We are delighted to announce the Round 2 Category Winners in the competition:
Historical Fiction Ancient to 16th century
Jackanapes Rising by Samantha Seal (US)
Samantha Seal is an Associate Professor of English at the University of New Hampshire (US). At age 7, she fell in love with medieval England after reading Antonia Fraser’s Lives of the Kings and Queens of England. She earned a PhD in Medieval Studies at Yale University, and is the author of Father Chaucer: Generating Authority in The Canterbury Tales (Oxford University Press, 2019), a feminist study and reinterpretation of Chaucer’s masterpiece. Samantha lives on the New Hampshire Seacoast with her husband and two children. Jackanapes Rising is her first novel.
Jackanapes Rising: Alice Chaucer, granddaughter of the famous poet, wagers that after the English victory at Agincourt, a brilliant woman can rise above the restrictions of her birth upon the wartorn Continent. But even as Alice triumphs over court intrigue and battlefield alike, her passion for a disillusioned English soldier— and the emergence of Jeanne, a French peasant girl who claims to speak to God— forces Alice to reexamine her beliefs about her country, her ambition, and the price she’ll pay for freedom.
Historical Fiction 17th century to 19th century
On Æther Hill by Marian Matta (Australia)
Marian Matta is an award-winning author of short stories, a keen local historian, and the oldest student in a circus school. Her short story collection, Life, Bound, was published in 2020 by MidnightSun, Adelaide, and her stories have appeared in a dozen anthologies. She lives with her husband in Australia’s Dandenong Ranges, which provided the setting for her novel, On Æther Hill.
On Æther Hill: Ruth Mortlake has the determination and skills to become a doctor but is denied the opportunity by the patriarchal society of 19th-century Australia. Her quest, coupled with personal tragedy, will bring her to the brink of insanity, leaving her with nothing to rely on but her inner strength.
Historical Fiction 20th century
Rubble Women by Alix Christie (Germany)
Alix Christie is the author of the historical novels Gutenberg’s Apprentice, long-listed for the International Dublin Literary Prize, and The Shining Mountains, an Editor’s Choice title for Historical Novels Review. Her short fiction has won a Pushcart Prize and been a finalist for the Sunday Times (UK) Short Story Award. An American-Canadian writer and journalist, she is based in Berlin, where she also covers arts and books for The Economist.
Rubble Women: In May 1945, in the destroyed capital of the Third Reich, a group of unlikely women is thrown together to clear not just the mountains of rubble left by the Second World War—but what twelve years of dictatorship have done to their own souls.
Historical Romance
In the Thunder Air by Fran Brosan (UK)
Fran Brosan took up writing after a career in advertising, completing an MSt in Creative Writing at the University of Cambridge in 2023. She writes poetry, fiction and creative non-fiction, winning the 2022 Dark Skies Poetry Competition and the Florence Staniforth Prize for Short Fiction in 2023. She lives on the North Norfolk coast and is co-founder of the Norfolk Writers’ Salon. In the Thunder Air, Fran’s first novel, has also been longlisted for the Yeovil and Exeter novel prizes and shortlisted for the Caledonia Novel Award 2024.
In The Thunder Air is the story of Hannah Behrens, a young woman hoping to secure her future by marrying her childhood sweetheart, unaware that a devastating secret from her past is about to revealed, or that a terrible flood is building on the moors above Lynmouth, which could kill those she loves. Based on the Lynmouth Flood Disaster of 1952.
Historical Crime
Blood Feud: The Forester of Gravelinges by John Orton (UK)
John Orton was born in 1949 in South Shields, England and after reading Law at St. Edmund Hall, Oxford, took up a career as a solicitor in local government until his retirement following a nervous breakdown due to stress in the late 1990s. Tracing his family history led John into a growing interest in the social history of his home town, South Shields, and under his real name he has written and published four historical novels set in South Shields which have won many indie awards: The Five Stone Steps – a tale of a policeman’s life in 1920s’ South Shields; BLITZ Pams (police auxiliary messengers); A Chil Wind off the Tyne; and He Wears a Blue Bonnet.
