Cooksley wins Caledonia Novel Award for ‘chilling’ gothic thriller The Small Museum

Jody Cooksley has won the £1,500 Caledonia Novel Award 2023 for her novel The Small Museum.

The Caledonia Novel Award is an international, Edinburgh-based award for unpublished and self-published novelists in all genres for adults and YA. Now in its ninth year, it received more than 540 entries from 34 different countries. Sophie Boyack has been highly commended for her novel Shamed.

Competition judge and literary agent at Johnson & Alcock Charlotte Seymour has now signed Cooksley, who also wins a free place on a writing course at Moniack Mhor Creative Writing Centre.

Seymour said of The Small Museum: “I loved this gothic thriller, whose title alone evokes the Victorian craze for collecting, particularly in the name of evolutionary science, as we soon learn is the case for Dr Lucius Everley. I was immediately drawn to the protagonist, Madeleine, who is married off to Lucius in a union that her parents hope will restore the family’s sullied reputation.

“An intelligent, independent young woman with a talent for drawing, she finds herself at a loss in her new London home: Lucius is usually out visiting patients or presenting his research, and keeps his collection of curiosities under lock and key, while his sister Grace runs Evergreen House for fallen women, and neither they nor the housekeepers will let Maddie have any involvement in their work.

“She is often confused by what she sees and hears in the house, and we too are never quite sure what is real and what is not. Gradually, Maddie comes to suspect that behind the Everley siblings’ reputable works lie unimaginable horrors... In interwoven chapters, we see her on trial for a crime that would see her hanged, unless her friend Caroline, who watches from the court gallery, can put together the pieces and find a way to save her.  

“The Small Museum chilled me to the bone (as any good book featuring bones should) and I’m thrilled that Jody has accepted my offer of representation.”