Linda Newbery

Linda Newbery has written widely for all ages. Her debut YA novel, Run with the Hare (1988), was about a sixth-form girl who becomes involved with an Animal Rights group (Linda is a passionate advocate for an animal welfare and a vegetarian since her twenties). In 2000, she moved to David Fickling Book with The Shell House, a young adult novel set both in the present and during the First World War. This was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize. Sisterland (2003), her next book, was also shortlisted for the Carnegie, and Set in Stone (2006), a Victorian Gothic mystery, won the Costa Children’s Book Prize.

Younger titles include Posy (Orchard, 2008), Lob (David Fickling, 2010), Barney The Boat Dog (Usborne, 2011) and the Cat Tales (Usborne) series. For middle-grade readers, Linda has written several novels including Nevermore (Orion, 2008), Treasure House (Orion, 2012) and The Brockenspectre (Jonathan Cape, 2014). For Usborne, she collaborated with Adele Geras and Ann Turnbull on 6 Chelsea Walk, six interlinked novels set in the same London house and following the stories of the girls who lived there at different periods.

Her first novel for adults, Quarter Past Two On A Wednesday Afternoon, (Doubleday, 2014; in paperback as Missing Rose) was a Radio 2 Book Club choice. She has written two short dyslexia-friendly novels for specialists Barrington Stoke, and is co-author with Yvonne Coppard of Writing Children’s Fiction: A Writers’ and Artists’ Companion (Bloomsbury).

Her latest novel is The Key To Flambards, published by David Fickling in October 2018, which the Telegraph praised for its ability to ‘quietly gets under the skin of her teenage characters with her unshowy, insightful prose’. She also recently had published This Book is Cruelty Free (Pavilion, 2021), a non-fiction guide to compassionate living drawing on her animal welfare campaigning of many years.

Linda enjoys writing and editing reviews for Writers Review, which she runs with her friends Adele Geras and Celia Rees.