Dark, disturbing and quieltly devastating, Night Babies is the haunting new novel from Lucie McKnight Hardy – a pitch perfect slice of folk-horror that sees a troubled artist haunted by her past in rural Wales.

Lucie will be in conversation with Andrew Michael Hurley (Starve Acre, Barrowbeck) and the talk will be followed by an audience Q&A and book signing.

Tickets are £5.00 each or £18.99 including a copy of Night Babies. Light refreshments are included in the ticket price.

Event starts at 6:30pm (doors at 6pm)

About the Book:

“All my fears have vanished, and I realise now that my dreams were not nightmares but a sign of what was to come, how this will end. An inevitability.”

Things were looking up for Astrid Aspden and her partner, Kit, until their house flooded. With Astrid’s first solo art exhibition just weeks away, her paintings are ruined and excitement has turned to despair.

She is thrown a lifeline when her best friend Flora invites her to stay in a run-down chapel she and her partner, Sim, are renovating in the Brecon Beacons. As Astrid and Kit settle into their new surroundings to salvage her work, they soon learn about the unsettling history of the chapel and what lies beneath the nearby reservoir.

As the weeks go by, tensions simmer between Astrid and Flora as sour memories flare up from their teenage past and deep wounds are laid bare from an ill-fated school trip to Florence. Her relationship with Kit begins to fray as the chapel and the surrounding hostile beauty of the valley begin to intrude on their lives.

Astrid throws herself into her work but the longer she spends in the chapel the more she begins to notice things: handprints on her paintings, shadowy figures reflected in the reservoir and voices whispering in the night. As the darkness of the Welsh valley closes in on Astrid, will she be able to run from the looming horror or be consumed by it?

Whether it is the past, the otherworldly, or the truth – they all haunt this menacing and claustrophobic novel.

Praise for Night Babies:

“A perfect psychological folk horror, where the internal landscape of its protagonist and the external landscape of the Brecon Beacons join together to become an uncanny piece of art. This is a story that carefully unravels its subjects, in which old sins cast long shadows and something dark is always lurking just beneath the surface” – Laura Elliott (Awakened)

“A considered, clever, creeping ghost story, with dark depths and dangerous undercurrents. Lucie McKnight Hardy is one of the best writers of the uncanny around” – Alison Littlewood (A Cold Season)

About the Author:

Lucie McKnight Hardy is the author of Water Shall Refuse Them, which was shortlisted for the Mslexia Novel Competition and longlisted for the Caledonia Novel Award and the short story collection Dead Relatives. Lucie grew up in West Wales and is a Welsh speaker. She has also lived in Liverpool, Cardiff, Zurich and Bradford, and now lives in Hay-on-Wye.