Ally is the award-winning author of stories full of history, mystery and adventure.
Black Powder, her debut novel about a boy caught up in the Gunpowder Plot, won the 2017 Historical Association’s Young Quills Award. This was followed by The Buried Crown, a wartime tale with a whiff of Anglo-Saxon myth and magic (2018), a Tudor-set adventure, The Queen’s Fool (2021) and her Roman London-set mystery thriller, Vita and the Gladiator (2023) – runner-up in the Young Quills Awards 2024. She has also done a retelling for young readers of her favourite book of all time – Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre.
Her new book, publishing in March 2025 with Chicken House Books, is Rebel Heart, a rip-roaring adventure story set during the English Civil Wars.
In her spare time, Ally loves exploring ruined castles and decaying mansions and imagining what it must have been like to live in them without electricity and hot and cold running water – although she’s quite glad she doesn’t have to herself! She is married and lives with her husband and assorted garden wildlife in deepest, darkest Surrey.
Website: www.allysherrick.com
Instagram: @ally_sherrick
Facebook: @ally.sherrick1
Ally’s Books
Vita and the Gladiator
Vita longs to write the plays that she steals off to watch – but as the daughter of a high-born Roman, her only future is marriage. When her father is murdered, everything changes.
The Queen’s Fool
When Cat’s beloved sister, Meg, is snatched from their convent home, Cat sets out to find her. With the help of a young actor, Jacques, she follows Meg’s trail over the sea to the strange and wondrous pageant of the ‘Field of Cloth of Gold’.
The Buried Crown
Londoner George has been sent to live in the countryside where an ancient burial ground contains a priceless treasure, a magical Anglo-Saxon crown Hitler is desperate to possess.
Black Powder
12-year-old Tom must save his father from hanging. He falls in with a mysterious stranger – the Falcon – whose true mission is to blow up Parliament with barrels of black powder.
Time Tunnellers 