Congratulations to Attica Locke who has been named this year’s winner of the Staunch Book Prize for her latest novel, Heaven, My Home.

A gorgeously written and haunting work southern gothic crime that simmers with racial tensions, Heaven, My Home is part police-procedural and part family drama. Ranger Darren Mathews is part of a team investigating the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas. His superiors hope that his presence as a black man will shake people up and improve their chances of success at closing the case. But when a son of one of their captain’s goes missing, Mathews is forced to question his own loyalties.

Established by UK screenwriter Bridget Lawless, the Staunch Book Prize is awarded to the best thriller novel in which no woman is beaten, stalked, sexually exploited, raped or murdered, and aims to ‘make space for an alternative to the overload of violence towards women in fiction’.

Locke was revealed as the winner on 25 November, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. She is the first American to win the award and receives £1000 in prize money. Previous winners include Australian author Jock Serong and British author Samantha Harvey.