As the nights draw in and the ghosts seep from the walls, it’s time to huddle beneath your counterpane with a suitably creepy book. I asked seven of our most brilliantly chilling writers to name their favourite Gothic reads, both a classic and a modern Gothic novel. Prepare to be frightened, repulsed, entranced… Ruth Ware […]
The 2018 Crown awards – our judges
With the winners of the three 2018 HWA Crown awards announced on Wednesday, 7 November, this is a good time to say thank you to our judges, who’ve spent many weeks reading the longlists and choosing the shortlists and will have to make the hard choice of one winner in their Crown award category. The […]
HWA Sharpe Gold Crown shortlist giveaway!
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: 1. Sign up to […]
Blood’s Revolution by Angus Donald
In an age of treachery, everyone must pick a side . . . Newly returned from years of secret work in Paris, Lieutenant Holcroft Blood, a brilliant but unusual gunnery officer in His Majesty’s Ordnance, must now face King James II’s enemies on the gore-drenched battlefields of the British Isles. But after the victory at […]
The Lost Daughter by Gill Paul
1918 With the country they once ruled turned against them, the future of Russia’s imperial family hangs in the balance. When middle daughter Maria Romanova captivates two of the guards, it will lead to a fateful choice between right and wrong. Fifty-five years later . . . Val rushes to her father’s side when she […]
Stockholm Syndrome in Ekaterinburg?
In April 1918, the former Tsar Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra and their children were moved by their Bolshevik captors to a house in Ekaterinburg, owned by a merchant called Ipatiev. Three weeks later, the rest of the family followed. They would never again set foot outside its confines. The building was surrounded by a […]
Sagas: they’re not all trouble at t’mill
Now I’ve loved history for as long as I can remember. In fact, I think I fell in love with the past and everyone living there when I was a child and saw Roger Moore gallop over the hill on that white charger in Ivanhoe on our 12-inch black and white TV screen. I love […]
Conrad Monk and the Great Heathen Army by Edoardo Albert
Conrad is a monk, but he has become a monk through trickery and against his will. So, it is fair to say that his heart isn’t really in it. Conrad is also clever, charming, entirely self-serving, self-absorbed and almost completely without scruple — but in Anglo-Saxon England, when the Danish invaders come calling, those are […]