necessarily be the best basis for a relationship with a man she doesn't really know.

Ruth gradually realises that she's not alone at Tigh na Linne. The house is haunted & the ghost is not entirely a stranger to her. As winter envelops the house & Ruth's loneliness & confusion increase, it becomes apparent that her future is intimately entwined with her family's past & her passion for a man who died one hundred years ago.

Atmosphere is so very important in any supernatural story. Linda Gillard has created a completely believable world in The Glass Guardian that spans the real & the unreal, the past & the present. The best ghost stories take place in winter, illuminated by cosy fires & flickering candlelight. Skye is the perfect setting, the bare wintry landscape mirroring Ruth's despair & grief when she first arrives at Tigh na Linne. Ruth is a vulnerable & very believable character. She has few warm memories & all of them are bound up with Skye & her Aunt Janet. Her determination to discover all she can about Janet's life & the earlier family history is a fascinating part of the story.

I can't say too much about the romantic hero of the book as it would spoil the story. I'll just say that if you've loved the heroes of Linda's earlier books, you won't be disappointed. The love story is tender & romantic but tinged with the grief & regrets of an earlier age. If you don't know Linda's books, what are you waiting for?! Click on the link to my teaser post above, & you'll find links to my reviews of Linda's books & to her website.

As usual with Linda's novels, I read The Glass Guardian in almost one sitting, I couldn't wait to find out what happened next. I was completely caught up in Ruth's journey. If you enjoy a love story with atmosphere, intelligent, multi-faceted characters & a touch of the supernatural, I think you'll enjoy The Glass Guardian. You can buy Linda's books for the Kindle (or Kindle app) from Amazon in the UK & US.

Linda Gillard's new book available now!

I'm a big fan of Linda Gillard's intelligent, involving novels. Linda's new book, The Glass Guardian, has just been released as a Kindle e-book.

I downloaded The Glass Guardian yesterday morning, started reading in the afternoon & finished it late last night. I loved it & I'll be reviewing it properly at the weekend. The story involves love, loss, grief, music, WWI, Skye, family secrets, loneliness & a ghost who will break your heart.

 If, like me, you don't have a Kindle but do have an iPad or tablet, you can download a Kindle app & read it that way. You can download The Glass Guardian here or here. There are some tantalising extracts on Linda's website here.

I've reviewed Linda's last two books, Untying the Knot & House of Silence & Linda wrote an insightful guest post about her decision to e-publish her most recent books. If you enjoy a well-written story about real people (well, except for the ghost, obviously, although he seemed pretty real to me) that's totally involving, unputdownable in fact if you'll excuse the cliché, I think you will love The Glass Guardian.

Top Ten Books of 2011 - Fiction

My Top 10 Fiction books for the year range from 19th century sensation fiction to 20th century adventure & romance. There's no crime in there & I haven't read many crime novels at all this year. I haven't read much contemporary fiction at all &, as a result, there's very little that's new or modern in my Top 10. I also read most of these books on my e-reader but I don't think that means much except that my e-reader has allowed me to get hold of titles that were previously unavailable. Again, the titles are in no particular order & you can read my original reviews by clicking on the links.

The First Violin by Jessie Fothergill was a book I downloaded from Girlebooks after reading about the author in one of my Top 10 Non Fiction books of the year, Notable Women Authors of the Day. This is the story of a young woman who goes to Germany to study music & falls in love with a mysterious man who plays first violin in the orchestra. It also has a very sympathetic portrayal of a married woman in love with another man.

Another treat from Girlebooks was The War Workers by E M Delafield. The story of a group of women working in a supply depot in England during WWI. It was based on the author's own experiences & is very different to her popular Provincial Lady books.

I'm going to pop a whole series in here even though I've only read the first three books. The Julia Probyn series by Ann Bridge has been my find of the year. Thanks to blog reviews & the wonderful Bloomsbury Reader, I've been able to get hold of the whole series & will be working my way through them all. I've read A Lighthearted Quest, The Portuguese Escape & The Numbered Account so far. Adventure in exotic locations sums up the series. Julia is a delightful character - attractive, clever & determined, she gets to the bottom of any mystery.

