Kate Heartfield – författare

*Winner of the Aurora Award for Best Novel* ‘Spellbinding’ JJA Harwood‘An entertaining and dark read’ Stylist‘An absorbing novel’ Guardian‘Beautifully written’ Elizabeth Chadwick ‘Power is not something you are given. Power is something you take. When you are a woman, it is a little more difficult, that’s all’ 1768. Charlotte, daughter of the Habsburg Empress, arrives in Naples to marry a man she has never met. Her sister Antoine is sent to France, and in the mirrored corridors of Versailles they rename her Marie Antoinette.The sisters are alone, but they are not powerless. When they were only children, they discovered a book of spells – spells that work, with dark and unpredictable consequences.In a time of vicious court politics, of discovery and dizzying change, they use the book to take control of their lives.But every spell requires a sacrifice. And as love between the sisters turns to rivalry, they will send Europe spiralling into revolution. Brimming with romance, betrayal, and enchantment, The Embroidered Book reimagines a dazzling period of history as you have never seen it before.

*Winner of the Aurora Award for Best Novel* From SUNDAY TIMES bestselling author Kate Heartfield comes a glorious, lyrical retelling of one of Norse mythology’s greatest epics 'With a brilliant heroine at the helm, this richly detailed, character-driven story renders epic mythological battles on a human scale' Publishers Weekly Brynhild is a Valkyrie: shieldmaiden of the Allfather, chooser of the slain. But now she too has fallen, flightless in her exile.Gudrun is a princess of Burgundy, a daughter of the Rhine, a prize for an invading king – a king whose brother Attila has other plans, and a dragon to call upon.And in the songs to be sung, there is another hero: Sigurd, a warrior with a sword sharper than the new moon.As the legends tell, these names are destined to be lovers, fated as enemies. But here on Midgard, legends can be lies…For not all heroes are heroic, nor all monsters monstrous. And a shieldmaiden may yet find that love is the greatest weapon of all.

*Aurora Award Finalist* Love, heroism and the supernatural collide in the midst of war. 'Paranormal elements are expertly woven with real history to create a convincing and exciting tale'Guardian 'A darker take on Raiders of the Lost Ark … a fine piece of work' SFX There's a tradition in the Sharp family that some possess the Second Sight. But is it superstition, or true psychic power?Kit Sharp is in Paris, where she is involved in a love affair with the stunning Evelyn Larsen, and working as an archivist, having inherited her historian father's fascination with the Bayeux Tapestry. He believes that parts of the tapestry were made before 1066, and that it was a tool for prediction, not a simple record of events.The Nazis are also obsessed with the tapestry: convinced that not only did it predict the Norman Conquest of England, but that it will aid them in their invasion of Britain.Ivy Sharp has joined the Special Operations Executive – the SOE – a secret unit set up to carry out espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance. Having demonstrated that she has extraordinary powers of perception, she is dropped into Northern France on a special mission.With the war on a knife edge, the Sharp Sisters face certain death. Can their courage and extrasensory gifts prevent the enemy from using the tapestry to bring about a devastating victory against the Allied Forces?

*Aurora Award Finalist* Love, heroism and the supernatural collide in the midst of war. 'Paranormal elements are expertly woven with real history to create a convincing and exciting tale'Guardian 'A darker take on Raiders of the Lost Ark … a fine piece of work' SFX There's a tradition in the Sharp family that some possess the Second Sight. But is it superstition, or true psychic power?Kit Sharp is in Paris, where she is involved in a love affair with the stunning Evelyn Larsen, and working as an archivist, having inherited her historian father's fascination with the Bayeux Tapestry. He believes that parts of the tapestry were made before 1066, and that it was a tool for prediction, not a simple record of events.The Nazis are also obsessed with the tapestry: convinced that not only did it predict the Norman Conquest of England, but that it will aid them in their invasion of Britain.Ivy Sharp has joined the Special Operations Executive – the SOE – a secret unit set up to carry out espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance. Having demonstrated that she has extraordinary powers of perception, she is dropped into Northern France on a special mission.With the war on a knife edge, the Sharp Sisters face certain death. Can their courage and extrasensory gifts prevent the enemy from using the tapestry to bring about a devastating victory against the Allied Forces?

*Aurora Award Finalist* Love, heroism and the supernatural collide in the midst of war. 'Paranormal elements are expertly woven with real history to create a convincing and exciting tale'Guardian 'A darker take on Raiders of the Lost Ark … a fine piece of work' SFX There's a tradition in the Sharp family that some possess the Second Sight. But is it superstition, or true psychic power?Kit Sharp is in Paris, where she is involved in a love affair with the stunning Evelyn Larsen, and working as an archivist, having inherited her historian father's fascination with the Bayeux Tapestry. He believes that parts of the tapestry were made before 1066, and that it was a tool for prediction, not a simple record of events.The Nazis are also obsessed with the tapestry: convinced that not only did it predict the Norman Conquest of England, but that it will aid them in their invasion of Britain.Ivy Sharp has joined the Special Operations Executive – the SOE – a secret unit set up to carry out espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance. Having demonstrated that she has extraordinary powers of perception, she is dropped into Northern France on a special mission.With the war on a knife edge, the Sharp Sisters face certain death. Can their courage and extrasensory gifts prevent the enemy from using the tapestry to bring about a devastating victory against the Allied Forces?

