Pop singer among winners at 2024 Nero Book Awards for English folk horror novel

English folk horror Lost In The Garden is among the four winners of the 2024 Nero Book Awards, as its author Adam S Leslie takes home the fiction prize.

The screenwriter, musician and songwriter, who grew up in Lincolnshire and lives in Oxford, won £5,000 and is in the running for the Nero Gold Prize, book of the year 2024, which boasts an additional £30,000 prize, along with winners across three other categories.

The second year of the literary awards saw Sophie Elmhirst’s Maurice And Maralyn: An Extraordinary True Story Of Shipwreck, Survival And Love win the non-fiction prize, while Wild Houses by Colin Barrett snapped up the debut fiction gong, and The Twelve by Liz Hyder named the children’s fiction winner.

Judges praised Leslie’s story of three women travelling to a sinister place as making “vulnerable, rooted characters come of age in a hazy, hypnotic book that reflects contemporary Britain through a distorted lens”.

Leslie is also a psychedelic pop singer-songwriter who produces music under the name Berlin Horse.

Gerry Ford, founder and group chief executive of Caffe Nero, said: “The standard of entries this year was very high and with such incredible shortlists, our judges had a difficult job of picking just one winner in each category.

“They have chosen four impressive books which display an outstanding level of writing and captivating storytelling.

“These four books are worthy winners and collectively, will appeal to readers of all ages and tastes and represent the best writing from the UK and Ireland. I look forward to announcing our Gold Prize winner in March, and I am proud to continue to support the arts at Caffe Nero through the Nero Book Awards.”

London author Elmhirst’s story of Maurice and Maralyn Bailey, a British married couple who spent more than a 100 days surviving on a raft in the Pacific Ocean in the 1970s after selling their house to travel to New Zealand, is her non-fiction debut.

The judges called it a “captivating gem of creative non-fiction writing that grips both as a human survival story, and as a profound, almost mythical tale of the wide blue yonder and the things that sustain us in times of crisis”.

She has written for the Guardian Long Read, The Economist’s 1843 magazine, Gentlewoman and Harper’s Bazaar, and previously been named feature writer of the year by the 2020 Press Awards, and in 2024, she was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Journalism.

Barrett’s debut dark comedy novel, set in County Mayo, Ireland, follows a small-town feud, a kidnapping and a life-altering weekend.

The judges said the “wit and humour in this novel belies an undercurrent of menace, and yet there is deep empathy and compassion at its heart”.

The Canadian novelist, who grew up in Mayo, saw his previous short story, Calm With Horses made in to a play as well as a 2019 crime drama film of the same name starring Irish stars Barry Keoghan and Niamh Algar.

Children’s book The Twelve by Liz Hyder, explores the mystery of a vanishing sister as well as folklore as a family holidays in the winter on the Pembrokeshire coast.

Hyder, an PR consultant, who studied at the University of Bristol, saw her debut novel, Bearmouth, win the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize, the Branford Boase Award and the Children’s Book of the Year in 2019 by The Times.

Author Bill Bryson will chair this year’s judging panel, selecting the overall Nero Gold Prize for Book of the Year 2024.

The 2023 inaugural winner was The Bee Sting by Irish author Paul Murray, a Booker Prize shortlisted author.

This will be announced at a ceremony in central London on March 5.