Canelo snares two folk horror novels by David Barnett
October 11, 2023
Commissioning Editor Kit Nevile has acquired World English language rights to Withered Hill, and another untitled standalone, by David Barnett from Laura Williams at Greene & Heaton in a two-book deal.
Withered Hill is a dual timeline horror novel, set between London and an isolated village in Lancashire. Surrounded by a thick ring of woodland, within which something sinister lurks in wait, Withered Hill and its inhabitants are of another world, drenched in dark, pagan traditions. In London we follow Sophie Wickham, who is living an unremarkable life – drunken nights, boring job, inappropriate men. Until she starts to receive strange, frightening messages, growing ever more insistent with each passing day, urging her to make her way to a village in the north…
David Barnett is an author, journalist and comic book writer based in the north of England. His commercial fiction includes the bestselling Calling Major Tom and The Growing Pains of Jennifer Ebert. As a freelance journalist he mainly writes features for the UK press including the Guardian, Independent, Telegraph and BBC Culture. He pens comics for DC’s Sandman Universe line, as well as 2000AD.
Nevile says: ‘Withered Hill is the perfect blend of atmospheric setting, compelling characterisation and rich British mythology. The result is a deeply unsettling tale of folk horror, with one of the best twists I have ever experienced, one that you will – genuinely – never see coming. I can envision no better title to be our very first frontlist horror project at Canelo.
Barnett says: ‘From the moment Kit and the Canelo team expressed their enthusiasm for Withered Hill and outlined their plans for it, I knew the book – and the next folk horror story I’m writing – could not have found a better home. Folk horror is definitely having a moment right now, and I hope Withered Hill will satisfy that craving. Sometimes we have to be reminded that, for all our world’s illumination and technological progress, night must always fall, and there are older ways, and things, out there in the darkness.
Withered Hill will be published in July 2024, in ebook and paperback, with a second folk horror novel, set on the Cornish coast, to follow in February 2025. For more information please contact [email protected]