Linda Taylor worked for the Civil Service in London and Angola, and as a vice-consul in Sri Lanka before teaching in Japan. On her return, she read English at Oxford. When her first novel, Reading Between the Lines, was published in 1998 it immediately became a Sunday Times Top Ten bestseller; her second novel, Going Against the Grain, was published in 1999 to great acclaim, followed by Beating About the Bush, Rising to the Occasion and, most recently, Shooting at the Stars. She lives in Kent.