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HWA / Sharpe Books Unpublished Novel Award LONGLIST ANNOUNCED

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HWA / Sharpe Books Unpublished Novel Award

LONGLIST

We were delighted at the number of excellent manuscripts we received, though the high quality of the entries made the selection of a longlist extremely challenging!

If the longlist were to include every manuscript we read which is both publishable and deserving of a wide readership, it would be twice as long.

The manuscripts which reached the longlist were the ones which are not just brilliantly written, but are brilliantly structured too. They also have in their subject matter, style or setting something fresh and vital about them.

So, without further ado, the longlisted books are:

Richard Bryson – Five Dark Moons

November 1943, the eve of the ill-fated Battle of Berlin. To escape Hell, reluctant Lancaster pilot Bob Smith must stand centre-stage amid the clash of duty and disillusion, sacrifice and survival.

Maggie Humm – Talland House

Talland House follows the artist character Lily Briscoe from Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse between 1900 and 1919. It is set at a dramatic moment in British history but is also one woman’s intense emotional journey.

Paula Lennon – The Adventures of Isaiah Ollenu Esquire

1772: ISAIAH OLLENU is an Englishman of African ancestry and a forthright law clerk. His career takes an unwelcome diversion when he is sent to Jamaica accompanied by RUBEN ASHBY, a pious insurance agent to find missing, possibly murdered, clients and their jewels.

Tim Oliver – Across The Line

May 1940: Following a baptism of fire on the frontline, Lieutenant Arthur Scottsdale is summoned to Section D, part of the Secret Intelligence Service and agrees to the task of rescuing two French scientists trapped behind enemy lines with details of top-secret radar technology.

Anna Pietrzkiewicz – Behold the Man

1899: Sent away from Krakow after a scandal, LIDKA FELDMANN, a half-Polish, half-Jewish student, arrives in a remote village. Instead of finding a rural idyll, she gets drawn into mysterious and dangerous events joining forces with a priest to solve a murder.

Baptiste Pinson – Sword Maidens

7th century Scandinavia: Mist, the shy thrall of a Dane jarl must prove she is worth more alive than dead to the Sword-Maidens, a crew of women and men led by the charismatic Kara Halfdansdottir.

Felicity J Reid – Guinevere

5th century: In the modern day Gwen returns to scatter her father’s ashes on Glastonbury Tor, and finds a gold ring lying in the church tower on its summit. Picking up the ring, she’s transported back to the fifth century and finds Merlin who is convinced it is her destiny to become the Queen Guinevere of legend.

HJ Reynolds – Hushed Peacocks

1653: The exiled, orphaned and destitute LADY LAURETTE MILES is recruited by Royalist spymaster and plunged into a life of fear and intrigue as an undercover operative.

Maggie Richell Davies – The Servant

1765: Fourteen-year-old HANNAH must go where she’s sent, despite her instincts screaming danger. Why does disgraced aristocrat, WILLIAM CHALKE, have a locked room in his house? What’s sold at the auctions taking place behind closed doors?

Mandy Rymill – Uxorious

1874: When vicar EDMUND WILBRAHAM is found dead, AGNES, his sister, accuses his new wife CAROLINE of murdering him.  Is Agnes telling the truth? UXORIOUS moves between Caroline’s trial for her husband’s murder and the events leading up to his death.

Peter Sandham – Porphyry and Ash

1452: JOHN GRANT is a Scottish mercenary, newly arrived in Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine empire, which is under threat from the Ottoman Turks. ANNA NOTARAS is the teenage daughter of Constantinople’s richest man. Previously betrothed to EMPEROR CONSTANTINE, she nurses a grudge against him for breaking the engagement off and an ambition to still be empress one day.

Susan Stokes-Chapman – Infelice

August 1820: SARAH WALKER returns to the family home and  finds that in her absence a new lodger has moved in. WILLIAM HAZLITT shows a marked interest in her and Sarah, having been starved of affection for so long unwittingly encourages his attentions, for he is like no man she has ever met: sharply intelligent, passionate in his beliefs and, above all, a writer who might teach her something of the world.

The final results will be announced in the second week of March.

Huge congratulations to all the longlisted writers.

