The Traitor of Sherwood Forest is here!
Let's launch my weird medieval Robin Hood into the world together!
Today is the day! The Traitor of Sherwood Forest is finally out on shelves!
You can buy Traitor anywhere you love to buy books, from your local independent bookstore to that big online retailer that also shoots rockets into space, and even at Target, Walmart, Waterstones, and Hudson Books! Maybe you will see it in your airport! (Please snap a photo if you do because that’s a lifelong dream.)
Here are some centralized links for the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand.
I also want to hype the audiobook because I was a total pain about getting it right, and my team was nothing but kind. The book is set in Nottinghamshire, and sure, it’s medieval, so the language would be completely different, but it didn't feel right for my characters to speak in a posh London accent. I wanted someone who could nail the East Midlands, and wow, did I get her! Grace Gray did an amazing job. She shifts voices for the characters so smoothly that you barely realize it's happening, and she's got just the right mix of gravity and mischief to fit the shifting tones of this book, to flicker from lightness to dark the way that Robin Hood himself does.
What to Expect
This has always been a difficult book for me to categorize. It’s not really tropey, and it careens pretty far off the beaten path of other Robin Hood retellings. But I can tell you what I wanted to do with it:
—I wanted to give the medieval Robin Hood a story. The original outlaw is very different from the disinherited noble lord we know today. He can be both chivalrous and temperamental, both generous and cruel. He steals from the rich, and he sometimes protects the poor, but he is also violent and erratic. Still, he is a hero. Not because he has a heart of gold and always does everything right. Not because he used to be an aristocrat but got kicked out of his castle. In the grand scheme of things, the medieval Robin Hood started out as no one of importance at all. But he wanted to make the world see him anyway—and I want you to see him too.
—I wanted to tell the story from the point of view of medieval peasant woman, someone whose inner life we rarely get to imagine. Jane Crowe is a servant. She has no special powers, no martial prowess, no money, and no noble lineage. She has to survive by her wits. And because she’s the very type of person Robin Hood was supposed to be fighting for, she’s the perfect lens for seeing through the mythology around him, and for helping us imagine what he could have been like—perhaps even would have been like—if he had been a real person.
—I wanted to bring the medieval ballads to life. The five people in the world who have actually read the obscure Robin Hood poems written before 1500 will recognize that I have pulled full episodes and sometimes even lines from the original texts, weaving the tricks and the jokes and the sorrows in and out of my own prose in order to tell a story that’s accessible to the modern reader. These ballads are so different from what we see in the movies, and they are rich with possibility. Are they works of astoundingly great literature? No! But are they a window into the past, teaching us things about the Middle Ages that we might not have considered? Absolutely yes. And I wanted to crack that window open with this book.
And I wanted to do more: I wanted to make sure that unlike modern Robin Hood stories, which have a clear moral compass, The Traitor of Sherwood Forest leaves you with more questions than answers. I wanted to keep you wondering about what villainy and heroism really mean. I wanted to make sure that violence and war - things I think we've become far too comfortable with - leave you feeling as unsettled as they should. In other words, this is not an easy book. But I hope it’s a good one.
Where to find me
It's going to be a busy few weeks! I'm doing a little tour here in Western Canada, with events in Vancouver, Victoria, and Calgary. If you're in any of these cities, please come and say hello at one of these bookstores!
I also have some virtual appearances coming up:
Into the Greenwood (available now!)
Writing is Hard (available now!)
An interview with Mary McMyne (May 1)
Historians at the Movies (coming soon)
Fresh Fiction (coming soon)
The Nerd Daily (coming soon)
Traitor also made some lists (the good kind), including Bookshop’s Most Anticipated April Releases, The Popverse’s Most Anticipated 2025 Books, Book Riot’s Best Historical Fiction in April, eReader’s Must-Read Historical Fiction of 2025, and Gizmodo’s Roundup of April Books! Believe it or not, there are more, and you can find them all on my website.
Team Crowe
I have just been so incredibly blessed to have the most supportive, enthusiastic, wonderful team behind me as I stumbled through Sherwood Forest. They helped me bring Jane and Robin Hood onto the shelves for you, and this book belongs to them too, so I want you to know their names:
My incredibly gifted editor, Nidhi Pugalia; my publicists, Yuleza Negron at Penguin US and Natasha Tsakiris at Penguin Canada, who have been fierce advocates for Traitor; Chantal Canales and Alex Cruz-Jiminez, the brilliant marketing strategists who yanked me into the 21st century; and Amber Beard at PRH Audio, who brought me the audiobook of my dreams! My immensely talented cover artist, Micaela Alcaino, and narrator, Grace Gray (I have already raved about her). And of course, my agent, Sam Farkas, who believed in this book when it was just an idea. You could not ask for a better agent on the entire planet. How did I get lucky enough to have a band of such amazing Merry Women on my side? It feels impossible. When you read this book, know that it’s their story too.
Last, but absolutely not least, I’m thankful for you, my readers. Most of you have already bought the book, and I am so grateful for that! If you wind up loving it, I’d be thrilled if you could recommend it to other people and write a review wherever you bought it—or on Goodreads or other reader sites. But if you're not an online person, you can always just tell me you liked it and that will definitely make my day!
Just knowing you’re here, and that you cared enough to read the book—and to read this—fills my heart up. Thank you for your faith in me, your support, and your excitement about The Traitor of Sherwood Forest. I can’t wait for you to explore Jane’s world!
—Amy