Still Missing by Beth Gutcheon was another unputdownable book. I almost stopped breathing at one point. If I hadn't had to get up for work, I think I would have read this in one sitting. The story of an abducted child & his mother's determination to find him, this seemed an unlikely choice for Persephone. But, the experiences of Susan Selky, her reactions to the investigation & her friends & family are universal so it doesn't really matter when the book was written.

Linda Gillard's foray into self-published e-books has been one of my favourite success stories of the year. House of Silence & Untying the Knot are both compelling reads but I think House of Silence was my favourite of the two. As Linda describes it, Cold Comfort Farm meets Rebecca. Family secrets, a beautiful house in the country & a passionate love story, what more could you want?

Anne Hereford by Mrs Henry Wood was my sensation novel of the year. I read it with my 19th century book group & was supposed to stick to seven chapters a week. Well, that was never going to happen once I started! An orphan forced to earn her own living, a mysterious house & its occupants, a vengeful man & a mysterious wing of the house where Anne is excluded, all the ingredients of classic sensation.

Cousin Bette by Honore de Balzac was a novel of revenge, greed & lust & I loved every minute of it. A downtrodden poor relation gets her revenge on her family when she loses the only man she cares about. The downfall of the Hulots is inevitable but even Bette doesn't have it all her own way.

Parnassus on Wheels by Christopher Morley is a book-lover's delight. The story of a travelling bookshop & the man who owns it shows what can happen when a passion for books takes over your life.

Garthowen by Allen Raine was another 19th century book group choice & it was a delightful surprise. The story of a farming family in Wales, of two brothers in love with the same woman & the different paths they take in life was absorbing & there was an element of the supernatural that made the story different to anything else I've read.

O Douglas was the pseudonym of the sister of John Buchan & I've read several of her novels since discovering her through Greyladies. Penny Plain is the story of a family & the efforts of the eldest sister to keep the family together. Jean Jardine, her family & friends in Priorsford show what life was like in a small Scottish town just after WWI. I called the book charmingly comfortable & it is, perfect comfort reading with humour & romance.

Tomorrow, for something completely different, a list of books that I'm sure would have made my Top 10 - if I'd had time to read them.

Untying the Knot - Linda Gillard

I understood Magnus. I loved him. But in the end, I just couldn't live with him. A familiar story, you might think, but some friends and family saw things differently. Wives are meant to stand by their man - Army wives particularly. And I didn't. I walked away. I walked away from a war hero.

It was a long, at times agonising walk. It wasn't as if I was walking into the arms of a new love. I couldn't even persuade my teenage daughter to come with me. I felt like the loneliest woman in the world. I think I was only able to do it because Magnus understood why I was going. That was possible the hardest part. The lack of recriminations.

But Magnus knew all about The Long Walk. And feeling like the loneliest man in the world.

What do you do when you love someone but can no longer live with them? That's the dilemma facing Fay McGillivray when she leaves her husband, Magnus. Magnus has been a career soldier, working in bomb disposal. His postings have been to Northern Ireland, the Falklands, the Gulf. Fay lived with the tension of being an Army wife for years, wondering if she'd ever see Magnus again every time he went back on duty. Then, the call came that Fay had always dreaded, Magnus had been badly injured in a bomb blast in Derry. And it wasn't just the physical scars, it was the mental torment that tore them apart. Magnus suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The flashbacks, the nightmares, the blank spots where he doesn't remember where he is or what he's done.

As part of Magnus's recovery, he decides to buy Tullibardine Tower, a rundown ruin of a medieval tower house, & restore it. (The picture, courtesy of Linda, is of Balvaird, to give you an idea of what Tully would have looked like). Hard physical work & solitude begin to heal Magnus but they drive Fay to the edge. Two years in a caravan on a windswept building site is more than Fay can stand. Their daughter Emily stays with her father & Fay begins a new life.

