Lucie McKnight Hardy

The haunting new folk horror novel from Lucie McKnight HardyAstrid Aspden is a young and talented artist who has just secured her first solo exhibition. But in the weeks leading up to the exhibition her house is flooded and her paintings damaged. Overcome with despair and not knowing what to do, Astrid is thrown a lifeline by her best friend Flora who invites her to stay at a chapel she and her partner are renovating in the Brecon Beacons. While staying there Astrid learns about the unsettling history of the chapel and what lies beneath the nearby reservoir. Gradually, Astrid notices strange goings-on in the chapel: handprints on her paintings, shadowy figures in the gloaming, and voice whispering in the night. All the while things become tense between Astrid and Flora as sour memories flare up and deep wounds are laid bare. Whether it is the past, the otherworldly, or the truth - they all haunt this menacing and claustrophobic novel.

Dead Relatives and Other Stories is the highly anticipated, no-holds-barred short story collection from Lucie McKnight Hardy. Not for the faint-hearted, Dead Relatives invites you behind closed doors, and will leave you wondering if it's better that they're kept shut and firmly locked.

SOMETHING HAS FALLEN AWAY. We have lost a part of ourselves, our history, what we once were. That something, when we encounter it again, look it straight in the eyes, disgusts us, makes us retch. This is the horror of the abject. Following the success of Comma’s award-winning New Uncanny anthology, The New Abject invites leading authors to respond to two parallel theories of the abject – Julia Kristeva’s theory of the psychoanalytic, intimate abject, and Georges Bataille’s societal equivalent – with visceral stories of modern unease. As we become ever-more isolated by social media bubbles, or the demands for social distancing, our moral gag-reflex is increasingly sensitised, and our ability to tolerate difference, or ‘the other’, atrophies. Like all good horror writing, these stories remind us that exposure to what unsettles us, even in small doses, is always better than pretending it doesn’t exist. After all, we can never be wholly free of that which belongs to us.

The heatwave of 1976. Following the accidental drowning of her sister, sixteen-year-old Nif and her family move to a small village on the Welsh borders to escape their grief. But rural seclusion doesn’t bring any relief. As her family unravels, Nif begins to put together her own form of witchcraft – collecting talismans from the sun-starved land. That is, until she meets Mally, a teen boy who takes a keen interest in her, and has his own secret rites to divulge. Reminiscent of the suspense of Shirley Jackson and soaked in the folk horror of the British landscape, Water Shall Refuse Them is an atmospheric coming-of-age novel and a thrilling debut.

These 20 stories are the winners in the 2017 Retreat West Short Story and Flash Fiction prizes. A woman ventures out into a marsh at night seeking answers about herself that she cannot find; a man enjoys the solitude when his wife goes away for a few days; two young women make a get rich quick plan; and a father longs for the daughter that has gone to teach English in Japan. These stories and more make up a wonderful collection looking at relationships of all kinds - the ones we have with ourselves, our lovers, our friends and our mothers. They are funny, poignant, sad and strange but all beautifully written and a fine example of the wonderful writers from all around the world that are creating short stories and flash fictions today.