HWA / Sharpe Books Unpublished Novel Award 2020

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The judging for the award is in its final stages, and the longlist and shortlists will be announced before the end of February 2020. We have been delighted and impressed by the quality of work submitted and the judges have some tough decisions to make. All entrants will be contacted by email with details of the longlist just before the official announcement, and consultations will begin as soon as the final result is in.

HWA Crown Awards 2018: The Winners

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Historian and Broadcaster Kate Williams presented the Historical Writers’ Association Crown Awards for 2018 at a party at Swedenborg Hall in Bloomsbury. The winner of the Debut Crown for 2018 was Estoril by Dejan Tiago-Stankovic, the Non-Fiction Crown was awarded to Leanda de Lisle for White King: Charles I – Traitor, Martyr, Murderer and the winner of the Sharpe Books HWA Gold Crown for Historical Fiction was Ralf Rothman’s To Die in Spring, superbly translated by Shaun Whiteside who was present to receive the award on Rothman’s behalf.

The winners of each prize receives a thousand pounds as well as the award itself. ‘Each winner was part of a very strong short and longlist,’ Chair of the HWA, Imogen Robertson said, ‘which demonstrated the breadth and vigour of Historical Writing published in the UK in the last year. We are sure that all lovers of history will find something to delight them in these lists from adventure, epic and literary fiction of the highest quality to important popular works of non-fiction which shed fresh light on familiar figures or carve out and claim important new territory all of their own.’

The evening also saw Canadian writer, Jennifer Falkner from Ottowa, carrying off first and second prize in the anonymously judged HWA / Dorothy Dunnett short story competition for unpublished short stories and the announcement of a new prize for unpublished novels in collaboration with Sharpe Books.

The Debut Crown judges said of Estoril by Dejan Tiago-Stankovic ‘Assured, surprising and complex, this poignant story of divided loyalties among the extraordinary residents of a hotel in neutral Portugal during the Second World War reads like a rediscovered classic.’

The judges of the Non-fiction crown called Leanda de Lisle: White King: Charles I – Traitor, Martyr, Murderer  ‘a quietly revolutionary biography of a man obscured by layers of myth, prejudice and misunderstanding,’ and added ‘Drawing on new sources, and interrogating familiar material in a new way, de Lisle emphasises Charles’s humanity, his weaknesses and his strengths, while restoring the women in his life to centre stage.’

The Judges of the Sharpe Books Gold Crown said  To Die in Spring by Ralf Rothmann translated by Shaun Whiteside was ‘beautifully written, affecting and intensely readable – a powerful novel that works on many levels.’ On a separate note, the judges praised the translation as being one of the best they had read.

The HWA would like to thank our sponsors, Sharpe Books, and The History Press for making the evening such a success and particular thanks to our judges who gave up a great deal of their time reading and debating the huge number of submissions with such generosity and enthusiasm. The Non-Fiction Crown judges were: M J Carter, Saul David, Jason Goodwin and Lucy Santos, the Debut Crown was judged by Ayo Onatade and Susan Heads, chaired by Ben Fergusson and the Sharpe Books HWA Gold Crown was judged by Rukhsana Ahmad, Elizabeth Buchan, Robin Carter, Richard Foreman, Tony Riches and Imogen Robertson, chaired by Elizabeth Fremantle.

 

HWA Crowns 2018: The Shortlists

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HWA Debut Crown Shortlist 2018
The Optickal Illusion by Rachel Halliburton

Populated by a cast of celebrated eighteenth-century painters jockeying for fame and fortune, this delightful tale of high art and low fraud is a celebration of the alchemy of painting and the dangers of unbridled ambition.

The Sealwoman’s Gift by Sally Magnusson

In this remarkable family saga, Ásta’s journey from Iceland to Algiers and back again turns her — and our — understanding of the seventeenth-century world upside down. It is a tale that is sometimes humorous, often terrifying, but always deeply humane.

The Lightkeeper’s Daughters by Jean E. Pendziwol

A moving inter-generational story of a family living on the Great Lakes. The narrative back-and-forth from the present to the past is beautifully controlled and the revelation of the secrets at the heart of the novel perfectly timed.

The Woolgrower’s Companion by Joy Rhoades

The harsh landscape, racial tension and overt sexism of war-time Australia is wonderfully evoked in this absorbing story of a woman trying to save her sprawling sheep farm in the face of greed, small-town pettiness and family tragedy.

