The Somerset Book Awards recognize emerging new talent and outstanding works in the genre of Contemporary and Literary Fiction. The Grand Prize Winner, Reenita Malhotra Hora’s book, Vermilion Harvest: Playtime at the Bagh, will be promoted for years to come in our annual Hall of Fame article, as well as be featured on the Somerset contest page year ’round!
The best part about being a Chanticleer Int’l Book Award Winner is the love and attention you get all year ‘round!
The 2024 Somerset Winners were announced at the 2025 Chanticleer Authors Conference in April, and you can see the official winners post here!
Join us in celebrating the 2024 First Place Somerset Winners!
Robert Gwaltney – Sing Down the Moon
This book is still not yet released, but has a release date for Summer 2026. We are very excited to see it come out!
Ann Bancroft – Almost Family
Liz Millanova has stage four cancer, a grown daughter who doesn’t speak to her, and obsessive memories of a relationship that tore apart her marriage. She thinks of herself as someone who’d rather die than sit through a support group, but now that she actually is going to die, she figures she might as well give it a go.
Mercy’s Thriving Survivors is a hospital-sponsored group held in a presumably less depressing location: a Nordstrom’s employee training lounge. There, Liz hits it off with two other patients, and the three unlikely friends decide to ditch the group and meet on their own. They call themselves the Oakland Mets, and their goal is to enjoy life while they can. Together, Dave, a gay Vietnam vet, Rhonda, a devout, nice woman who’s hiding a family secret and finds peace in a gospel choir, and snarky Liz plan outings to hear jazz, enjoy nature, and tour Alcatraz. In the odd intimacy they form, Liz learns to open up and get close, acknowledge and let go of the dysfunction in her marriage, and repair her relationship with her daughter. They joined forces to have a good time—but what they wind up doing is helping one another come to grips with terminal cancer and resolve the unfinished business in their lives.
Christina Boyd – The Woman in The Painting
This work is also a manuscript, and we are very excited to see it come out eventually! Click above to see Boyd’s website and her extraordinary work.
Kay Smith-Blum – Tangles
Also a 2024 Hemingway First Place Winner!
Oppenheimer was just the beginning.
When a harpooned whale offers proof the Hanford Nuclear Reservation is endangering all life in the Columbia River Basin, Luke Hinson, a brash young scientist, seizes the chance to avenge his father’s death but a thyroid cancer diagnosis derails Luke’s research. Between treatments, he dives back in, making enemies at every turn. On an overnight trek, Luke discovers evidence that Mary, his former neighbor, embarked on the same treacherous trail, and her disappearance, a decade prior, may be tied to Hanford’s harmful practices mired in government-mandated secrecy.
A love story wrapped in a mystery, this stunning Cold War home-front tale reveals the devastating costs of the birth of the nuclear age, and celebrates the quiet courage of wronged women, the fierce determination of fatherless sons, and the limitless power of the individual.
Tangles is a genre-defying must-read for our time.
Anthony Horton – Unpaved
Each passing mile triggers vivid flashbacks to a transformative summer spent with his beloved grandfather, offering the hope of a new beginning amid the turmoil of his professional life. The chaotic web of accusations and misconduct surrounding his former boss adds an unexpected layer of complexity to his pilgrimage. The weight of his past and present converge as Russell travels onward, haunted by memories and uncertain of the revelations that await him at the cabin.
With the fate of his professional life hanging in the balance, Unpaved leads to a convergence of personal and corporate truths.
From Chanticleer:
Unpaved by Anthony Horton is a pensive novel of how returning to one’s roots can reveal hints on how to move forward after a lifetime of grief.
Russell Nowak-McCreary is a man whose life has been proudly shaped by formidable women. His mother, Judith, was a prominent cardiac surgeon at the reputable St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London. His wife, Anna, thrived as a student of Judith’s and has risen to the top of Boston’s best medical campus. And Russell’s work partner Sarah Westroes joined his company, Datatel, as its CEO with a relentless drive to expand its footprint in the tech industry. His childhood was spent without a father figure, only excepting the fond memories of a single summer at his grandfather’s cabin in the Canadian wilderness.
