The Linford Collection: Books 1-3

Three gripping novels from award-winning author, Liz Harris.

A sweeping saga set between the wars, each novel tells the story of one of the Linfords, a family simmering with secrets, schemes and lies.

THE DARK HORIZON – ROBERT & LILY'S STORY

Oxfordshire, 1919. The instant that Lily Brown and Robert Linford set eyes on each other, they fall in love. The instant that Robert’s father, Joseph, chairman of the family’s successful building company, sets eyes on Lily, he feels a deep distrust of her. Convinced that his new daughter-in-law is a gold-digger, and that Robert’s feelings are a youthful infatuation he’d come to regret, Joseph resolves to rid his family of Lily, and he doesn’t care how he does it. As Robert and Lily are torn apart, the Linford family is told a lie that will have devastating consequences for years to come.

THE FLAME WITHIN – THOMAS & ALICE'S STORY

London, 1923. Alice Linford stares up at the large Victorian house set back from the road—the house that’s to be her new home. But it isn’t her house. It belongs to a Mrs Violet Osborne, who, three weeks earlier, was no more than a name at the end of an advertisement for a companion that had caught her eye. Mrs Osborne lived in Belsize Park, not far from Kentish Town, the place where Alice had lived with her husband, Thomas. Thomas Linford—the man Alice still loves, but through her own stupidity, lost. The man for whom she’s left the small mill town in Lancashire where she was born for the second time, and returned to London to fight for.

THE LENGTHENING SHADOW – FRANZ & DOROTHY'S STORY

When Dorothy Linford marries former German internee, Franz Hartmann, at the end of WWI, she’s cast out by her father, Joseph, and she and Franz go to live in a village in south-west Germany, where they have a daughter and son. Unknown to her father, Dorothy is in contact with her sister, Nellie, in England, and her cousin, Louisa, a truculent adolescent whose actions finally force her to face a dramatic moment of truth. Life in Germany in the early 1930s darkens, and as things that had seemed harmless gradually assume a threatening undertone, Dorothy and Franz struggle to protect themselves and their children in the increasingly dangerous times.

“Each volume in the Linford series focuses on different characters. They can all be read independently, and readers of The Lengthening Shadow, familiar with the saga, will appreciate how Harris has avoided spoilers for The Dark Horizon (book one) and The Flame Within (book two) – this is very skillfully done!” (Historical Novel Society Review)



Genre: Historical