The shortlist for the 2025 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction has been announced today! Thanks to this prize, I have discovered lots of great books and authors over the last few years and always look out for the longlists and shortlists; in fact, trying to read all of the shortlisted titles since the prize began in 2010 is a personal project of mine (you can see my progress here).
There are six books on today’s shortlist, chosen from the longlist of twelve revealed back in February. Here are the six (blurbs all taken from Amazon):
The 2025 Walter Scott Prize Shortlist
The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry (Canongate)
October, 1891. Butte, Montana. A hard winter approaches across the Rocky Mountains. The city is rich on copper mines and rampant with vice and debauchery among a hard-living crowd of immigrant Irish workers.
Here we find Tom Rourke, a young poet and balladmaker, but also a doper, a drinker and a fearsome degenerate. Just as he feels his life is heading nowhere fast, Polly Gillespie arrives in town as the new bride of the devout mine captain Long Anthony Harrington.
A thunderbolt love affair takes spark between Tom and Polly and they strike out west on a stolen horse, moving through the badlands of Montana and Idaho. Briefly an idyll of wild romance perfects itself. But a posse of deranged Cornish gunsmen are soon in hot pursuit of the lovers, and closing in fast . . .
The Mare by Angharad Hampshire (Northodox Press)
Hermine Braunsteiner was the first person to be extradited from the United States for Nazi war crimes. Hermine was one of a few thousand women to work as a female concentration camp guard. Prisoners nicknamed her ‘the Mare’ because she kicked people to death. When the camps were liberated, Hermine escaped and fled back to Vienna.
Many years later, she met Russell Ryan, an American man holidaying in Austria. They fell in love, married and moved to New York, where she lived a quiet life as an adoring suburban housewife, beloved friend and neighbour. No one, not even her husband, knew the truth of her past, until one day a New York Times journalist knocked on their door, blowing their lives apart.
The Mare tells Hermine and Russell’s story for the first time in fiction. It explores how an ordinary woman could descend so quickly into evil, examining the role played by government propaganda, ideology, fear and cognitive dissonance, and asks why her husband chose to stay with her despite discovering what she had done.
The Book of Days by Francesca Kay (Swift Press)
ANNO DOMINI 1546.
In a manor house in England a young woman feels the walls are closing around her, while her dying husband is obsessed by his vision of a chapel where prayers will be said for his immortal soul.
As the days go by and the chapel takes shape, the outside world starts to intrude. But as the old ways are replaced by the new, the people of the village sense a dangerous freedom.
The Book of Days is a beautifully written novel of lives lived in troubled times and the solace to be found in nature and the turning seasons.
Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon (Fig Tree)
Ancient Sicily. Enter GELON: visionary, dreamer, theatre lover. Enter LAMPO: feckless, jobless, in need of a distraction.
Imprisoned in the quarries of Syracuse, thousands of defeated Athenians hang on by the thinnest of threads.
They’re fading in the baking heat, but not everything is lost: they can still recite lines from Greek tragedy when tempted by Lampo and Gelon with goatskins of wine and scraps of food.
And so an idea is born. Because, after all, you can hate the invaders but still love their poetry. It’s audacious. It might even be dangerous. But like all the best things in life – love, friendship, art itself – it will reveal the very worst, and the very best, of what humans are capable of.
What could possibly go wrong?
The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller (Sceptre)
December 1962, the West Country.
In the darkness of an old asylum, a young man unscrews the lid from a bottle of sleeping pills. In the nearby village, two couples begin their day. Local doctor, Eric Parry, mulling secrets, sets out on his rounds, while his pregnant wife sleeps on in the warmth of their cottage.
Across the field, in a farmhouse impossible to heat, funny, troubled Rita Simmons is also asleep, her head full of images of a past life her husband prefers to ignore. He’s been up for hours, tending to the needs of the small dairy farm he bought, a place where he hoped to create a new version of himself, a project that’s already faltering.
There is affection – if not always love – in both homes: these are marriages that still hold some promise. But when the ordinary cold of an English December gives way to violent blizzards – a true winter, the harshest in living memory – the two couples find their lives beginning to unravel.
Where do you hide when you can’t leave home? And where, in a frozen world, can you run to?
The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden (Viking)
It is fifteen years after the Second World War, and Isabel has built herself a solitary life of discipline and strict routine in her late mother’s country home, with not a fork or a word out of place. But all is upended when her brother Louis delivers his graceless new girlfriend, Eva, at Isabel’s doorstep – as a guest, there to stay for the season…
In the sweltering heat of summer, Isabel’s desperate need for control reaches boiling point. What happens between the two women leads to a revelation which threatens to unravel all she has ever known.