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

Beginning with a man waking up confused and frightened in an Agatha-Christie-esque house party where everyone seems to know his name, this feverish whodunnit is a uniquely gripping and mind-bending read.

Estoril by Dejan Tiago-Stankovic

Assured, surprising and complex, this poignant story of divided loyalties among the extraordinary residents of a hotel in neutral Portugal during the Second World War reads like a rediscovered classic.

HWA Non-Fiction Crown Shortlist 2018

White King: Charles I – Traitor, Martyr, Murderer by Leanda de Lisle is a quietly revolutionary biography of a man obscured by layers of myth, prejudice and misunderstanding. Drawing on new sources, and interrogating familiar material in a new way, de Lisle emphasises Charles’s humanity, his weaknesses and his strengths, while restoring the women in his life to centre stage.

The Fear and the Freedom: How the Second World War Changed Us by Keith Lowe

A brilliant exploration of the impact – geopolitical, social, economic, philosophical and psychological – that World War Two has had on the modern world. Told through a series of personal stories that are emblematical of a broader theme, Lowe’s book is a masterpiece of historical inquiry: painstakingly researched, cleverly constructed and elegantly written.

Pie and Mash Down the Roman Road by Melanie McGrath Dodging all the cliches, McGrath does a remarkable job of excavating the lives of the owners, employees and customers of G. Kelly’s Pie and Mash Shop, to produce a fresh and constantly surprising portrait of working-class life in the East End over a century, from 1917 to 2017. A triumph of acute, empathetic but unsentimental observation, her crisp prose throws light on uncelebrated lives with thrilling forensic detail.

A History of Rome in Seven Sackings by Matthew Kneale

With a combination of enormous verve and admirable scholarship novelist Matthew Kneale alights on seven crux moments in Rome’s 2500-year history, and through them tells a terrific story of destruction, resilience and transformation, while drawing a series of vivid and seductive portraits—social, political, cultural, architectural, even olefactory— of the city over time. Popular history at its absolute best.

The Debatable Land: The Lost World Between Scotland and England by Graham Robb

Part investigation, part travel book and part personal quest this book is a remarkable tale of a piece of land on the border between Scotland and England. Graham Robb’s book is a treat for the general reader and historical scholar alike.

Six Minutes in May: How Churchill Unexpectedly Became Prime Minister by Nicholas Shakespeare: revisits the disastrous Norway campaign of 1940, our first engagement with Hitler’s war machine, to ask how the architect of the debacle nonetheless emerged as Britain’s wartime Prime Minister. As the action moves back from the frozen north to London political circles, Shakespeare draws on his novelistic background to provide gripping studies of the main protagonists, Halifax, Chamberlain and Churchill.

HWA Sharpe Books Gold Crown Shortlist 2018

Blood’s Game by Angus Donald

A gripping page-turner, full of Restoration swagger, with an intriguing hero and brilliant action. Compulsively readable.

Sugar Money by Jane Harris

A novel with fantastic energy and verve – a bold and ambitious book that is both a vivid recreation of a neglected period of history and a gripping adventure story in the tradition of Robert Louis Stevenson. Powerful narration, atmospheric and immersive.

The Valentine House by Emma Henderson

A subtle, soulful, beautifully written period drama with an irresistible central character. A compelling, humorous, powerful and rewarding read.

To Die in Spring Ralf Rothmann trans by Shaun Whiteside

Beautifully written, affecting and intensely readable – a powerful novel that works on many levels. On a separate note, the judges praised the translation as being one of the best they had read.

The Last Hour by Harry Sidebottom

An energetic and gripping thriller, a great shot of adrenaline, and hugely entertaining. Does something fresh and appealing with the genre.

The Zoo by Christopher Wilson

Highly original, this fascinating novel swings from satire to horror to tragedy. Bittersweet, vital and commendably different.

The HWA Crowns Longlist 2018

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The HWA Crowns Longlist

Thirty six remarkable books will fight it out in the race for the 2018 HWA Crowns, as the longlists for the HWA Crowns 2018 are announced.

