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Sarah Hilary

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Sarah Hilary is a UK crime novelist and former bookseller. Hilary was born in Cheshire[1] but later moved to the South East to study for a First Class Honours Degree in History of Ideas. She won the Fish Criminally Short Histories Prize[2] in 2008 for her story, Fall River, in August 1892.[3] In 2012, she was awarded the Cheshire Prize for Literature.[citation needed]

Her debut novel, Someone Else's Skin, was published in 2014 and was a Richard & Judy Book Club pick in the same year.[citation needed] It won the 2015 Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award,[4] and, in 2016, it was selected as one of the titles for World Book Night in the UK.[5] It has also been a Silver Falchion and Macavity Award finalist in the US.[6]

Her second book, No Other Darkness, was shortlisted for a Barry Award.[citation needed]

Sarah Hilary's grandparents and mother in a Japanese prison camp in Borneo, 1944

Hilary has written about her family history, most notably in "My Mother was Emperor Hirohito's Poster Child" for The Guardian, March 2014. Her mother and grandparents were prisoners of the Japanese in Batu Lintang camp where her grandfather, Stanley George Hill, died in 1945.[7] Hilary wrote about her grandmother's courage in the camp for the Dangerous Women Project in 2017.[8]

She wrote the introduction for Virago's new editions of three books by Patricia Highsmith republished in 2016: The Two Faces of January, This Sweet Sickness, and People Who Knock on the Door. Hilary talks about Highsmith's legacy for today's crime writers in A Gift for Killing, June 2016.[citation needed]

Her first standalone, Fragile, published on 10 June 2021, is partly inspired by the motives of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca.[9]

In 2023, she published Black Thorn, a crime novel centered around six deaths at a seaside housing development in Cornwall.[10] The Guardian described it as "a creepy and atmospheric tale" that is "beautifully and sensitively written."[11]

Hilary is autistic.[12]

Works

Marnie Rome series

Title Publisher Published ISBN
Someone Else's Skin Headline 2014 978-1472207685
No Other Darkness Headline 2015 978-1472207722
Tastes Like Fear Headline 2016 978-1472236838
Quieter Than Killing Headline 2017 978-1472241108
Come and Find Me Headline 2018 978-1472248961
Never Be Broken Headline 2019 978-1472249005

References

  1. ^ "Sarah Hilary - profile and books". www.writtengems.com. Retrieved 9 January 2017.
  2. ^ "Fish Publishing - alumni". www.fishpublishing.com. Retrieved 9 January 2017.
  3. ^ Hilary, Sarah (26 April 2012). "Fall River, August 1892". Sarah crawl space blog. Retrieved 9 January 2017.
  4. ^ Flood, Alison (17 July 2015). "Sarah Hilary's debut wins crime novel of the year award". The Guardian. Retrieved 11 June 2016.
  5. ^ "Someone Else's Skin | Books | World Book Night". worldbooknight.org. Retrieved 10 July 2023.
  6. ^ "Interview with Sarah Hilary". www.bathshortstoryaward.org. 31 March 2016. Retrieved 9 January 2017.
  7. ^ Hilary, Sarah (1 March 2014). "My mother was Emperor Hirohito's poster child". The Guardian. Retrieved 9 January 2017.
  8. ^ "Quietly Dangerous: How my grandmother won the war". Dangerous Women Project. 18 January 2017. Retrieved 19 January 2017.
  9. ^ "Fragile". Pan Macmillan. Retrieved 19 July 2022.
  10. ^ "Black Thorn". Pan MacMillan.
  11. ^ Wilson, Laura (July 2023). "The best recent crime and thrillers – review roundup". The Guardian.
  12. ^ Hilary, Sarah [@sarah_hilary] (18 June 2022). "Well it's #AutisticPrideDay and this is long overdue but here I am saying publicly for the first time that I'm autistic because visibility matters. Love to all my ND friends and allies" (Tweet). Retrieved 4 April 2023 – via Twitter.