From one of Canada's finest historical novelists, an intricately woven story of revenge, deception, love and redemption set against the turbulent social upheavals of 1860s Russia.

For Antonina, the wife of a wealthy Russian landowner, the world falls apart one cold spring afternoon when her husband takes her little boy, Misha, out riding. Set upon by kidnappers on horseback, the boy is stolen and the count wounded. Beautiful, musical and sheltered, Antonina is at first stunned and grief-stricken, then helpless as the count sickens and dies.

Desperate, and surrounded by serfs and servants unsettled by the collapse of the old order, Antonina turns to Grisha, the estate steward, for help in getting her son back. He is a man of relentless competence and ambition, and she is drawn to his strength, unaware that he is both driven and crippled by secrets he hoped he'd left behind him in the land of his birth, Siberia. In her search for her lost boy, Antonina faces betrayals that are literally murderous, and finds strengths she had no idea she possessed as she wanders the crumbling halls of Angelkov, pitting her wits against people turned erratic and cruel. In the end, her fate, and the fate of her son, hangs on the way love can sometimes transform even the deepest of hatreds.

Linda Holeman started writing in 1990 and has since then been prolific. She has written twelve works of fiction, for adults and young people. She has also written a novel for children, Frankie on the Run.

Linda's young adult novel Promise Song had roaring success in 1998: selected for the 1998 Books for the Teen Age by the New York Public Library, finalist for the Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction for Young People, short-listed by the McNally-Robinson Book of the Year Award, short-listed for the Ontario Library Association Red Maple Award, Choice of the Canadian Childrens Book Centre. Her first collection of stories for adults, Flying to Yellow, came out with Turnstone Press in 1996; one of the stories, `Turning the Worm,` was selected for the Journey Prize Anthology. To date, Linda's work has been translated into French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Greek, Polish, Russian, Serbian, Norwegian, Danish and Swedish.

She has travelled widely, and her past careers include a huge range -- from dairy worker to a decade of teaching. She lives in Toronto, Ontario.

Linda Holeman's profile page

Praise for The Lost Souls of Angelkov

“As enchanting as a Tchaikovsky ballet, as heady as vodka, The Lost Souls of Angelkov explores the painful period in Russian history when the country struggled to free itself from the bounds of ignorance and feudalism. It opens with a mesmerizing scene—the only child of a Russian count is kidnapped. Holeman explores the forbidden liaisons, treachery, sexual longing and revenge of the unhappy people who inhabit this isolated estate in a novel as intriguing as a Russian nesting doll.”
—Roberta Rich, author of The Midwife of Venice

Praise for Linda Holeman

“[Holeman’s] strength is a tremendous ability to create multiple plotlines and then weave them until they’re tied off in a satisfying knot.”
—The Globe and Mail

“Holeman is a master of dramatic tension and of seducing a reader’s attention.”
—The Globe and Mail