The Loney
Shortlisted for the James Herbert Award.
The Loney is a superb new slow-burn British horror novel in the tradition of The Wicker Man.
Exploring issues of faith and the survival of older beliefs, Andrew Michael Hurley’s beautifully atmospheric and moving novel has at its heart the relationship between two London Catholic boys, Smith and his mute, mentally disabled brother Hanny.
The discovery of the remains of a young child during winter storms along the bleak Lancashire coastline leads Smith back to the Saint Jude’s Church Easter pilgrimage to The Loney in 1976. Not all of the locals are pleased to see the Catholic party in the area, and some puzzling events occur. Smith and Hanny, the youngest members of the party, become involved with a glamorous couple staying at a nearby house with their young charge, the heavily pregnant Else. Prayers are said for Hanny at the local shrine, but he also inadvertently becomes involved in more troubling rites. Secrets are kept, and disclosed.
After the pilgrimage, a miracle — of one kind or another — occurs. Smith feels he is the only one to know the truth, and he must bear the burden of his knowledge, no matter what the cost.
ISBN 978-1-905784-69-1.
The Loney is a sewn hardback of 278 pages, printed lithographically, with silk ribbon marker, head and tailbands, and d/w and decorated boards.
Publication 1st October 2014.
Limited to 300 signed copies.
Andrew Michael Hurley
Andrew Michael Hurley (born 1975) is a British writer whose debut novel, The Loney, was published in a limited edition of 278 copies on 1 October 2014 by Tartarus Press and was published under Hodder and Stoughton's John Murray imprint in 2015. He was interviewed on BBC Radio 4's Open Book programme "British Gothic" in October 2015.
The Loney has been reviewed in The Guardian and The Telegraph. It is set in the area of Morecambe Bay in north west England, described in the text as "that strange nowhere between the Wyre and the Lune". Hurley has said that the novel's two starting points were "to write a kind of dark version of the Nativity [...] and exploring ideas of faith and belief" and "various wild, lonely places on the north west coast of Lancashire [...] a sense of imminent menace or dormant power lying just under the sand and the water". It is the winner of the 2015 Costa Book Awards First Novel Award as well as the British Book Industry award for best debut fiction and book of the year.
More books by Andrew Michael Hurley