As he returns to the remote cabin of his youth to set his mother’s affairs in order, Russell takes this time alone to finally process all that he lost.
Erika Shepard – Abomination Child
Meet the Fosters. Parents from disparate backgrounds, an eight-year-old boy and his thirteen-year-old sister, all living a suffocating version of the American dream in 1958 Missouri.
An innocent grade school Halloween party—and one small betrayal—lead to an act of sudden violence that stuns them all, and in an instant their facade of normalcy cracks, sending each of them down a separate, winding path to self-discovery.
Abomination Child follows the story of that family through the fog of anger, lost innocence, and disillusionment. It is the story of Brian, an effeminate boy who believes with all his heart he is a girl; his rebellious tomboy sister Liz who yearns only to escape; their diligent, studious mother Barbara who longs for the peace and tranquility of a normal family life, and their father John, angry and wounded by war, now mired in new-found religious zeal.
Each must find their own truth in the shifting world of the Sixties and Seventies—if they can.
From Chanticleer:
Abomination Child is a coming-of-age novel, a piece of historical fiction, and a lesson to us all. Erika Shepard tells the story of Brianna, a young girl growing up in Missouri during the 1960s, struggling to be accepted.
Within her community, Brianna is seen on the outside as a boy, and everyone knows her as Brian. She confides in her older sister Liz, who supports her and helps her face a world that doesn’t understand. Spanning many years, Abomination Child follows Brianna’s journey of survival, hoping that one day she’ll be able to live freely as herself.
Brianna’s – known then as Brian – troubles start after his father learns that he dressed in girl’s clothes at a school Halloween dance. Deeply conservative and religious, Brian’s father hits him for what he believes is an abominable perversion caused by the Devil. For Brian, it’s as simple as knowing he is really a girl, a girl named Brianna.
Leslie DeBrock – The Frog-Eyed Gospel
In a steamy East Texas town, surrounded by oilfield grit and 1960s racial tension, devout eighteen-year-old Peter Loucas faces the prospect of the Viet Nam draft. The sudden death of his father and then his witness of a lynching, thrust him headlong into a fraught adulthood. A summer job in the oilfield leads to a taboo connection with Swat, a black veteran of the Korean War. While his community tries to keep him on track, Pete finds a confidant in Gwynn, a Berkely student temporarily stranded in Texas. The tug-of-war between Pete’s beliefs and the newly discovered complexity around morality and integrity force Pete into a dangerous spiritual reckoning.
This debut novel, in which landscape is a character in its own right, weaves together the pain, the joy and the unexpected twists in creating a life that can be lived with.
From Chanticleer:
In his debut novel The Frog-Eyed Gospel: A Texas Exodus, Leslie DeBrock weaves together the inspiring yet complex stories of a diverse cast of characters, all making their way through a tense Texas summer in 1965.
Peter Loucas is the boy at the center of this story, a senior in high school bent on going to college and becoming the newest preacher in the Bible belt. His faith in God is passionate and strong — until his father is killed in an oilfield accident. In his grief, Pete finds himself suddenly questioning the teachings to which he had given himself blindly for years.
The setting of the story couldn’t be more poised for conflict: Sabine Gap, a small town with religious intimidation and racism everywhere you look. The Vietnam war rages and veterans flock home traumatized. Supporters and protestors clash nationwide. The residents of Tin Cup —Sabine Gap, a small town replete with religious and racial rigidity. While protests roil the nation, veterans return, some walking; some not.
Thank you for joining us to celebrate the 2024 Somerset First Place Winners!
Your book can join the Tiers of Achievement, but only if you submit to the Chanticleer Int’l Book Awards!
Got a great Fiction Book? The 2025 Somerset Book Awards are open through the end of October!
Unpaved by Anthony Horton is a pensive novel of how returning to one’s roots can reveal hints on how to move forward after a lifetime of grief.