Selfies Award Winner — Best Novel 2026
Eva St John
Author of the Norwich Map Runners series
Flint in the Bones has been named winner of the Book Brunch Selfies Award for Best Novel 2026 — a fantasy detective series that turns a thousand years of Norwich history loose in the present day. Books one and two available now through Bittern Books.
Shop nowNorwich reimagined
Eva St John | Norwich Map Runners | Published by Mudlark's Press
Norwich has stood for over a thousand years — its Norman castle, medieval lanes, Georgian townhouses and modern buildings all integrated into the city of today. It is this very quality, a city where every century is visible at once, that sparked the idea behind Flint in the Bones.
“In Norwich you can walk down any street and you will see a multitude of time frames within a five minute walk — you see layers of British history. I wanted to take it one stage further: what would it be like if all the people were here as well as their buildings? And so Flint in the Bones was born.”
— Eva St John
In the novel, a magical cataclysm fuses centuries of Norwich maps together, pulling people forward through time so that Tudor farmers, Victorian housemaids and Georgian matrons all wake up in the present day, disoriented and afraid. Only buildings old enough to appear on enough historical maps survive; Norwich itself is saved by its ancient city walls, while the surrounding Norfolk countryside becomes a wasteland.
Real Norwich locations anchor the fantasy — the Guildhall, Elm Hill, the Castle, the old city walls, Bank Plain, the Great Hospital and the Cathedral — as do real historical figures, including Julian of Norwich. Add a vicious serial killer, a rookie detective, a cast of characters from different eras and the ability to ‘map run’ between historical times, and you have a gripping storyline.
Norwich Guildhall — one of the real city landmarks that anchors the fantasy.
Books one and two of the Norwich Map Runners series are available now through Bittern Books, with book three set to join the list in November.
Images: Andrew Blundred
Read moreThe Norwich Map Runners
Flint in the Bones
Eva St. John
Book one. Detective Eliza ‘Bish’ Barnaby returns to a Norwich where ancient maps hide deadly shortcuts — and a killer is loose.
£12.99
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Fire in the Flint
Eva St. John
Book two. A trading patriarch is murdered, every clue points to forbidden magic, and the city is running out of time.
£12.99
Shop nowBoth titles in stock now — with book three joining the list in November
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