Juliette, convinced Ewan still lives there in some form, seeks the help of the Beacons, a seemingly benevolent group of occultists. Richard, to try and keep the boy out of his mind, has turned his attention to the field opposite the house, where he patiently digs the barren dirt in search of a legendary oak tree.

Starve Acre is a devastating new novel by the author of the prize-winning bestseller The Loney. It is a novel about the way in which grief splits the world in two and how, in searching for hope, we can so easily unearth horror.

‘The new master of menace’ Sunday Times

A blizzard a century ago has passed into fable in the Endlands. Trapped by the snow, the residents of the valley found themselves at the mercy of the Devil, who brought death and destruction before being driven back to the moors.

Now, the three farming families of the Endlands face a new test. The patriarch of the community, the Gaffer, has died and his grandson, John Pentecost, must decide if he will return and work the land in his grandfather’s stead. He feels the pull of duty, loyalty and tradition: obligations that his pregnant wife, Kat, finds hard to understand as an outsider. And as the celebrations of the Devil’s exile draw near, she realises that there is a darkness in this place which cannot be repelled.

BOOK OF THE YEAR IN THE TIMES, SUNDAY TIMES, FT, METRO AND MAIL ON SUNDAY

‘A work of goose-flesh eeriness’ The Spectator

A brilliantly unsettling and atmospheric debut full of unnerving horror – ‘The Loney is not just good, it’s great. It’s an amazing piece of fiction’ Stephen King

Two brothers. One mute, the other his lifelong protector.

Year after year, their family visits the same sacred shrine on a desolate strip of coastline known as the Loney, in desperate hope of a cure.

In the long hours of waiting, the boys are left alone. And they cannot resist the causeway revealed with every turn of the treacherous tide, the old house they glimpse at its end . . .

Many years on, Hanny is a grown man no longer in need of his brother’s care.

But then the child’s body is found.

And the Loney always gives up its secrets, in the end.

‘This is a novel of the unsaid, the implied, the barely grasped or understood, crammed with dark holes and blurry spaces that your imagination feels compelled to fill’ Observer

‘A masterful excursion into terror’ The Sunday Times