The Historical Writers’ Association (HWA) has great pleasure in revealing the 2025 Crown Awards shortlists, celebrating the best in historical writing, fiction and non-fiction, published during 2024–2025. There are three awards categories — HWA Gold Crown, HWA Non-fiction Crown, and HWA Debut Crown — and six shortlisted books in each category. The books shortlisted for […]
Historia interview: Carolyn Kirby
Carolyn Kirby, award-winning author of When We Fall and The Conviction Of Cora Burns. talks to AD Bergin about her new novel, Ravenglass. A sweeping adventure with a cross-dressing main character, Kit, it’s set against a backdrop of 18th-century social and industrial revolution, the lesser-known regional slave trade, and the Jacobite rising of 1745. AB: […]
Ravenglass by Carolyn Kirby
In 18th-century Whitehaven, Kit Ravenglass grows up in a house of secrets. A shameful mystery surrounds his mother’s death, and his formidable, newly rich father is gambling everything on shipping ventures. Kit takes solace in his beloved sister Fliss, and her sumptuous silks, although he knows better than to reveal his delight in feminine fashion. […]
The Blackbirds of St Giles by Lila Cain
It’s 1782, Daniel and his sister Pearl arrive in London with the world at their feet and their future assured. Having escaped a Jamaican sugar plantation, Daniel fought for the British in the American War of Independence and was rewarded with freedom and an inheritance. But the city is not a place for men like […]
Ship of Thieves by Douglas Skelton
Jonas Flynt’s stepmother, Mercy, has been abducted from Edinburgh and carried back to the West Indies by her former owner. Gideon Flynt, his father, has followed in hot pursuit, but Cassie, Jonas’s first love, knows Gideon is not the man he once was and appeals to Flynt for help. Naturally, he agrees. Against Colonel Nathaniel […]
Historical books for summer reading, 2025
We asked five well-loved authors to each suggest a couple of books they recommend for history lovers to enjoy reading over the summer. Their choices include novels about the eve of the Roman Conquest and the eve of the Norman one; non-fiction about the long history of Black people in Britain and the island’s first […]
The Case of the Mad Doctor by PD Lennon
On the island of Jamaica in 1772, people have started disappearing without trace. Have they run away, trying to start new lives in the British colony under assumed names, or is something darker afoot? Some of the missing had taken out large life insurance policies before leaving England, and so word of the vanishings reaches […]
The Art of a Lie by Laura Shepherd-Robinson
It’s London in 1749, and following the murder of her husband in a violent street robbery, Hannah Cole is struggling to keep her head above water. The Punchbowl and Pineapple, her confectionary shop on Piccadilly, is barely turning a profit, and her suppliers are conspiring to put her out of business. So when she learns […]