Hesket

'Sara Bayat is a stunning new talent' Bridget Walsh

Unsettling things are happening in rural Norfolk. At first glance, Hesket is a blink-and-you-miss it village, a seemingly unremarkable place that belies its horrifying history. There are tales of witch trials and death, of a curse that lies dormant in the landscape where the women condemned as witches are buried, and a great flood that long ago washed Old Hesket away.

In present-day Hesket, a new development is planned for this woodland. Following various different voices in which the ordinary and the peculiar converge, Hesket: A Norfolk Haunting chronicles a quiet community of hard-working people, each contending with their own losses amidst daily life. To their horror, the sacred grounds of their beloved old woods are earmarked for development.

As the work commences, despite village protests, strange and unexplained events begin to occur and the lives of the villagers start to disintegrate. While each of the eight characters has their own story to tell, beautifully and heart-rendingly encapsulated within individual chapters, the narrative connects them in a broader tale of jealousy, love, bereavement and joy from beginning to end.

Merging psychological realism and rural terror, Hesket: A Norfolk Haunting is a compelling, uncanny page-turner from debut novelist Sara Bayat.