Winner of the Aurora Award for Best Novel Hell is empty and all the devils are here. The Chatelaine has come. The year is 1328 and Hell has overrun Bruges. Demons stalk the streets and revenants swarm the walls. The city’s men have fallen and only widows remain.But Hell should fear them.Margriet de Vos killed her first soldier when she was eleven. She has buried six children and will fight for the daughter left to her. Their only wealth is gone, taken into the inferno. And she will not be stolen from. The Devil be damned.Together with a man-at-arms with unfinished business, a widow and her forgehammer, and a alderman's wife who escapes with her children, Margriet will raise a raiding party like Hell has never seen.

From Sunday Times bestselling author of The Embroidered Book and The Valkyrie comes an opulent 13th century epic retelling of the life of Mercutio before he ever encountered Romeo and Juliet.On the battlefield, as warring factions deal out death, young Mercutio chances upon the charismatic poet Dante Alighieri. In their desperate stand against the enemy, they inadvertently open a crack between our world and Faerie, literally changing the stars over Mercutio’s head, and creating a mysterious presence who will follow Mercutio for all the days of his life.With new stars come new destinies for young men who will travel to the ends of the Earth to honour the bonds of love and friendship.As outcasts and exiles, Mercutio and Dante find family in a band of fighters called the Montecchi, near Verona. With his friends at his side, Mercutio will battle to change his stars, and to free the changeling upon whose fate hangs the future of the human world.

From Sunday Times bestselling author of The Embroidered Book and The Valkyrie comes an opulent 13th century epic retelling of the life of Mercutio before he ever encountered Romeo and Juliet.On the battlefield, as warring factions deal out death, young Mercutio chances upon the charismatic poet Dante Alighieri. In their desperate stand against the enemy, they inadvertently open a crack between our world and Faerie, literally changing the stars over Mercutio’s head, and creating a mysterious presence who will follow Mercutio for all the days of his life.With new stars come new destinies for young men who will travel to the ends of the Earth to honour the bonds of love and friendship.As outcasts and exiles, Mercutio and Dante find family in a band of fighters called the Montecchi, near Verona. With his friends at his side, Mercutio will battle to change his stars, and to free the changeling upon whose fate hangs the future of the human world.

*Aurora Award winner*Love, heroism and the supernatural collide in the midst of war.

It’s 1788 and Alice Payne is the notorious highway robber, the Holy Ghost. Aided by her trusty automaton, Laverna, the Holy Ghost is feared by all who own a heavy purse.It’s 1889 and Major Prudence Zuniga is once again attempting to change history - to save history - but seventy attempts later she’s still no closer to her goal.It’s 2016 and . . . well, the less said about 2016 the better!But in 2020 the Farmers and the Guides are locked in battle; time is their battleground, and the world is their prize. Only something new can change the course of the war. Or someone new.Little did they know, but they’ve all been waiting until Alice Payne arrives.

Mischief, Magic, Love and War.It is the Year of Our Lord 1601. The Tuscan War rages across the world, and every lord from Navarre to Illyria is embroiled in the fray. Cannon roar, pikemen clash, and witches stalk the night; even the fairy courts stand on the verge of chaos.Five stories come together at the end of the war: that of bold Miranda and sly Puck; of wise Pomona and her prisoner Vertumnus; of gentle Lucia and the shade of Prospero; of noble Don Pedro and powerful Helena; and of Anne, a glovemaker’s wife. On these lovers and heroes the world itself may depend.These are the stories Shakespeare never told. Five of the most exciting names in genre fiction today – Jonathan Barnes, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Emma Newman, Foz Meadows and Kate Heartfield – delve into the world the poet created to weave together a story of courage, transformation and magic.Including an afterword by Dr. John Lavagnino, The London Shakespeare Centre, King's College London.

For two days and three nights, Françoise de Montesquiou d’Artagnan has slept, trapped in a strange dream of a shifting world of spirits. Everyone in the dream is clad in the forms of animals, including Françoise herself, and they are discussing secret affairs of monsters and princes – until a host of vampires attacks them in the dream. A man with a beautiful voice faces them down, telling her to run. Françoise wakes in her grave, buried by her grieving parents and abandoned by her fiancé – and determined to find the man who’d saved her life, identifiable only by his voice. She flees to Paris and finds people like her: the Benandanti, born in their cauls, and blessed with the gift to enter the spirit realm in dreams. She learns that the vampires who attacked her in spirit are a threat in the waking world – and that they sit in the highest positions in the land. Only she and her new brothers and sisters can bring them down.

Victorian-era breakneck thriller which opens up a whole new chapter of the Assassin's Creed universe, by Sunday Times bestselling author Kate Heartfield