Linda Barlow

Linda Ruth Barlow is an American author of contemporary romance, historical romance, general fiction, thrillers, and romantic suspense. She has won numerous industry awards, including the 1989 Romance Writers of America RITA Award for Best Single Title Romance for her novel Leaves of Fortune, Romantic Times' Best New Historical Novelist of 1986, and a Lifetime Achievement award from Romantic Times. She is also vice president of Monash Research, an IT consultant firm.

Biography Barlow was born in Boston, MA and in addition to writing books, she has taught university courses, co-founded a software company, and served as an expert witness on search engine technology. Her books have been translated into approximately 20 foreign languages. She contributed two essays to Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women, a collection of essays on the romance industry edited by Jayne Ann Krentz. This book won the Susan Koppelman Award for Excellence in Feminist Studies of Popular Culture and American Culture in 1993.

Barlow earned a BA from Wheaton College and an MA from Boston College, where she was a doctoral fellow in English literature for several years. Since then, she held served on the faculty of Boston College and Middle East Technical University (Orta Dogu Teknik Universitisi) in Ankara, Turkey. Barlow did graduate work in biology at Harvard University, where she was a teaching assistant for Comparative Functional Anatomy of the Vertebrates at the Harvard Extension School. In addition, she taught Neurobiology and Anatomy and Physiology at Cambridge College. Barlow has also given workshops and seminars all over the United States.

Inaugural winner of the Romantic Times Career Achievement Best Author in Contemporary Novel Award Romantic Times named Intimate Betrayal and Thicker Than Water as Top Picks. Publishers Weekly said, "Past and present collide predictably in a competent, though not especially exciting novel... The most compelling, evocative scenes take place in India... Otherwise, this is a largely overheated brew of incest, New Age mysticism and dark deeds." However, The New York Times listed it as a noteworthy book in 1990 and the original reviewer said "it should be subtitled 'Something for Everyone.' The novel has 'channeling and crystals for the New Age crowd. And for mainstream readers, there is money, lots of it, as well as power plays, revenge, death and even eating disorders.'"