Salt lands Zoe Apostolides' folk-horror debut
Salt will publish Zoë Apostolides’ “scintillating” supernatural debut, The Homecoming.
Christopher Hamilton-Emery, director of Salt, acquired world rights, excluding German, from Lisa Moylett at Coombs Moylett Maclean. It will be published as a paperback original in July 2025.
The Homecoming is a mystery and folk-horror set in a remote manor in Northumberland, UK. Ellen, a young ghost-writer, is sent to record the memoirs of the elderly Catherine Carey at the dilapidated estate. But as Ellen builds a picture of Miss Carey’s life in the lonely, damp corner of the country, she realises that she is being haunted by much more than the past.
“This is a story about isolation, memory, spirits and secrets and intergenerational friendship,” Salt said.
Apostolides, who is based in London, said: “In this book, I wanted to create the sort of haunted-house novel I love to read while imagining a dialogue between two women separated by the span of more than half a century, exploring our attitudes to the elderly, to cognitive decline, and how an untamed environment might mirror that decline.”
Hamilton-Emery said: “Zoë’s scintillating debut is a slippery tale of ghosts and dark legacies drawn together by a compelling friendship that is challenged by unsettling revelations. It’s a superb tale that is bound to tease, delight and thrill its readers.”
Apostolides was born in south London in 1990. She began her career in magazine and newspaper journalism after graduating from the University of Oxford, and has written for a variety of print and online media including the Times Literary Supplement. She has written several works of non-fiction including End of Innocence, published by independent Mardle Books in 2022. The Homecoming is her first novel.
