John Murray
John Murray
John Murray
John Murray
The second novel from the author of the award-winning bestseller The Loney
BOOK OF THE YEAR IN THE TIMES, SUNDAY TIMES, FT, METRO AND MAIL ON SUNDAY
'The new master of menace' Sunday Times
After the blizzard of a century ago, it was weeks before anyone got in or out. By that time, what had happened there, what the Devil had done, was already fable.
Devil's Day is a day for children now, of course. A tradition it's easy to mock, from the outside. But it's important to remember why we do what we do. It's important to know what our grandfathers have passed down to us.
Because it's hard to understand, if you're not from the valley, how this place is in your blood.
That's why I came back, with Kat; it wasn't just because the Gaffer was dead.
Though that year we may have let the Devil in after all . . .
Hurley is a superb storyteller. He leads you up on to the moors, into the eye of a snowstorm, dropping little clues, sinister hints at devilment and demonic possession. Then he changes course, scuffs over the prints in the snow, springs new villainies on you, abandons you overnight in the hills - The Times
A masterly second novel - Mail on Sunday
This is a story with pull. Its lively, building sense of evil is thoroughly entangled with the assumptions of the way of life depicted, that apparently timeless relationship of the smallholder and the moor - Guardian
The nebulous presence of the Devil is evoked so palpably in this novel that at times I hardly dared look up when reading for fear of seeing him grinning at me from the chair next to mine . . . a riveting, disturbing novel - Literary Review
The new master of menace. This chilling follow-up to The Loney confirms its author as a writer to watch . . . Hurley doesn't need the devil's help to grip you. His taut writing does that for him. Nature's routine cruelties are caught with a fierce accuracy that Ted Hughes would have admired - Sunday Times
a work of goose-flesh eeriness . . . His prose is precise and his eye gimlet - The Spectator
Andrew Michael Hurley is adept at making his readers' spines tingle - The Times, Books of the Year
Expect pastoral lyricism - snowstorms sweeping in across an ancient landscape - spliced with gothic shivers - Mail on Sunday, Books of the Year
Andrew Michael Hurley is based in Lancashire. His first novel, The Loney, was originally published by Tartarus Press as a 300-copy limited edition, before being republished by John Murray. It went on to sell in twenty languages, win the Costa Best First Novel Award and the Book of the Year at the British Book Industry Awards. Devil's Day, his second novel, was picked as a Book of the Year in five newspapers, and won the Encore Award.