Fay starts again. She begins working seriously as a textile artist & finds some success. Her relationship with Emily suffers but she has a warm friendship with Magnus's mother, Jessie, a woman with secrets of her own. Her relationships with men are pretty disastrous because she compares them all to Magnus - & no one can compare. Magnus is still at Tully Tower, living with Nina, a young teacher who longs for a commitment from Magnus that he's not able to give. When Magnus turns up at an exhibition of Fay's work, she has to confront her feelings about him, their marriage & the reasons why she left.

Untying the Knot is a complex novel. Fay & Magnus are both damaged people. They suffer from guilt - Magnus because he's still alive & because of the way his illness has impacted on his family. Fay because she left. She was there to look after Magnus & she couldn't do it. She was so busy trying to be the buffer between Magnus & Emily, making Magnus feel secure & shield Emily from the worst of Magnus's symptoms. In the process, she lost herself. But Fay & Magnus both discover that the physical & emotional knots that tie them together will take a lot of breaking.

This is a romantic novel in the sense that Fay & Magnus have a great love for each other & the reader wishes that they could find a way to be together. Their love is encapsulated in a letter Magnus wrote to Fay to be delivered in the event of his death. He kept it with him always as a talisman but didn't have it with him on the day of the Derry explosion. He finally reads the letter to Fay in one of the most moving scenes of the novel & that's the point where I thought there was a chance that they would be alright. But there's more than romance in the book. It's harrowing to read the descriptions of Magnus's PTSD, the terror he suffers, the flashbacks. It's also very funny. Poor Nina & her gorgon mother, pushing Magnus into an engagement that ends almost before it's begun when the engagement party descends into violent farce & recriminations.

Linda has published Untying the Knot as an e-book for the Kindle. Her previous novel, House of Silence was published as an e-book in April & has been a great success, selling over 12 000 copies. Linda has written about her experience of e-publishing on this blog here & also on Dani's blog, A Work in Progress. Dani has also reviewed Linda's earlier books, Emotional Geology & Star Gazing which I've read & loved in my pre-blogging days. There are links to lots more reviews of Untying the Knot at Linda's excellent webiste here. You can buy Untying the Knot for the Kindle at Amazon UK or Amazon US.

Linda Gillard on e-publishing House of Silence

I'm very pleased to hand over the blog today to Linda Gillard, author of House of Silence, which I reviewed yesterday. Linda has kindly agreed to write about the struggle she experienced trying to get her book accepted by print publishers & why she decided to go it alone & e-publish.

To paraphrase PG Wodehouse, “It’s never difficult to distinguish between an author with a grievance and a ray of sunshine.”

Two years ago I was dropped by my publisher. I was in good company. A lot of mid-list authors – some well-known names – were dropped as the recession bit deep. It seemed all editors wanted was “stunning début novels”, genre fiction and books by celebs. So-called “respectable sellers” like me were told our sales were disappointing and we were quietly dropped. Though I didn’t go that quietly. My third novel STAR GAZING was subsequently short-listed for three book awards and won one of them. (I think I hold the record for The Most Short-listed Author Without a Publisher.)

You’d think awards and short-listings would have made it easier for me to find a new publisher. Er, no. Publishers are ruled by the bottom line. Unless a book award stimulates big sales, it doesn’t count for much. It’s easier and cheaper to launch “stunning” début authors, offering in some cases risible advances or even no advance at all. (Some authors are now being offered just a share of the profits.)

After two years of my agent’s best efforts, we hadn’t found a publisher for my fourth novel, HOUSE OF SILENCE. Editors said the book would be hard to market because it belonged to no clear genre. Well, they had a point. HOUSE OF SILENCE is a country house mystery/family drama/rom-com/love story. Or to put it another way, COLD COMFORT FARM meets REBECCA.

What’s that? You’re salivating already? Your clicking finger is itchy?… I must now explain a fundamental difference between authors and publishers. (Brace yourselves. You might find the next bit upsetting.) Authors are trying to sell their books to readers. Publishers are trying to sell their books to retailers. Increasingly, in the UK this means supermarkets.

It was very frustrating. I had a considerable, worldwide following and my loyal fans had been begging for a new novel for three years. Meanwhile I’d kept myself in the public eye by writing guest blogs, chatting on book forums and – ahem – winning the odd book award. I had a ready-made market for a new book, but no editor wanted to publish it.

