Page Updated: 04/02/99
Gillian White
Gillian White
Veil of DarknessVeil of Darkness New11 Mar 99
The SleeperThe Sleeper
Unhallowed GroundUnhallowed Ground Newpbk 25 Mar 99
About the Author (Photo by John Alexabder)
Bibliography


New First British Edition Bantam (1999)
Veil of Darkness
'He, who killed me with his smile, had to die …
It was only a book, after all. A fat, old-fashioned-looking book, tucked away in the library of the Cornish hotel where Kirsty was hiding from her husband and all the violence and horror of her old life. The book seemed to offer her an escape, a new start, a different life for her and her children. For surely Kirsty deserved better - money, a decent house, security and friendship - and the book suddenly, miraculously, promised to give her all these things. Kirsty knew what had to be done, but she had to have help, and with her new-found friends at the hotel she had all the help she needed.
But slowly, insidiously, things started to go horribly wrong. The book seemed to take over all their lives, influencing their behaviour and leading them down bleak and terrible roads. Kirsty's past began to catch up with her, until she had to confront the worst of her fears in the darkness.
Once again Gillian White introduces us to a world in which the most ordinary of happenings turn into the stuff of nightmares.

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First British Edition Bantam (1998)
The Sleeper
See Review by Andrew Taylor
In a wintry seaside resort an old woman goes missing from her residential hotel for the elderly, the inappropriately named Happy Haven. And in a remote farmhouse not far away, the Moon family gathers for its traditional Christmas. Clover Moon, the farmer's wife, looks forward to the forthcoming festivities with quiet desperation and dread. She knows that her mother-in-law, Violet, regards her as an inadequate and unsuitable wife for her beloved only son, but when strange accidents start happening she begins to wonder whether Violet could actually be trying to kill her.
And what are the dark secrets in Violet's own childhood are coming back to haunt her? As gales and blizzards cut off the power and maroon the Christmas gathering, where did the body come from which is swept into the farmhouse cellar by the rising floodwater?
In Gillian White's dark and disturbing world, where nothing is quite as it seems, a mystery from the past becomes a terrifying ordeal in the present, and a traditional family Christmas turns into a nightmare. The Sleeper is a marvelously gripping and intense novel assuring her place amongst today's top writers of contemporary fiction.
Gillian White`s powerful story telling has led to comparisons with Barbara Vine, Fay Weldon, and Minette Waiters. She has even been called "Martin Amis with heart." (Glasgow Herald)
'A dark, disturbing tale' Sunday Telegraph
'What joy to discover an exciting new writer. This dark, spooky psychological thriller grabs you by the throat and won't let go… Not a book for those with high blood pressure' Val Hennessy, Woman's Journal
'An excursion to Barbara Vineland… Gillian White handles her gruesome ingredients with control and intelligence' Independent on Sunday
'A first-rate psychological thriller - perceptive, witty and full of suspense' Good Housekeeping
'Bitingly brilliant - complex, witty and sinsiter' Daily Mirror
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New Paperback - Corgi (1999)
Hardback
Bantam (1998)
Unhallowed Ground
See Review by John Boyles
Once upon a time, it is said, the devil walked in this valley…
On a snowbound February day, when Georgina first saw Furze Pen - a picturesque thatched cottage in a peaceful valley on Dartmoor - she thought it just the place to recover from the recent nightmare of her job in London. True, the cottage was cold and isolated, and the neighbours weird and strangely threatening. But Georgie needed to work out her life, and Furze Pen seemed as good a place as any until the terrors started.
There was the lone watcher on the hill - at first she thought it was a scarecrow, so stark and still was it standing - and then the unexplained fire, with the remains of a child's doll smouldering in the ashes. But there had never been a child at Furze Pen. And as the seasons turned and snow once again blocked off the remote valley, the frightening began in earnest…
In this truly terrifying novel Gillian White has created a world of dark secrets which hide behind the seemingly ordinary lives of her characters. It is a world which is scarier than most people's worst imaginings.
Acclaim for Gillian White's previous novels
'A novelist of the highest quality… an intense and vividly written novel which takes you by the throat and won't let go.' Sunday Independent
'A marvelously exciting writer. She tingles one's spine.' Jilly Cooper
'A rich and wonderful tale of domestic infamy.' Fay Weldon
'Bitingly brilliant - complex, witty and sinister.' Daily Mirror
'She has a remarkable empathy with a rich cast of characters. Her broad but sure brushstrokes are stingingly accurate.' Independent
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About The Author
Adopted as a baby bay a wealthy industrialist and his wife, Gillian White was brought up in a middle class home in Liverpool and sent to private school. But by the age of fifteen she had been expelled from three schools and sent to a home office approved school for three years, in need of care and protection. Searching for life's thrills and spills she found them, and more, on the streets of sixties London. After three unforgettable years locked up when she learned more about life than she has before or since, she trained to be a journalist and spent five years on a newspaper in Essex. During this time she married the paper's chief reporter and started her family of four.
She exchanged an inherited jade collection for a herd of Friesian cows after her father died, and bought a small farm in wildest Cornwall. This enterprise soon folded, as predicted, so Gillian and her family moved to Devon to farm near Dartington Hall School, which their four children attended.
The school closed down after a notorious national scandal and Gillian invited the remaining pupils and teachers to start a new school in her farm house. The school survives today and is thriving, but Gillian found the noise and over-population of her home hellish and was driven to her bedroom, and this is when and why she started to writes. In the ten years since then three of her novels, Rich Deceiver, The Beggar Bride and Mothertime have been adapted for BBC television, and The Sleeper is to follow soon.
Gillian says that the most pleasing part of being a novelist is that she is allowed to be eccentric! She lives in Totnes with her husband. Her children and grandchildren live nearby.

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Bibliography
N.B. dates and publishers in dark red indicate British First Editions. Dates and publishers in black indicate recent reprints.

  • Veil of Darkness (Bantam, 1999) New Mar 99
  • The Sleeper (Bantam, 1998)
  • Unhallowed Ground (Bantam, 1998) Bantam Sep 98 New Corgi Pbk Mar 99
  • Chain Reaction
  • Dog Boy
  • Grandfather's Footsteps
  • Mothertime
  • Nasty Habits
  • The Beggar Bride
  • The Crow Biddy
  • The Plague Stone
  • The Rich Deceiver

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