“With his stunning debut, Higginson presents readers with a grisly folk tale in one of the most anticipated novels of the year.”
Carwyn has been tending his ancestral land for decades in the Welsh mountains. As sheep farmers, it’s a quiet life for him and his wife, Rhian, but the recent years haven’t been the best for them. Friends lost to old age, or leaving the area due to rising prices and accumulating debts, and not to mention the scores of tourists disrespecting the land, camping in private areas, misjudging the harsh elements begging to be rescued.
After Carwyn discovers a strange stone head in a faraway corner of his farm, he sees the artifact as part of something much larger, and something unfathomably old. Despite Rhian’s warnings, Carwyn falls into a deep obsession with unearthing the structure, neglecting his daily work on the farm. The sheep fall sick and a tragic accident on market day leaves an increasingly isolated Rhian no way to satisfy their insistent creditors.
Carwyn is convinced uncovering the site and its original purpose will solve all of their problems. But there was a reason his ancestors buried the past, and with his disturbing the earth, Carwyn has called for a greater power more terrible than he could ever imagine.
Why we’re excited about this book:
2026 is proving to be another stellar year for horror fiction releases, and this first novel by Liam Higginson proves folk horror is alive and well in the modern age. Born and raised in rural north Wales, Higginson has held many a positions for his day jobs. With his stunning debut, Higginson presents readers with a grisly folk tale in one of the most anticipated novels of the year. Gerardo Sámano Córdova (Monstrilio) calls The Hill in the Dark Grove: “Gracefully and lovingly rendered with the heft of folklore, land, and history … evokes, in dazzling detail, the tribulations of everyday life and the grandeur of ancestry … bewitching.”. Ian McGuire (The North Water) says: “An intensely imagined and beautifully crafted novel about myth, memory, landscape, and the extraordinary, unworldly power of the deep past … powerful, inventive, and gripping to the very end.”, and Paul Tremblay (A Head Full of Ghosts) says: “A sumptuously written, dark meditation on aging, obsolescence, and the brutalizing march of time and progress… There’s something long buried in the mountains of North Wales; Liam Higginson expertly brings it all to the surface.”
Releasing from Hogarth 11 August 2026, The Hill in the Dark Grove by Liam Higginson is available for pre-order now.
BOB PASTORELLA