To be fair, a couple of editors really loved HoS, but they couldn’t get their marketing team on board. One enthusiastic editor backed off when she discovered my next book wasn’t the same. She was dismayed to discover I wrote one-offs, which are – you guessed it! – hard to market. (Versatility is apparently a publisher’s nightmare. In what other field of creative endeavour is that true?)

And then the e-book revolution happened. Kindle was the answer to a grumpy author’s prayer. I no longer cared if I made money, so long as I broke even. I wasn’t desperate to see my name on a book cover or on a shelf in Waterstones. (Been there, done that.) No, this was about letting a book find its readers, who I just knew would love the story and characters.

So, with my agent’s approval, I decided to publish HOUSE OF SILENCE myself on Amazon for Kindle. Believe it or not, selling the e-book at £1.90, I'll still make more per copy sold than I did from my paperbacks! I only need to sell 100 to go into profit. (I paid a professional designer to do a cover to – oh joy! – my specifications. So there are no headless people. No supermodel legs. No illegible fonts. Just a cover that makes a very clear statement about the content of the book. Spooky old mansion under a lowering sky. An oldie, but a goodie.)

Readers think authors are giving e-books away at silly prices, but the appalling irony is, we’re actually making more money this way. That’s why some established authors are moving away from mainstream to e-publishing. They can make more money and have artistic control. So authors are rejoicing. The revolution is here!

Personally, I have nothing to fear from the e-publishing revolution. I’m already acquiring new readers with HOUSE OF SILENCE and they’ll turn to my out-of-print back-list, so I’ll publish two more e-books, EMOTIONAL GEOLOGY and A LIFETIME BURNING on Kindle later this year. If editors don’t want my fifth novel (finished) or my sixth (work-in-progress), then I’ll put those on Kindle too. There are plenty of people waiting to read them.

But I know a lot of my readers would prefer a paper book – to be honest, so would I - so I’m looking into print-on-demand to see whether it could be economic to produce “limited edition” paperbacks for readers who don’t have access to e-books or who want to own “a proper book”. Those won’t come cheap, so it all depends how much readers are prepared to pay to own a paper book.

Some fear e-publishing heralds the death of paper books, but I think there could be a backlash. I suspect the Folio Society will do very nicely out of the e-publishing boom. We’ve seen fountain pens and letter writing make a big comeback. Music on vinyl has become popular again. I’m sure readers will continue to collect special, well-produced books for their shelves, while amassing e-books on their Kindles. It isn’t either/or. We can have both.

Thank you Linda for sharing a writer's experience of the world of publishing. Have a look at Linda's website here for more information on her work & check out House of Silence at Amazon.

House of Silence - Linda Gillard

Gwen Rowland is an independent, self-contained young woman in her mid twenties. Christened Guinevere by her drug-addicted mother because she was conceived at Glastonbury, Gwen’s life has deliberately taken the opposite track to that of her mother, aunts & uncles, all now dead from drink, drugs & misadventure. Gwen studied art, fell in love with textiles & works as a wardrobe assistant on film & TV sets. While working on a Regency drama, she meets Alfie Donovan, an actor who seems strangely familiar. Alfie’s childhood has been just as dysfunctional as Gwen’s. His mother, Rae Holbrooke, is the author of the wildly successful series of children’s books, Tom Dickon Harry. Alfie had been the inspiration for the boy in the books, a much-loved son after the birth of four daughters. A documentary on his mother’s work when he was young had just augmented the legend & led to a distance, both emotional & physical, between Alfie & his family. He only goes home, reluctantly, for Christmas.

