Congratulations to Sara Marshall-Ball, whose debut novel, Hush (2015), was longlisted for the 2015/16 Waverton Good Read Award.

Hush – an extract from which was shortlisted for the Myriad First Drafts Competition –

is the haunting and mysterious story of adult sisters Lily and Connie Emmett who are struggling to deal with a long-buried childhood secret: an event that saw Lily suffer from selective mutism for many years.

Hush has been praised by crime writer Lesley Thomson as ‘poignant and suspenseful… entirely absorbing’, by Sussex Life magazine as ‘beautifully written… a satisfying read’ and by the Argus as ‘chilling and unsettling’. Sara has written about the experience of creating HUSH, in essays for Bookanista (‘Capturing Silence’), the Faber Academy blog (‘Why I Write’), and Finding Our Voices magazine.