The Sterkarm Handshake

Winner of the Guardian Fiction Prize and Carnegie Medal Finalist: Beware of shaking hands with a Sterkarm .?.?.

The sixteenth-century Sterkarms are tough, determined, and brave. They are also vicious, violent, and dirty, and spend most of their time warring with their neighbors and stealing their livestock. But what they lack in charm, they make up for in pristine land. At least FUP, the twenty-first-century corporation, thinks so.
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Scotland in the sixteenth century is teeming with natural resources and fossil fuels that the twenty-first century lacks. FUP intends to make billions by mining the past with an industrial secret: a time machine. To facilitate their plunder, they send Andrea, an anthropologist with a knack for languages, through the Time Tube to the sixteenth century to study the community. There, she meets Per Sterkarm, a handsome young warrior, and despite their differences, the two fall in love. When Per learns FUP’s intentions, he vows to protect his land and destroy the invaders. In the bloody battle that follows, Andrea will have choose not only which side she belongs on, but in what century .?.?.
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Perfect for fans of Outlander, The Sterkarm Handshake is a rich historical portrait about the clashing of cultures, finding home, and falling in love.

Susan Price is the author of the Sterkarm series. Born in Dudley, West Midlands, in England, she went on to write the Guardian Fiction Prize–winning The Sterkarm Handshake (1998) after visiting reiver country on the borders of Scotland. To help her imagine the Sterkarm’s world, she drew on lifelong interests in history, folklore, and old ballads, as well as her hobbies of shooting with a longbow and traveling to the Scottish hills with her partner. Price continued the series with A Sterkarm Kiss (2004) and A Sterkarm Tryst (2017). Her other works include the novel The Ghost Drum, which won the prestigious Carnegie Medal. Price lives in the Black Country, in West Midlands, England.
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