Alfie & Gwen’s friendship becomes a relationship &, when Gwen asks if they’ll spend Christmas together, Alfie reluctantly invites her to his family home, Creake Hall. Gwen is entranced by Creake Hall, an Elizabethan mansion kept going by Viv & Hattie, Alfie’s two sisters who still live at home. They care for their mother, Rae, who has had a breakdown & now rarely leaves her room. Viv is in her fifties, works hard in the house & the garden. She seems to have no inner life at all, never having had a relationship of her own. Hattie has also been damaged by her past. She’s a little fey, a little fragile, but she is a wonderful seamstress & makes gorgeous quilts, using vintage fabrics from the trunks & wardrobes of Creake Hall. This forms a bond between Gwen & Hattie when they meet. Viv tries to explain this odd family to Gwen,

Well, I think all you really need to know about us as a family, Gwen, is that we’re... fragmented. We aren’t close. Never have been, never will be. Oh, I’m fond of Hattie, but she’s only a half-sister and I’m old enough to be her mother. Ours is a strange relationship... We’re an odd bunch of siblings altogether! The only thing we have in common is Rae. Our ambivalence towards her. And our concern for her... Alfie comes to see her once a year and we’re all very grateful to him for that. It keeps Rae going. He’s her obsession now – has been since the last breakdown. He’s her precious son. But she was never a mother to him. Never a proper mother to any of us, if truth be told.

Gwen becomes uneasy when she starts to realise that Alfie hasn’t told her the truth about his background. She notices things. The photo of a boy playing cricket left-handed when Alfie is right-handed. The scraps of letters she finds in Hattie’s scraps bag that Alfie supposedly wrote home from school. The details don’t add up & Alfie’s story becomes just one of the secrets hidden in the past of this family & this house.

Gwen’s life is also shaken by her meeting with Marek. Marek is working as the Holbrooke’s gardener. He’s known as Tyler because Rae always calls the gardener Tyler, just as the dogs are always Harris & Lewis, although the original Harris & Lewis died years before. Gwen Is immediately attracted to Marek, a man with secrets of his own. Half-Polish, half-Scottish, Marek practiced as a psychiatrist until five years ago when he left his profession & became a gardener. Marek is strong, sensitive & he plays the cello like an angel. He’s also a good listener, the product of his former life as a therapist,

‘I’m not wise,’ he replied, ‘just a people-watcher. If you watch enough people and watch them carefully, patterns emerge. From those patterns you can glean a few truths about human behaviour. It’s not wisdom, just observation. So, no, it’s not exhausting, it’s fascinating. Sometimes satisfying. I don’t do it intentionally any more. In fact, my intention is not to do it, but it still happens. It’s who I am. What I am.’

Linda Gillard’s heroes are always gorgeous, sexy & irresistible. I’ve read all her novels & loved all her heroes but Marek is very special. He can even make old, grey pyjamas sexy. As Gwen & Marek fall into bed & begin to fall in love, Gwen realises that she has never really known Alfie at all. Gwen becomes the catalyst that exposes the lies & deceit at the heart of the Holbrooke family.

I think Linda Gillard is a wonderful writer of contemporary fiction. I’ve known Linda for several years now. We were both members of the same online reading group for a while & we’ve kept in touch via email ever since, so this is my disclaimer! House of Silence is a compulsively readable book. It’s a compelling story of family secrets & lies, set in a crumbling Elizabethan mansion at Christmas in the depths of a freezing Norfolk winter. The heroine is smart, independent & compassionate. The hero is, quite frankly, gorgeous. You would think that publishers would be falling over themselves to publish this book. Well, they’re not. Linda Gillard has published three other novels.

Emotional Geology & A Lifetime Burning were published by Transita & Star Gazing by Piatkus. All three novels are award winners (Star Gazing was shortlisted for the Romance Writers Association award for Best Romantic Novel in 2009) but Linda has been trying to get House of Silence published for over two years. So, Linda decided to take advantage of the move towards e-books & e-publish.  

House of Silence has just been released exclusively as an e-book for the Kindle through Amazon. The reasons for Linda’s decision to publish in this way will be revealed tomorrow in a special guest blog that Linda has written for I Prefer Reading. In the meantime, have a look at Linda’s website & at the Amazon US listing for House of Silence (if you're anywhere in the world except the UK). If you're in the UK, you can buy House of Silence at Amazon UK. If you have a Kindle or can read Kindle e-books on your e-reader or PC, please have a look at Linda's book on Amazon.