Lynda Rutledge Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Lynda Rutledge
Author Lynda Rutledge, who is a lifelong animal lover, has had the joy of snorkeling with endangered turtles, petting baby rhinos, hang-glided off of a tiny Swiss mountain, and strolling around with a tower of giraffes.

All of which during an eclectic freelance career writing nonfiction for some well-known organizations and publications as she won residencies and awards for her fiction work.

Lynda has been a professional writer for over two decades, working as a film and restaurant reviewer, copywriter, nonfiction author, book collaborator, travel writer, and freelance journalist. She’s written articles for international and national publications, like the Chicago Sun-Times, Houston Post, Chicago Tribune, Poets & Writers, and San Diego Union-Tribune, as well as many more with her travel pictures often appearing with her words.

She has also created book-length nonfiction some prominent organizations like the San Diego Zoo Global and Habitat for Humanity.

Over the years, however, her creative writing was the place that she dreamed and played, where she was able to write to learn what she knows. She has an MA in American literature, and an MFA in creative writing. Lynda has won residencies and awards from the Writers League of Texas, the Illinois Arts Council, Ragdale Foundation, Squaw Valley Community of Writers, Atlantic Center for the Arts, and Sewanee Writers Conference.

Early on, she was inspired by every Superman comic that was in her father’s drug store, and all the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boy mystery novel in her tiny town’s Carnegie Public Library. All of these lead her right to Huckleberry Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird before she started studying American Literature in college and beyond.

When she was growing up she was too busy attempting to break her small tomboy neck to have any desires to be a writer. During grade school, she wanted to be the very first female shortstop for the New York Yankees. During high school she wanted to play tennis while at Wimbledon. By the time she went to college, she wanted to be an artist, but found she was much better at being a failed artist.

The only thing she had done during through all of it was read. This is when it occurred to her that every book she was reading for the college literature courses she was taking, even all the other books she had read throughout her life was written by a real person, not by some literary god of some kind. So she enrolled in a creative writing course and got hooked.

Through the years, while making a living seeing the world as she worked with words, she kept playing with her words to create worlds too. This lead to the once-in-a-lifetime pleasure of putting her first novel on her shelf.

“Faith Bass Darling’s Last Garage Sale” was made into a 2019 major French film that stars Catherine Deneuve and it won the 2013 Writers’ League of Texas Book Award. “Brave New Wanda” won an Illinois Arts Council Award.

“Brave New Wanda”, Lynda’s debut novel, was released in the year 2004. Her work is from the historical and general fiction genres.

“Brave New Wanda” is the first stand alone novel and was released in the year 2004. Wanda Louise Ledbetter (who is white trash, mad, orphaned, too smart for her own good, and thirteen years old) eyeballs every guy that leaves the doctors’ entrance of the huge hospital in Dallas.

Perched on her mom’s rusted-out Cadillac, she has spent all afternoon there, ever since Harley (her stepdad) yelled out a secret no one was ever supposed to know. Wanda’s father was not her dad, and even her mom does not know his name, since she was made with donor sperm.

It made her grab her half-gone grandmother and her half-dog Wild Thing and go looking for her “real” dad. There is some brave new trouble waiting for her, and Brave New Wanda roars toward it in her mom’s junker Caddy.

“Faith Bass Darling’s Last Garage Sale” is the second stand alone novel and was released in the year 2012. One wealthy woman chooses to sell every one of her worldly possessions, she finds the secrets of her family’s past.

On the final day of the millennium, Faith Bass Darling the sassy and richest old lady living in Bass, Texas, decides she will have a garage sale. With some help from a few neighborhood boys, she lugs her countless Tiffany lamps, priceless Louis XV elephant clock, and all the other things she has in her nineteenth century mansion onto her sloping and long lawn. Why would a recluse for twenty years up and decide to sell her possessions off suddenly? Because God spoke to her and told her.

The folks in town grab up five generations of heirlooms. As a result, everybody coming to the sale, which includes Faith’s long-lost daughter, discover that these antiques don’t just hold some family secrets but they inspire some of life’s most important questions. What are we without our own memories? Do our possessions really possess us? Could there be life after death or can you have second chances on earth? Could Faith really be selling off that Tiffany lamp for a dollar?

“West With Giraffes” is the third stand alone novel and was released in the year 2021. Woodrow Wilson Nickel, at the age of 105, feels that his life is ebbing away. However once he learns that giraffes are going extinct, he finds he is recalling the unforgettable experience that he can’t take with him to his grave.

The year is 1938. The Great Depression has been lingering. Hitler threatens Europe, and some world-weary Americans are longing for wonder. They find it in a couple of giraffes that miraculously survive the hurricane as they cross the Atlantic. A twelve day road trip follows in a custom made truck to deliver Southern California’s very first giraffes to the San Diego Zoo. Young and rowdy from the Dust Bowl, Woodrow is behind the wheel.

Inspired by true events, the story weaves together fictional figures with some real-life ones, including the world’s very first female zoo director, a young female photographer hanging onto a secret, a crusty old guy with a past, and a story that is told before time runs out.