John now lives in North Somerset, England with his wife and family. As part of a relaxation technique to divert negative thoughts John imagined himself back in Anglo Saxon times and constructed stories of life in the mystical Gordano Valley. He has now set down these tales as the Gordano Mysteries of which Blood Feud: the Forester of Gravelinges is the first.
Blood Feud: Seven year old Ecwine forswore the feud on his father’s severed head. As Cynewulf, the young forester, he is chased from his home by the Normans, and seeks the aid of Cadorric the Bard to become a warrior. Thus begins the first book of John Orton’s Gordano Mysteries set in the mystical Gordano Valley in Sumersaeton in the violent times of post conquest England.
Biographical Historical Fiction
The Warder’s Daughter by Sharon Barba (Australia)
Sharon Barba is an author and graduate historian from Perth, Western Australia. A two-time Cecil and Owen Prize winner, Sharon is passionate about bringing history to life through meticulously researched, evocative, and compelling fiction. With the encouragement of her husband, Don (beta-reader, marketer, and Cheerleader-in-Chief), Sharon loves to combine her research trips with travel, good food and wine, and the odd shopping expedition.
The Warder’s Daughter: When charismatic Fenian rebel, John Boyle O’Reilly, is transported to Western Australia in 1868, headstrong Jessie Woodman is in the mood for rebellion. Their forbidden affair will challenge not only Jessie’s deepest fears, but also her fraught relationship with John’s warder—her father. To set John free, Jessie must overcome her fears and determine how much she’s willing to sacrifice for the man she loves.
Historical Adventure
Spyissima by H. J. Reynolds (UK)
H.J. Reynolds is a copywriter who lives in York after working in Sussex, New Zealand and the Lake District. She grew up near Oliver Cromwell’s 1647 East Anglian headquarters and has always been fascinated by the British Civil Wars and their aftermath. As a student at the University of Cambridge, Helen learnt of the playwright Aphra Behn’s espionage mission for Charles II, sowing the seeds for Spyissima.
Spyissima: The Hague, 1652: The English resistance’s newest spy is desperate to strike back against the Parliamentarians who murdered her father and executed her king. But when her first mission ends in disaster, Lady Audette Miles must team up with an enigmatic Royalist agent to stop an assassination that could destroy their fragile cause forever.
Historical Fantasy, Timeslip, Alternate History
The Alchemy of Light by Lenore Hart (US)
Lenore Hart is the author of eight novels, and series editor of The Night Bazaar fantastic fiction anthologies. A Shirley Jackson Award finalist, she’s published short fiction in magazines and literary journals, and has received grants, awards, and fellowships in the United States and Europe. Her work has been featured on Voice of America and the PBS-TV series Writer to Writer. She’s fiction faculty at The Ossabaw Island Writers Retreat. Her latest book is The Night Bazaar London.
The Alchemy of Light: In rural 1880s Missouri, Homer Dagget – traveling Daguerreotypist of the dead – rescues a mute girl whose parents were gruesomely murdered. But the killer follows them East, and their paths collide during a controversial death-chair experiment at Thomas Edison’s New Jersey laboratories. There, in a shocking climax, science and magic converge in a fantastical transformation.
Children’s & Young Adult Historical Fiction
Lucy’s Movie: The Prisoner’s Promise by Kimberly Cross Teter (US)
Kimberly Cross Teter is a former teacher and bookseller who writes books for young readers, hoping to engage their imagination while offering a fresh perspective on universal themes. Her first novel, Isabella’s Libretto, is about a young cellist playing with the famed all-female orchestra of the Ospedale della Pietà in Venice, Italy. Her current work is set in Texas in 1945. In addition to the Midsouth chapter of HNS, Kim is also active in the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. A native Texan, she lives now in the rolling hills of Middle Tennessee with her husband and crazy yellow Labrador.
Lucy’s Movie: A sixth-grader with creative flair desperately wants the approval of her friends and family, but also wants to stand up for what’s right. When Italian prisoners of war arrive in her Texas town at the end of World War II to paint murals in the local church, her resolve is sorely tested. Can Lucy finds a way to satisfy her heart AND her conscience?
Huge congratulations to you all.
These nine entries will now go forward to the final judges’ panel to decide on the overall winner to be announced at the HNS UK 2024 conference at Dartington Hall on 7 September 2024.
The Historical Novel Society UK 2024 conference 