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The Hill in the Dark Grove
Hardcover
$29.00
Published on Aug 11, 2026 | 304 Pages
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 ruin—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
One of Publishers Weekly’s Most Anticipated Books of the Year
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 unearthing the structure, 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.
“A sumptuously written, chilling folk horror novel.”—Paul Tremblay, New York Times bestselling author of Horror Movie and A Head Full of Ghosts
One of Publishers Weekly’s Most Anticipated Books of the Year
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 unearthing the structure, 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.
Author
Liam Higginson
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, helped out at a B&B in a French watermill, run errands for the CEO of a large consultancy firm, spent lockdown in an empty holiday cottage while a herd of goats took over the town, and now works with his wife at Llandudno Pier.
Learn More about Liam Higginson
