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Picador has won a four-way auction for The Hill in the Dark Grove, the debut novel by Liam Higginson.
Picador publishing director, Sophie Jonathan, acquired UK and Commonwealth rights in what the publisher tipped a "hotly contested" bidding war between four publishers from Louise Buckley at Hannah Sheppard Literary Agency.
Picador are set to publish The Hill in the Dark Grove in hardback, e-book and audiobook in January 2026. The Hill in the Dark Grove is about Carwyn and Rhian, “an elderly couple – the last in a long family line of sheep farmers – living out a brutal year in their hillside farm deep in the mountains of Snowdonia”, Picador said.
The synopsis reads: “When Carwyn stumbles across a stone circle and some sort of burial mound in one of the fields on their land, he quickly develops an obsession. His wife, Rhian, meanwhile, is confronted with the growing realisation that the man with whom she shares her life and home is slowly becoming a frightening stranger.
“As the harsh Snowdonia winter closes in, she finds herself alone with her increasingly peculiar husband, and the mountains, and the looming megalithic stones.”
Jonathan said: “The Hill in the Dark Grove is a novel that captures all the vibrating power of Snowdonia and its ancient landscape, that twists together Welsh folklore and a story of love and loyalty to create a literary novel like no other: the story of lives dictated by the land and a livelihood that feels like it is being lost to time.
“That Liam is able to blend that extraordinary world-building craft, the ability to make his landscape a living, breathing thing, with genuinely thrilling plotting and perfectly pitched love, longing, anger, politics and pride, is amazing to me. The Hill in the Dark Grove is the debut novel of a writer to watch, and I couldn’t be more excited to welcome him to the Picador list.”
Buckley said: “The Hill in the Dark Grove is beautifully written yet deeply chilling, a book that held me captivated until the final page.”
Higginson, who works in the arcade management office at Llandudno Pier, said: “When something as wonderful and terrifying as your debut novel being picked up by your dream publisher actually happens, it’s hard not to think in terms of clichés and platitudes.
“I can only say how incredibly grateful I am to my agent Louise, and to Sophie and her colleagues at Picador for all their encouragement and enthusiasm. If readers are even a fraction as kind about the book as they’ve all been, I’ll have to keep pinching myself for at least a few more months.”
Born in rural north Wales, Higginson wrote the novel as “a haunting tribute to the mountains of his childhood, the myths of his homeland, and the resilience of love in the face of the merciless passage of time", Picador said.