The Hill in the Dark Grove - by Liam Higginson (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

In this gripping debut, steeped in Welsh folklore, a husband and wife living in the beautiful but isolated mountains of Snowdonia stumble upon a buried Neolithic structure--awakening a mysterious, ancient presence with its own dark designs.

"A sumptuously written, chilling folk horror novel." --Paul Tremblay, New York Times bestselling author of Horror Movie and A Head Full of Ghosts

Carwyn and his wife, Rhian, have lived a quiet life as sheep farmers in the remote Welsh mountains for decades, tending to ancestral land that has been in Carwyn's family for generations. But recent years have taken their toll: local friends lost one by one to old age or rising prices; the accumulation of debts; new English tourists, more every year, disrespecting the land--littering, camping on private property, needing to be rescued when they misjudge the elements.

When Carwyn finds a strange stone head in a disused corner of the farm, he realizes the artifact is just one piece of something much larger--something unfathomably old. Despite Rhian's protests, Carwyn becomes obsessed with the site, and soon neglects the daily work of the farm to keep digging. Meanwhile, the sheep fall sick more easily than any season before, and a tragic accident on market day threatens to leave an increasingly isolated Rhian without a way to satisfy their ever-more-insistent creditors. Through it all, Carwyn becomes convinced that uncovering the site and determining its original purpose will be the key to solving everything. But there was a reason his ancestors kept the past buried, and in disturbing the earth, he has called forth a power greater and more terrible than he could have imagined.

Enthralling and atmospheric, Liam Higginson's The Hill in the Dark Grove expertly weaves together myth, psychological suspense, and supernatural horror, heralding a sparkling new literary talent.

Review Quotes

"The Hill in the Dark Grove is a sumptuously written, dark meditation on aging, obsolescence, and the brutalizing march of time and progress, as well as a chilling folk horror novel. There's something long buried in the mountains of North Wales and within Carwyn and Rhian, sheep herders who are economically pushed beyond their limits; Liam Higginson expertly brings it all to the surface."--Paul Tremblay, New York Times bestselling author of Horror Movie and A Head Full of Ghosts

"An intensely imagined and beautifully crafted novel about myth, memory, landscape, and the extraordinary, unworldly power of the deep past . . .. pPowerful, inventive, and gripping to the very end."--Ian McGuire, Booker Prize-longlisted author of The North Water

"A slow-burning reeking creep of a novel about eerie ancient places and dangerous interlopers . . . I loved it."--Claire Fuller, author of The Memory of Animals, Unsettled Ground, and Bitter Orange

"Liam Higginson skillfully creates a troubling and loaded atmosphere in The Hill in the Dark Grove a sense of a landscape as ancient but nonetheless unsettled. The novel is eerie in a way that is rich and abides in the mind."--Garrett Carr, author of The Boy from the Sea

"The Hill in the Dark Grove adopts familiar Welsh myths and tales -retold to build the scaffolding for Higginson's unnerving saga. His compelling writing vibrates with unease through the intimacy of Carwyn and Rhian."--Anthony Shapland, author of A Room Above a Shop

"Gracefully and lovingly rendered with the heft of folklore, land, and history, The Hill in the Dark Grove evokes in dazzling detail the tribulations of everyday life and the grandeur of ancestry. Higginson takes us on a soul-stirring quest to unearth the past in order to anchor the present before it flitters away. It's a truly bewitching experience!"--Gerardo Sámano Córdova, author of Monstrilio

"Witty, tender, ultimately terrifying . . . Evocative and deftly done, The Hill in the Dark Grove is a book of echoes, haunted by the sheer vastness of time and landscape, how they enact upon us, and the stories we tell. . . . A celebration of love's persistence, a summoning of ancient lore, a superb debut."--Kiran Millwood Hargrave, author of The Mercies and The Dance Tree

"Liam Higginson is a new talent in Welsh storytelling. Atmospheric, chilling, and incredibly touching, The Hill in the Dark Grove holds the reader in its arms and shows us how our stories, our objects and memories, are shaped and held by the land."--Joshua Jones, Dylan Thomas Prize-shortlisted author of Local Fires

About the Author

Liam Higginson was born and raised in the deepest hinterlands of rural North Wales. In what some might generously call a varied career, he has been an extremely bored accountant, cooked dinners at a B&B in a French watermill, run errands for the CEO of a large consultancy firm, spent lockdown in a friend's empty holiday cottage while a herd of goats took over the town, and now works in the arcade management office at Llandudno Pier.