won the Bath Novel Award and Harper’s Bazaar Big Book Award. It was longlisted for the Desmond Elliot Prize and shortlisted for the Author’s Club Best First Novel Pick. In 2019, she was shortlisted for The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. Her second book, Double or Nothing (2022), is the first in a trilogy commissioned by the Ian Fleming Estate to expand the world of James Bond. Sherwood's latest novel, A Wild & True Relation (2023), was described by Hilary Mantel as “a rarity – a novel as remarkable for the vigour of the storytelling as for its literary ambition. Kim Sherwood is a writer of capacity, potency and sophistication.”
At CrimeReads Sherwood tagged ten top espionage novels centering women’s stories, including:
American Spy by Lauren Wilkinson (2019)Read about the other entries on the list.
Lauren Wilkinson’s debut novel interrogates what it means to be a spy for a system that is trying to preserve a national identity that excludes you. Marie Mitchell is an intelligence officer for the FBI in 1968. As a black woman, her career is thwarted by the all-white boys’ club, until she’s sent on a mission that will change how she sees herself and her nation. A riveting exploration of belonging, race, gender and the Cold War, with another beguiling use of point of view.
American Spy is among Sarah Stewart Taylor's five mystery novels about characters searching for relatives.
--Marshal Zeringue
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