Joan Lingard is the author of fourteen novels for adults and more than forty books for children. She was born in Edinburgh, where she now lives, but grew up in Belfast. Both cities have provided settings for her work, as have her husband's backgrounds of Latvia and Canada.

She currently spends three months of the year in Spain.

ACROSS THE BARRICADES, the second title in her best-selling Ulster quintet, won the prestigious W. German award for children's literature, the Buxtedhuder Bulle, in 1986. TUG OF WAR was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal in 1989, and won the Federation of Children's Book Groups Award, the Sheffield Book Award and the Lancashire Children's Book Club of the Year Award. She has won Scottish Arts Council Awards for her novel AFTER COLETTE and for her children's book TOM AND THE TREE HOUSE.

In 1998 she was awarded the M.B.E. for Services to Children's Literature.

The renowned children's author successfully turns her hand to adult literary fiction. It is 1920 and the beautiful village of Yegen, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, awakens to a new year. The wild flowers, poppies, lavender, rosemary and thyme fill the air with their enchanting scent as the setting sun streaks vivid bands of pink and purple across the sky.

For years Yegen's small community has continued in its own quiet way, knowing little of the outside world. But the arrival of Gerald Brenan, the British writer, and his string of artistic and literary visitors, brings a new excitement to the sultry town.

But Gerald is not the only new arrival; in a dusty stable a child is born. With her dark hair and wide, soot-black eyes, the young Encarnita was as beautiful as she was serious. Growing up in Yegen, with the reflective Virginia Woolf, witty Lytton Strachey and other Bloomsbury group friends of Don Geraldo visiting the village regularly, Encarnita learned many stories.

But after the passing of eighty years and many miles, there is still one tale left to tell... Exquisitely written, ENCARNITA'S JOURNEY is a tale as beautiful as its Spanish setting, with touches of true insight into the lives of its literati cast and dark-eyed heroine. Accompany Encarnita from Yegen to Scotland's bustling capital, and be filled with wonder every step of the way.