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news and features
HWA Crown Award Winners 2025
The winners are:Gold: The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry (Canongate Books)Non-fiction: Moederland by Cato Pedder (John Murray)Debut: A Poisoner’s Tale by Cathryn Kemp (Bantam) Read more about the books and the shortlisted titles on... more
Dorothy Dunnett / HWA Short Story Competition 2025
The winning and shortlisted stories! Huge congratulations to our winner, Sean Lusk, our Highly Commended writers, Alex Edwards and Joseph Dragovich, and the writers of our shortlisted stories, Liz Kershaw, Sopie Lenoir, and Elaine... more
Dorothy Dunnett Society / HWA Short Story Competition Longlist
Many congratulations to the writers of our longlisted stories. The shortlist and winning stories will be announced on Friday 3 October! We ended up with nearly 150 stories this year and the standard was extremely high. Many thanks to our first... moreauthor showcase
Martin Daley
Martin was born in Carlisle. He writes both fiction and non-fiction and his works range from subjects as varied as nineteenth century detective novels to mid-twentieth century sporting history. In 2010 he created Inspector Cornelius Armstrong, who carries out his police work against a backdrop of Edwardian Carlisle. With the publication of the first Inspector Armstrong Casebook, Martin became a member of the Crime Writers’ Association. He is... more
Jill Bray
Jill lives on the Island of Guernsey now, but is originally from Yorkshire. She has a love of early medieval history which led her to study the subject at Huddersfield College in the 1980's. Working in Leeds at the time, meant that she had access to the Yorkshire Archaeological Society on their late night opening and following research, she wondered what the lives of the people she read about were actually like. This started a love of writing... more
Angela M Sims
Angela is a writer of “compelling and extensively researched” historical fiction. Now retired, her professional background included 27yrs in clinical cardiology and 15yrs as a university lecturer, but her keen interest in the art and history of the Italian Renaissance sowed the seed for her first book, The Rose of Florence (2023), followed by Hiding the Flame (2025). She lives in Cardiff, UK, visiting Florence whenever she... more
Tony Aston
Tony Aston is a former Scotland Yard detective and counter-espionage specialist within the UK Defence Industry. His first book, "Redditch - From the Chip Shop to the Batchley", published in May 2022, tells of his life growing up during the 1950s and 60s in the Midlands town at a time when it was trying to repair, rebuild and reinvent itself after WWII. He has a great interest in 20th century civil and military history, demonstrated in his first,... more
