Gillian Linscott Books In Order

Publication Order of Birdie Linnet Books

Publication Order of Liberty Lane Books

Publication Order of Nell Bray Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Anthologies

Gillian Linscott is a British historical fiction and mystery author best known as the author of the Nell Bray series of novels. Linscott was born in Windsor, England in 1944 to shoe shop manager Thomas Snow and shop assistant Muriel Rosaline. As a teenager, she went to Somerville College in Oxford from where she graduated in 1966. In 1988 she got married to writer Anthony Joseph Vincent Geraghty. After she graduated from college, she found a job as a journalist and worked for the likes of the “Guardian” and the “BBC” among several other media outlets. During the 1970s she had many assignments reporting on the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland even though she also did a lot of reporting on parliament. In time, she turned to crime fiction writing and it was not long before she went full time after publishing her debut novel “A Healthy Body” in 1984. Her popular “Nell Bray” novels that feature a suffragette detective as the lead have won the Best International Historical Mystery Novel at the Herodotus Award and been the winner of the Ellis Peters/CWA Historical Dagger Award in 2000. Linscott has also written the Victorian Era “Liberty Lane” series as Caro Peacock. When she is not writing her novels, she is an avid gardener and has a garden with rows of lettuce in her back yard.

Linscott always wanted to be a writer though she was hesitant about it. She came from a stable and loving family but there was no one to encourage her in her literary pursuits and hence becoming a published author did not seem like a viable path. Still, she read a lot while she was a child and would read child fiction from the likes of Enid Blyton and adventure novels such as “Kidnapped” by RL Stevenson. Crime books were an early revelation and she would soon graduate to Conan Doyle and Raymond Chandler, who she still reads from time to time even as an adult. Apart from adventure and mysteries, she was also a huge fan of historical fiction. Gillian remembers her great uncle sitting on his armchair and she on the floor, while he regaled them with stories from his days as a horse cab driver in Berkshire, England. He had the privilege to be in attendance at the funeral of Queen Victoria at Windsor in 1901. The city where he used to work as a cabbie was a fashionable area on the banks of the Thames. Her uncle told her stories of fashionable showgirls from the Edwardian stage who often visited London to enjoy the river’s boating. He would be the one that would drive many of them to meet their lovers on the boat. All of these would later provide fertile ground and inspiration for the stories and novels that she wrote.

Gillian Linscott’s “Sister Beneath the Sheet” is a fascinating story in the Nell Bray series set in Biarritz at the turn of the century. It is at this time that Topaz Brown the celebrated courtesan wrote a will leaving money to her favored house help and about 50,000 pounds to a British suffrage group named the Women’s Social. But then she had been found dead believed to have committed suicide just a day after revising her will. Her brother is determined to stop the implementation of the will on the grounds that she was not in a proper state of mind when she wrote it. Tansy who was her maid is convinced that Brown was murdered and believes a rival prostitute might have been involved in the homicide. Nell Bray a Union member steps into the maelstrom as she had been sent to collect the legacy by Emmeline Pankhurst. Nell is recently released from jail after serving time for participating in an illegal demonstration and throwing a brick at 10 Downing Street. The smart and feisty Nell intends to get to the bottom of the mystery and proves herself a capable sleuth, even when there are tragic consequences due to the interference of a renegade suffragist.

“Hanging on the Wire” by Gillian Scott is the horrifying story that tells of what happens when an assassin finally becomes successful. Nell has always been a protector of the woman’s suffrage movement through it is her amateur sleuthing that has got people talking. First, she had found out what had happened in the homicide of one of the foremost courtesans in France and now Jenny Chesney her old friend is asking for her help. They are in the middle of the chaos of World War One and Jenny got a job at the Nantgarrew military hospital as a Freudian specialist. Mrs. Monica Minter, a colleague at the office has been jealous of her work and has been conducting petty acts of sabotage just to disprove every theory Jenny comes up with. Things get complicated when someone takes a shot at one of the patients and Nell thinks Minter in the hospital may be involved. She approves of the war but does not approve of attempted murder as a way to settle scores. At Nantgarrew she learns that bizarre behavior is common and Mrs. Minter’s schemes are not going to end any time soon. She is not the only one as there is a soldier who has a stockpile of revolvers and grenades under his bed. The doctors don’t care about the bizarre behaviors and happenings on base except for weird dreams about anything from sex to sausages. Nell is baffled by how things have deteriorated until an assassin kills someone in horrifying circumstances.

Gillian Linscott’s “Stage Fright” opens to the irrepressible and indomitable Nell Bray still riding high after solving two murders. It is only yesterday that she was in Holloway Prison and her success tales have become legend attracting the attention of the likes of George Bernard Shaw. Shaw is the biggest playwright in England during the time and he comes to Nell with a complicated case – his lead protagonist is in danger and he wants her to make sure that she gets to the stage without getting killed. Bella Flanagan is supposed to work on the reworked Cinderella classic that Shaw has made into a scathing attack on the centuries-old marital law regulations of England. The plot has a lot of resemblance to the life Flanagan the lead. Just like the character in the play, she is in a loveless marriage and her husband only seems to be interested in her wealth. Lord Penwardine would not give her freedom and would rather she be confined to the stage. Sabotage and threats have been commonplace during the rehearsals and it is only when Nell steps in that there are no hitches and play finally opens. But her detractors are still doing everything including heckling and rioting to get the play stopped due to jealousy. But could her husband resort to murder?