The Sterkarm Handshake

Winner of the Guardian Prize. Golden Duck Award nominee 2001.

The Sterkarms have plundered the border lands between Scotland and England for centuries, but now the Elves have come, bribing the Sterkarms to give up their warlike ways with 'wee white pills' - aspirin.

The Elves have come from the 21st Century, and intend to take the mineral wealth from beneath the Sterkarms' land. They consider the Sterkarms to be 'peasants armed with sticks', and think they will be a pushover. They think wrong...

Andrea Mitchell, living among the Sterkarms as a liason officer, knows that her employers have underestimated them, but she is in love with Per Sterkarm, and is torn between the 16th and 21st Centuries...