In the Night Wood

A FOREST. A BOOK. A MISSING GIRL. NOMINATED FOR THE WORLD FANTASY AWARD AND THE SHIRLEY JACKSON AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR – TOR.COM Charles Hayden has been fascinated by a strange Victorian fairy tale, In the Night Wood, since he was a child. When his wife, Erin – a descendant of the author – inherits her ancestor’s house, the couple decide to make it their home. Still mourning the recent death of their daughter, they leave America behind, seeking a new beginning in the English countryside. But Hollow House, filled with secrets and surrounded by an ancient oak forest, is a place where the past seems very much alive. Isolated among the trees, Charles and Erin begin to feel themselves haunted – by echoes of the stories in the house’s library, by sightings of their daughter, and by something else, as old and dark as the forest around them. A compelling and atmospheric gothic thriller, In the Night Wood reveals the chilling power of myth and memory.

‘Every story is a ghost story, Bailey tells us. But not every ghost story is as haunting as this one. Nor as luminously written, literate, absorbing, transporting, and all-around excellent. I couldn’t put it down’Karen Joy Fowler, bestselling author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves ‘A resonant tale of literary obsession and a story of old myths rising violently to the surface of an otherwise rational world’TOR.com ‘Suffocatingly real’SFX ‘In the Night Wood is a wonder: literary, intriguingly supernatural, and all too human. A must read for anyone who as a child wanted to find a magic wardrobe to explore or a rabbit hole to fall down only to realize as an adult that those whimsical childhood adventures have a darker side’Molly Tanzer, author of Creatures of Will and Temper ‘A literary puzzle box that deftly mixes the scary, nasty folktales of the 19th century and Daphne du Maurier’s classic Don’t Look Now’Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts and The Cabin at the End of the World

Dale Bailey is the critically-acclaimed author of seven books, including The End of the End of Everything and The Subterranean Season. His story ‘Death and Suffrage’ was adapted for Showtime’s Masters of Horror television series. His short fiction has won the Shirley Jackson Award and the International Horror Guild Award, has been nominated for the Nebula and Bram Stoker awards, and has been frequently reprinted in best-of-the-year anthologies, including Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy. He lives in North Carolina with his family.