“Historical Writing is an important part of our culture and also a vital way of understanding that culture,” says HWA chair Imogen Robertson. “ It enriches, entertains and illuminates and we should be profoundly grateful to the writers and publishers who continue to produce such outstanding work. This year we have read a remarkable range of excellent books and are proud to present thirty-six of the very best.”

Split over three awards – the HWA Non Fiction Crown, HWA Debut Crown and HWA Sharpe Book’s Gold Crown the longlists are as follows:

HWA Sharpe Books Gold Crown

To Die in Spring Ralf Rothmann, translated by Shaun Whiteside (Picador)

Beautifully written, affecting and intensely readable – a powerful novel that works on many levels. On a separate note, the judges praised the translation as being one of the best they had read.

Sugar Money Jane Harris (Faber)

A novel with fantastic energy and verve – a bold and ambitious book that is both a vivid recreation of a neglected period of history and a gripping adventure story in the tradition of Robert Louis Stevenson. Powerful narration, atmospheric and immersive.

The Last Hour Harry Sidebottom (Bonnier Zaffre)

An energetic and gripping thriller, a great shot of adrenaline, and hugely entertaining. Does something fresh and appealing with the genre.

Vanishing of Audrey Wilde Eve Chase (Michael Joseph)

Strikingly good writing, impeccable scene-setting, accomplished suspense and fantastic imagery.

The Zoo Christopher Wilson (Faber)

Highly original, this fascinating novel swings from satire to horror to tragedy. Bittersweet, vital and commendably different.

Pilgrim’s War Michael Jecks (Simon & Schuster)

With a great cast of characters, this impeccably researched and highly entertaining novel is a terrific start to a new series.

The Western Wind Samantha Harvey (Johnathan Cape)

Original and beautifully written, this is a medieval detective story mixed with philosophy, featuring a fascinating protagonist and an immersive world.

Prussian Blue Philip Kerr (Quercus)

A vivid and gripping crime story that weaves in fascinating insights into its period. The penultimate instalment in a much-loved and admired series.

Blood’s Game Angus Donald (Bonnier Zaffre)

A gripping page-turner, full of Restoration swagger, with an intriguing hero and brilliant action. Compulsively readable.

The Coffin Path Katherine Clements (Headline)

Atmospheric, textured, engrossing and spooky, The Coffin Path is an intense and immersive read and a tremendous evocation of its period, with a hugely appealing protagonist at its heart.

The Tyrant’s Shadow Antonia Senior (Corvus)

A relevant and important period of history brought vividly to life. Dark ironies mix with a moving personal story. A novel of real power, written with great style and empathy.

The Valentine House Emma Henderson (Sceptre)

A subtle, soulful, beautifully written period drama with an irresistible central character. A compelling, humorous, powerful and rewarding read.

Elizabeth Fremantle, Chair of judges said:

“Judging a book prize with such a broad remit is a daunting prospect, as it means comparing novels with strikingly different aims, from the subtle and literary, to pure adventure, and everything in between. But in the end an exceptional novel stands out as such, whatever its aim, and it has been a true pleasure to discover a number of outstanding novels, all brilliantly executed, touching and thought provoking in their own way.”

HWA Non Fiction Crown

Houses of Power: The Places that Shapes the Tudor World Simon Thurley (Bantam Press)
An important book, informed by brilliant original scholarship and research into the construction and function of royal Tudor palaces. It goes far beyond the confines of architectural history, though, to open up a new vista into the formal as well as the intimate world of the Tudor monarchy.

White King: Charles I – Traitor, Martyr, Murderer Leanda de Lisle (Chatto & Windus)
A quietly revolutionary biography of a man obscured by layers of myth, prejudice and misunderstanding. Drawing on new sources, and interrogating familiar material in a new way, de Lisle emphasises Charles’s humanity, his weaknesses and his strengths, while restoring the women in his life to centre stage.

Six Minutes in May: How Churchill Unexpectedly Became Prime Minister Nicholas Shakespeare (Harvill Secker)
This revisits the disastrous Norway campaign of 1940, our first engagement with Hitler’s war machine, to ask how the architect of the debacle nonetheless emerged as Britain’s wartime Prime Minister. As the action moves back from the frozen north to London political circles, Shakespeare draws on his novelistic background to provide gripping studies of the main protagonists, Halifax, Chamberlain and Churchill.

