Linden Woods

Product Description

A story of love and heartbreak in the Second World War - With the country preparing for war, beautiful Linden Woods finds employment as a secretary at a Black Country steelworks, where she befriends the charismatic and liberated Penny, daughter of wealthy steel magnate Charles Burgayne. Charles sons, Edward and Hugh, are soon vying for Lindens attention, but with vastly different methods. Linden grows to love one brother and despise the other, with devastating consequences...

From Booklist
If 18-year-old Linden Woods were a typical English working-class girl, her life would be predetermined. She would leave school, get a menial job, marry, and quit work to have children. But two thing conspire against this scenario: Linden isn't typical, and World War II is on the horizon. Ambitious, smart, and beautiful, Linden is hired as a typist at Blower's Green Steelworks but meets and soon falls in love with handsome Edward Burgayne, the son of the steelworks owner. She is nervous that the Burgayne family will view her as an interloper, but only Edward's elder brother, Hugh, poses a problem. He claims Linden is a gold digger, but secretly, he wants her for himself. When Edward is called up to fight in the war, Hugh sees his chance to claim Linden and plots a terrible scheme to get her—a scheme that nearly destroys the entire Burgayne family. Taylor's latest romance has all the right ingredients—a beautiful heroine, a handsome hero, an evil villain, passion, romance, wartime tragedy—to guarantee it an audience of historical-romance devotees. Melton, Emily
About the Author

Michael Taylor has had a varied career as journalist, academic and central banker. His numerous publications include Men versus the State: Herbert Spencer and Late Victorian Individualism (OUP, 2006) and contributions to the New Dictionary of National Biography.