It’s time for the third and last 2018 Historia HWA Crowns shortlist giveaway!
This time we’re giving all six novels on the Sharpe Books Gold Crown award shortlist to one winner.
Follow the instructions below to enter. You’ve got four chances to win and can enter using any or all of the options:
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More about the shortlisted books:
Blood’s Game by Angus Donald (Bonnier Zaffre)
London, Winter 1670.
Holcroft Blood has entered the employ of the Duke of Buckingham, one of the most powerful men in the kingdom after the king. It is here that his education really begins. With a gift for numbers and decoding ciphers, Holcroft soon proves invaluable to the Duke, but when he’s pushed into a betrayal he risks everything for revenge.
His father, Colonel Thomas Blood, has fallen on hard times. A man used to fighting, he lives by his wits and survives by whatever means necessary. When he’s asked to commit treason by stealing the crown jewels, he puts himself and his family in a dangerous situation – one that may end at the gallows.
As the machinations of powerful men plot to secure the country’s future, both father and son must learn what it is to survive in a more dangerous battlefield than war – the court of King Charles II.
Sugar Money by Jane Harris (Faber)
Martinique, 1765, and brothers Emile and Lucien are charged by their French master, Father Cleophas, with a mission.
They must return to Grenada, the island they once called home, and smuggle back the 42 slaves claimed by English invaders at the hospital plantation in Fort Royal.
While Lucien, barely in his teens, sees the trip as a great adventure, the older and worldlier Emile has no illusions about the dangers they will face. But with no choice other than to obey Cleophas – and sensing the possibility, however remote, of finding his first love Celeste – he sets out with his brother on this ‘reckless venture’.
The Valentine House by Emma Henderson (Sceptre)
In June 1914, Sir Anthony Valentine, a keen mountaineer, arrives with his family to spend the summer in their chalet, high in the French Alps. There, for the first time, fourteen-year-old foundling Mathilde starts work as one of the ‘uglies’ – village girls employed as servants and picked, it is believed, to ensure they don’t catch Sir Anthony’s roving eye.
For Mathilde it is the start of a life-long entanglement with les anglais – strange, exciting people, far removed from the hard grind of farming. Except she soon finds the Valentines are less carefree than they appear, with a curiously absent daughter no one talks about.
It will be decades – disrupted by war, accidents and a cruel betrayal – before Mathilde discovers the key to the mystery. And in 1976, the year Sir Anthony’s great-great grandson comes to visit, she must decide whether to use it.
To Die in Spring by Ralf Rothmann, translated by Shaun Whiteside (Picador)
Walter Urban and Friedrich ‘Fiete’ Caroli work side by side as hands on a dairy farm in northern Germany. By 1945, it seems the War’s worst atrocities are over.
When they are forced to ‘volunteer’ for the SS, they find themselves embroiled in a conflict which is drawing to a desperate, bloody close. Walter is put to work as a driver for a supply unit of the Waffen-SS, while Fiete is sent to the front. When the senseless bloodshed leads Fiete to desert, only to be captured and sentenced to death, the friends are reunited under catastrophic circumstances.
In a few days the war will be over, millions of innocents will be dead, and the survivors must find a way to live with its legacy.
The Last Hour by Harry Sidebottom (Bonnier Zaffre)
A lone figure stands silhouetted on top of the Mausoleum of Hadrian. Behind him, the sun is setting over the centre of the known world. Far below, the river is in full flood. The City of Rome lies spread out before him on the far bank. An enemy is closing in; he is cornered. He jumps.
Bruised and battered, he crawls out of the raging river. He is alone and unarmed, without money or friends, trapped in a deadly conspiracy at the heart of the Empire. The City Watch has orders to take him alive; other, more sinister, forces want him dead.
As the day dies, he realises he has only 24 hours to expose the conspirators, and save the leader of the world. If the Emperor dies, chaos and violence will ensue. If the Emperor dies, every single person he loves will die.
The Zoo by Christopher Wilson (Faber)
Yuri Zipit. A boy who’s had a bang on the head in a collision with a Moscow milk truck.
He has a kind face, makes friends easily, and likes to help. People want to tell him their secrets.
Including the Great Leader himself, who takes a shine to Yuri when he employs him for his natural talents.
In his new job, Yuri will witness it all – betrayals, body doubles, buffoonery. Who knew that a man could be in five places at once? That someone could break your nose as a sign of friendship? That people could be disinvented?
