The Hill in the Dark Grove
08 January 2026Synopsis
'Eerie . Dangerous. I loved it' - Claire Fuller, author of Unsettled Ground
'Evocative, tender, terrifying . . . Superb' - Kiran Millwood Hargrave, author of The Mercies
'Powerful, inventive and gripping to the very end' - Ian McGuire, author of The North Water
Exquisitely written and impossible to put down, The Hill in the Dark Grove is a haunting and sinister story steeped in Welsh folklore. Moving and chilling in equal measure, it is a story about a lost way of life and the terrifying lengths we go to to protect what we know.
Carwyn and Rhian – the last in a long line of sheep farmers – are living out a brutal year on their hillside farm, deep in the mountains of Eryri, North Wales.
When Carwyn discovers a buried prehistoric ruin in one of the fields on their land, his curiosity quickly descends into obsession. His wife, Rhian, meanwhile, is confronted with the growing realization that the man with whom she shares her life and home is becoming a frightening stranger.
As the harsh winter closes in, Rhian finds herself alone with her increasingly peculiar husband, and the mountains, and the looming megalithic stones.
'Vibrates with unease' - Anthony Shapland, author of A Room Above a Shop
Details
08 January 2026
9781035069453Reviews
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, and how they enact upon us and the stories we tell. A celebration of love’s persistence, a summoning of ancient lore, a superb debut.
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. A truly bewitching experience!
'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'
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 the sheep herders, Carwyn and Rhian, who are economically pushed beyond their limits; Liam Higginson expertly brings it all to the surface
