There is a place I go to when I walk, a bare outcrop of rock to which one tree clings obliquely. The tree is wind-warped, encrusted with pale grey lichen, its gnarled branches bent and splayed at unnatural angles, like broken limbs. I love that tree. I love its quirky ugliness, its tenacity, its solitariness. My tree is a survivor and what that survival has cost is eloquently graven into every straining bough.
After one of our gales Calum checks slates on the roof and I walk up the hill to my rock, my tree. When I see that it still stands, leaning at its familiar rakish angle, my heart leaps. The day will come no doubt when that tree yields but until that time I will honour my tree and its improbable affirmation of life.
~~~
About the Author
Linda Gillard lives on the Black Isle in the Scottish Highlands and has been an actress, journalist and teacher. She’s the author of seven novels, including STAR GAZING which was short-listed in 2009 for Romantic Novel of the Year and The Robin Jenkins Literary Award (for writing that promotes the Scottish landscape.)
HOUSE OF SILENCE became a Kindle bestseller and was selected by Amazon as one of their Top Ten Best of 2011 in the Indie Author category.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank
My daughter Amy Glover for her unmerciful, but always constructive criticism.
Roger Sanderson for his advice on mountaineering. (Any errors are mine, not Roger’s.)
My agent Tina Betts and publishers Nikki Read and Giles Lewis for believing in this book.
My writers’ e-group for their enthusiasm and support, with special thanks to Sheree, Elie and Wendy.
Carcanet Press Ltd. For permission to quote from Sorley MacLean’s poem An Cuilithion/The Cuillin printed in FROM WOOD TO RIDGE (Carcanet/Birlinn 1999)
~~~
Also by Linda Gillard...
HOUSE OF SILENCE
Orphaned by drink, drugs and rock’n’roll, Gwen Rowland is invited to spend Christmas at her boyfriend Alfie's family home, Creake Hall - a ramshackle Tudor manor in Norfolk. Soon after she arrives, Gwen senses something isn't quite right. Alfie acts strangely towards his family and is reluctant to talk about the past. His mother, a celebrated children's author, keeps to her room, living in a twilight world, unable to distinguish between past and present, fact and fiction.
When Gwen discovers fragments of forgotten family letters sewn into an old patchwork quilt, she starts to piece together the jigsaw of the past and realises there's more to the family history than she's been told. It seems there are things people don’t want her to know. And one of those people is Alfie…
REVIEWS…
"HOUSE OF SILENCE is one of those books you'll put everything else on hold for."
CORNFLOWER BOOKS blog
“The family turns out to have more secrets than the Pentagon. I enjoyed every minute of this book. It's written with considerable panache and humour, despite the fact that there’s a very serious underlying thread to the book - how do we, as individuals and families, deal with tragedy?”
Kathleen Jones, author of MARGARET FORSTER: A LIFE IN BOOKS
~
STAR GAZING
Short-listed for Romantic Novel of the Year 2009 and The Robin Jenkins Literary Award, the UK’s first environmental book award.
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, a successful novelist. Marianne's passionate nature finds 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’s 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”?...
REVIEWS…
“A joy to read from the first page to the last... Romantic and quirky and beautifully written.” www.LoveReading.co.uk
“A thinking woman’s romance that lingers in the memory long after the last page has been turned.”
New York Journal of Books
“A read for diehard romantics with a bent towards environmental issues.”
Aberdeen Press & Journal
~
UNTYING THE KNOT
Marrying a war hero was a big mistake. So was divorcing him.
A wife is meant to stand by her man. Especially an army wife. But Fay didn’t. She walked away - from Magnus, her traumatised war hero husband and from the home he was restoring: Tullibardine Tower, a ruined 16th-century tower house on a Perthshire hillside.
Now their daughter Emily is getting married. But she’s marrying someone she shouldn’t.
And so is Magnus...
REVIEWS…
“This author is funny, smart, sensitive and has a great feel for romance… Highly recommended!”
RHAPSODYINBOOKS blog
"Another deeply moving and skilfully executed novel by Linda Gillard… Once again, she had me committed to her characters and caught up in their lives from the first few pages, then weeping for joy at the end.”
AWESOME INDIES book blog
“Daring to write characters like this is brave. And it works. Beautifully.”
Indie Ebook Review
~
THE GLASS GUARDIAN
Ruth Travers has lost a lover, both parents and her job. Now she thinks she might be losing her mind.
When death strikes again, Ruth finds herself the owner of a dilapidated Victorian house on the Isle of Skye: Tigh na Linne, the summer home she shared as a child with her beloved Aunt Janet, the woman she’d regarded as a mother. As Ruth prepares to put the old house up for sale, she discovers she’s not the only occupant. Worse, she suspects she might be falling in love. With a man who died almost a hundred years ago…
REVIEWS…
“As usual with Gillard's novels, I read THE GLASS GUARDIAN in almost one sitting. The story is about love, loss, grief, music, World War I, Skye, family secrets, loneliness and a ghost who will break your heart.”
I PREFER READING book blog
“A captivating story, dealing with passionate love and tragic death... An old, crumbling house, snow falling all around, and a handsome ghost... Curling up with this book on a dark night would be perfect!”
THE LITTLE READER LIBRARY book blog
“The ending? Beautiful and completely satisfying. I cried tears of joy.”
AWESOME INDIES book blog
~
CAULDSTANE
A gothic novel in the romantic suspense tradition of Daphne du Maurier and Victoria Holt.
When ghostwriter Jenny Ryan is summoned to the Scottish Highlands by Sholto MacNab - retired adventurer and Laird of Cauldstane Castle - she’s prepared for travellers’ tales, but not the MacNabs’ violent and tragic history.
Lust, betrayal and murder have blighted family fortunes for generations, together with an ancient curse. As members of the family confide their sins and their secrets, Jenny learns why Cauldstane’s uncertain future divides father and sons.
But someone resents Jenny’s presence. Someone thinks she’s getting too close to Alec MacNab - swordsmith, widower and heir to Cauldstane. Someone will stop at nothing until Jenny has been driven away. Or driven mad.
“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.” Especially a dead woman.
REVIEWS…
"Absolutely modern and gloriously gothic... There's a remote and decrepit Scottish castle, (with a curse attached, of course), a wicked stepmother, a feisty but emotionally vulnerable heroine, more handsome men than you can shake a sword at, and a very dangerous ghost."
Kathleen Jones, author of MARGARET FORSTER: A LIFE IN BOOKS
"The castle is a character in its own right, as evocative as Manderley, and a perfect setting for this gothic tale of love and the struggle between good and evil."
I PREFER READING book blog
~~~
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br /> Connect With Linda
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LindaGillardAuthor
Website: http://www.lindagillard.co.uk
Smashwords author page: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/LindaGillard
Emotional Geology Page 25