Sarah Hilary

"Sarah Hillary" redirects here. For the New Zealand artist, see Sarah Hillary (artist).

Sarah Hilary
Born	Cheshire, England
Occupation	Novelist
Genre	crime fiction
Notable works	Marnie Rome series

Sarah Hilary is an English crime novelist known for her Marnie Rome series of novels. She won the Fish Criminally Short Histories Prize ^[1] in 2008 for her story, Fall River, in August 1892. ^[2] In 2012, she was awarded with the Cheshire Prize for Literature. ^[3]

Early life and education

Hilary was born in Cheshire, ^[4] England and later moved to the South East to study for a First Class Honours Degree in History of Ideas. Hilary announced on X in June 18, 2022 that she is autistic. ^[5]

Career

While Hilary had been writing since she was young, she was 47 years old when her novel, Someone Else's Skin, was published in 2014 ^[6] and was a Richard & Judy Book Club pick in the same year. ^[7] It won the 2015 Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award, ^[8] and in 2016, it was selected as one of the titles for World Book Night in the UK. ^[9] It was also a Silver Falchion and Macavity Awards finalist in the US. ^[10]

Her second book, No Other Darkness, was shortlisted for a Barry Award. ^[11]

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. ^[12] Hilary wrote about her grandmother's experience in the camp for the Dangerous Women Project in 2017. ^[13]

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 seventh novel, Fragile, published on 10 June 2021, is partly inspired by the motives of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca. ^[14]

In 2023, she published Black Thorn, a crime novel centred around six deaths at a seaside housing development in Cornwall. ^[15] It received a positive review from Laura Wilson of The Guardian , who praised Hilary's writing style. ^[16]

Bibliography

Marnie Rome series

Title	Publisher	Published	ISBN
Someone Else's Skin [17]	Headline	2014	978-1472207685
No Other Darkness [18]	Headline	2015	978-1472207722
Tastes Like Fear	Headline	2016	978-1472236838
Quieter Than Killing [19]	Headline	2017	978-1472241108
Come and Find Me	Headline	2018	978-1472248961
Never Be Broken	Headline	2019	978-1472249005

References

1. "Fish Publishing – alumni". www.fishpublishing.com. Retrieved 9 January 2017.
2. Hilary, Sarah (26 April 2012). "Fall River, August 1892". Sarah crawl space blog. Retrieved 9 January 2017.
3. "The 2012 Cheshire Prize for Literature". University of Chester . Archived from the original on 3 December 2013.
4. "Sarah Hilary - profile and books". www.writtengems.com. Retrieved 9 January 2017.
5. 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.
6. Coughlan, Claire (15 August 2021). "When life begins at 40: voices of experience create literary gems". Sunday Independent ; Dublin. p. 22.
7. "Hodgson and Shemilt on WHS Richard & Judy list". The Bookseller. Retrieved 16 October 2023.
8. Flood, Alison (17 July 2015). "Sarah Hilary's debut wins crime novel of the year award". The Guardian. Retrieved 11 June 2016.
9. "Someone Else's Skin | Books | World Book Night". worldbooknight.org. Retrieved 10 July 2023.
10. "Interview with Sarah Hilary". www.bathshortstoryaward.org. 31 March 2016. Retrieved 9 January 2017.
11. "Sarah Hilary". www.panmacmillan.com. Retrieved 16 October 2023.
12. Hilary, Sarah (1 March 2014). "My mother was Emperor Hirohito's poster child". The Guardian. Retrieved 9 January 2017.
13. "Quietly Dangerous: How my grandmother won the war". Dangerous Women Project. 18 January 2017. Retrieved 19 January 2017.
14. "Fragile". Pan Macmillan. Retrieved 19 July 2022.
15. "Black Thorn". Pan MacMillan.
16. Wilson, Laura (July 2023). "The best recent crime and thrillers – review roundup". The Guardian.
17. Review of Someone Else's Skin
    • Jakeman, Jane (17 March 2014). "A tense, deep and dramatic tale of domestic violence". The Independent. p. 47. Retrieved 19 December 2024.
18. Review of No Other Darkness
    • "Fiction Reviews". Publishers Weekly ; New York. Vol. 262, no. 26. 29 June 2015.
19. Review of Quieter Than Killing
    • Flood, Alison (21 March 2017). "Quieter Than Killing review – vivid and eerie". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 19 December 2024.