Napoleon: The Spirit of the Age Michael Broers (Faber & Faber)
The second of three volumes of what promises to be the best life of Napoleon Bonaparte yet written, it covers just five years – 1805 to 1810 – as an extraordinary run of military victories left the Emperor of the French master of the continent but more isolated politically and emotionally than ever before. The end result is a very human portrait of a brilliant but flawed individual, and one that showcases the author’s deep knowledge, elegant prose and compelling argument.

The Fear and the Freedom: How the Second World War Changed Us Keith Lowe (Viking)
A brilliant exploration of the impact – geopolitical, social, economic, philosophical and psychological – that World War Two has had on the modern world. Told through a series of personal stories that are emblematical of a broader theme, Lowe’s book is a masterpiece of historical inquiry: painstakingly researched, cleverly constructed and elegantly written.

The Women Who Flew for Hitler: A True Story of Soaring Ambition And Searing Rivalry Clare Mulley (Macmillan)
Fast-paced, beautifully structured dual biography of Hanna Reitsch and Melitta von Stauffenberg, two ambitious women from very different backgrounds who defied convention to become pioneering test pilots in Second World War Germany. Reitsch remained a committed Nazi to the end; Stauffenberg supported the failed July Plot against Hitler’s life. Mulley tells the full story of these two distinctive women in gripping detail for the first time.

Lady Fanshawe’s Receipt Book: An Englishwoman’s Life During the Civil War Lucy Moore (Atlantic Books)
Beautifully constructed and engagingly told Lady Fanshawe’s Receipt Book gives us the Civil War from the perspective of the domestic. Using Anne Fanshawe’s memoirs and her receipt book – a remarkable survival in itself– Lucy Moore plunges us into mid-seventeenth century Britain in this fascinating book.

Black Tudors: The Untold Story Hardcover Miranda Kaufmann
(One world Publications)
Kaufmann presents the reader with ten vivid true-life stories of black Britons revealing their lives and experiences while filing in some serious historical blanks in Tudor history.

The Debatable Land: The Lost World Between Scotland and England Graham Robb (Picador)
Part investigation, part travel book and part personal quest this book is a remarkable tale of a piece of land on the border between Scotland and England. Graham Robb’s book is a treat for the general reader and historical scholar alike.

Hearts And Minds: The Untold Story of the Great Pilgrimage and How Women Won the Vote Jane Robinson (Doubleday)
Hearts and Minds tells the story of the Great Pilgrimage: a six-week protest march in 1913. Robinson tells the stories of these remarkable women and the sacrifices they made skilfully weaving in the wider issues behind it and the extraordinary change these marchers helped to effect.

A History of Rome in Seven Sackings Matthew Kneale (Atlantic Books)
With a combination of enormous verve and admirable scholarship novelist Matthew Kneale alights on seven crux moments in Rome’s 2500-year history, and through them tells a terrific story of destruction, resilience and transformation, while drawing a series of vivid and seductive portraits—social, political, cultural, architectural, even olefactory— of the city over time. Popular history at its absolute best.

Pie and Mash Down the Roman Road Melanie McGrath (Two Roads)
Dodging all the cliches, McGrath does a remarkable job of excavating the lives of the owners, employees and customers of G. Kelly’s Pie and Mash Shop, to produce a fresh and constantly surprising portrait of working-class life in the East End over a century, from 1917 to 2017. A triumph of acute, empathetic but unsentimental observation, her crisp prose throws light on uncelebrated lives with thrilling forensic detail.

HWA Debut Crown

The Wicked Cometh Laura Carlin (Hodder & Stoughton)

A pitch-perfect Victorian sensation novel, jam packed with dark London streets, missing children, mysterious diaries and ghastly secrets.

Estoril Dejan Tiago-Stankovic (Apollo)

Assured, surprising and complex, this poignant story of divided loyalties among the extraordinary residents of a hotel in neutral Portugal during the Second World War reads like a rediscovered classic.

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle Stuart Turton (Raven Books)

Beginning with a man waking up confused and frightened in an Agatha-Christie-esque house party where everyone seems to know his name, this feverish whodunnit is a uniquely gripping and mind-bending read.