~
I’ve only read one of these – The Heart in Winter – and although I didn’t like it much, I’m not at all surprised to see it on the shortlist and won’t be surprised if it’s the overall winner. I’m sorry that the other two books I had read from the longlist, Clear by Carys Davies and Mother Naked by Glen James Brown, didn’t make the shortlist as I enjoyed both of them much more! Glorious Exploits and The Safekeep are already on my TBR. I’m not sure I like the sound of The Mare, but am interested in reading The Land in Winter and The Book of Days.
What do you think? Have you read any of these or would you like to read them?
The winner will be announced at the Borders Book Festival in Melrose in June.
She Reads Novels 
I guessed three of the six – Glorious Exploits, The Heart in Winter & The Safekeep. Have yet to read Glorious Exploits. Sad Clear didn’t make it but happy to see The Land in Winter on there. I have The Mare to read & need to get a copy of The Book of Days (been putting it off until the shortlist came out)
I can’t say I’m looking forward to The Mare given the subject matter but the judges must have seen something in it they admired. I really liked The Land in Winter and can recommend that
Yes, The Mare sounds like an uncomfortable subject, but it will probably be a powerful book and must have impressed the judges. I’ll look forward to The Land in Winter – I’ve enjoyed some of Andrew Miller’s other books.
The only one of these that I’ve read is Glorious Exploits but that was one of my top books of last year. I definitely to look out for some of the others.
I’m pleased to hear Glorious Exploits was one of your books of the year! I have a copy of that one, so should be reading it soon.
I hope you enjoyed this when it. I loved it and it was genuinely funny while being sad in other places which is hard to achieve
Glorious Exploits is well worth a try; it’s touted as being funny, and while I didn’t laugh out loud that often while reading it, it’s definitely got some snort-worthy situations and circumstances. I’m interested in what Lennon chooses to do next.
That’s good to know! I’m often a bit wary of books that are described as funny, because a sense of humour is such an individual thing, but I’ll look forward to trying this one.
I refuse point blank to consider the 1960s as being a historical setting 🙂 . It’ll be the 1980s next!
The Walter Scott Prize uses the definition of 60 years before publication, but I agree it’s far too recent!
I picked up a copy of ‘Glorious Exploits’ last week… So I’ll get around to reading it at some point in the next 5-10 years… [lol]
I’m not *quite* old enough to remember the notably harsh winter of ’62 but I have read about it. If that event interests you (or anyone else) I can recommend ‘Frostquake – How the Frozen Winter of 1962 Changed Britain Forever’ by Juliet Nicolson.
I also have a copy of Glorious Exploits, but not sure when I’ll get around to it either. Hopefully in the next few months. Frostquake does sound interesting – thanks!
I have The Safekeep on my pile. It must be up for another award, too. I’ve generally liked Andrew Miller, but I’m not really looking forward to another book by Kevin Barry. Maybe I’ll like it better than the last one.
The Safekeep was shortlisted for the Booker Prize last year and also the Women’s Prize this year. I hope you like the Kevin Barry. I wasn’t very impressed by it, but most people seem to have loved it.
It’s the Booker Prize, then. I didn’t like his Beatle one, so I don’t have high hopes for the Barry.
I’ve read good things about Glorious Exploits so do hope I’ll get to it eventually — and maybe rekindle my intention to read some Greek plays for the first time since I was at school! And I enjoyed Miller’s Pure and have often wondered how good his other work has been.
I enjoyed Pure too and have also read Miller’s Now We Shall Be Entirely Free, which is another excellent book, although the two are very different. I’m looking forward to reading this latest one.
I haven’t read any of the short list and am not over enthused by it. I will probably read The Land In Winter but I share the view that the 1960s is a bit too recent to be considered historical fiction. The Safe Keep and The Book of Days are the most promising for me.
I’m not very enthusiastic about this year’s shortlist either – the books I had enjoyed from the longlist didn’t make it. I don’t know if I want to read The Mare, but I’ll try the others, starting with Glorious Exploits and The Safekeep as I have copies of those two.
I haven’t read any of them and to be honest I’m not particularly inspired by any of the blurbs. So I’m going to have to rely on you to inspire me more when you review them!
I don’t think it’s a particularly inspiring shortlist this year either and the fact that I really disliked the only one I’ve read so far isn’t very encouraging! I’m hoping for better luck with the others.
I DNF The Safekeep and it seems to be getting shortlisted for EVERYTHING. The Book of Days also appeals to me.
The Safekeep hasn’t really appealed to me, but I’m curious to read it now that it’s been on so many shortlists! The Book of Days does sound interesting.
I loved Andrew Miller’s Pure, so I’d like to read his newest.
I enjoyed Pure too. His new book sounds very different, but I’m looking forward to it.