The Sealwoman’s Gift Sally Magnusson (Two Roads)

In this remarkable family saga, Ásta’s journey from Iceland to Algiers and back again turns her — and our — understanding of the seventeenth-century world upside down. It is a tale that is sometimes humorous, often terrifying, but always deeply humane.

The Lightkeeper’s Daughters Jean E. Pendziwol (W&N)

A moving inter-generational story of a family living on the Great Lakes. The narrative back-and-forth from the present to the past is beautifully controlled and the revelation of the secrets at the heart of the novel perfectly timed.

The Woolgrower’s Companion Joy Rhoades (Chatto & Windus)

The harsh landscape, racial tension and overt sexism of war-time Australia is wonderfully evoked in this absorbing story of a woman trying to save her sprawling sheep farm in the face of greed, small-town pettiness and family tragedy.

The Parentations Kate Mayfield (Point Blank)

A deliciously uncanny novel that wonderfully evokes eighteenth-century Iceland and Victorian London as it unspools a twisted tale of giants, mysterious earthquakes, centuries’ old sisters and the search for eternal life.

Deposed David Barbaree (Twenty7)

Reading like the Man in the Iron Mask on the Tiber, this historical thriller sets your pulse racing, while brilliantly evoking the violence and intrigue of Ancient Rome.

The Optickal Illusion Rachel Halliburton (Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd)

Populated by a cast of celebrated eighteenth-century painters jockeying for fame and fortune, this delightful tale of high art and low fraud is a celebration of the alchemy of painting and the dangers of unbridled ambition.

The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock Imogen Hermes Gowar (Harvill Secker)

A rich cast of characters are thrown together by the discovery of what just might be a real mermaid, in this genuinely fresh take on eighteenth-century London, filled with powerful women, hapless businessmen and vivid set pieces.

Bitter Francesca Jakobi (W&N)

A psychologically penetrating portrait of a mother struggling to come to terms with her past, while trying to rebuild a broken relationship with her adult son. Jakobi convincingly reveals the complex ways in which exile and abandonment echo down the decades.

The Magician’s Lie Greer Macallister (Legend Press)

A wonderful cat-and-mouse thriller set in a carnivalesque world of magicians and exotic dancers, in which nothing is quite what it seems. It’s thrilling opening sets the tone for a pacy and suspenseful read.

Ben Fergusson, Chair of judges said: “It was a huge honour to be asked to chair the HWA Debut Crown 2018. Susan Heads, Ayo Onatade and I were astounded by the quality of submissions that we received and enchanted by a list that swept us off to Iceland, Ancient Rome, wartime Portugal, Victorian and Georgian London, Algeria, Australia and beyond. There were many wonderful titles that, heartbreakingly, didn’t make the longlist, meaning that these twelve books genuinely represent an exceptional selection of debut novels that we would heartily recommend to all lovers of historical fiction.”

For further information, please contact Lucy Santos, administrator for the Historical Writers’ Association at admin@historicalwriters.org or on 07950226999.

Notes for editors:

The HWA Debut Crown has been running since 2012. The HWA Non-Fiction Crown and the HWA Gold Crown were first launched in 2017.

The HWA Sharpe Books Gold Crown Judges are:

Elizabeth Fremantle – Chair

Richard Foreman

Elizabeth Buchan

Tony Riches

Robin Carter

Imogen Robertson

Rukhsana Ahmad

The HWA Non Fiction Crown Judges are:

Miranda Carter

Jason Goodwin

Saul David

Lucy Santos

The HWA Debut Crown Judges are:

Ben Fergusson

Ayo Onatade

Susan Heads

About the HWA:

The Historical Writers’ Association are authors, publishers and agents of historical writing, both fiction and non-fiction. The HWA was created to provide professional and social support to our members, and to created opportunities online and in person for our members to meet with readers, fellow writers and enthusiasts for all things historical. Our chair is the author Imogen Robertson, who took over from founding chair Manda Scott in 2015.

www.historicalwriters.org

About Sharpe Books

Sharpe Books is a leading independent publisher of historical fiction. Although it mainly publishes established authors – such as Michael Jecks, Peter Tonkin and Sarah Gristwood – Sharpe Books are actively seeking submissions from new authors. Sharpe Books also specialise in publishing backlist titles and literary estates. Please visit their website for further info. http://sharpebooks.com/