Description

‘Where is Evelyn? Oh, I remember. She took our eyes.’

Winner of the British Fantasy Award for Best Horror and the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel.

New Year’s Day, 1921. Seven mutilated bodies are discovered in an ancient stone circle on a remote Scottish island. The victims are ‘the Children’ – members of a nature cult ruled by the charismatic, sadistic patriarch, the adder.

The sole survivor of the massacre, Dinah, claims that Eve is the murderer, apparently drowned while attempting her escape. Yet as Eve’s story of the years leading up the massacre intertwines with Dinah’s account of the aftermath, a darker, stranger truth begins to emerge.

The Isle is all Eve knows. Hidden from the world, the Children worship the Great Snake who dwells in the ocean, dance in the stones at dawn and offer their blood in sacrifice. The adder’s word is law. When Eve is forced into the world beyond the Isle her faith and love are tested by unexpected friendships that make her question everything. As she begins to see through the adder’s macabre fictions, the world Eve knows collapses. Does she lose her humanity with her belief? Does it drive her to kill?

A heart-pounding literary thriller with a devastating twist.

Publisher Review

A wonderful literary gothic tale -- Sarah Pinborough Catriona Ward doesn't hold back on colour: the desolate island her characters inhabit, with its carefully described constant crashing waves, is conjured so vividly you could almost taste the salty air. * SCI FI NOW * Little Eve brims with dark energy, full of haunting, surprising turns. You will be guessing and gasping till the end -- Philip Womack Little Eve is brilliantly plotted, wonderfully well written and full of surprises. It has perfect timing, line by line -- Andrew Cowan, author of PIG and WORTHLESS MEN Little Eve is a sublime, utterly compelling tale which grabbed me by the lapels and wouldn't let go. A dark, beautiful, gleaming novel. I loved it -- Irenosen Okojie A smart and moving examination of self delusion and the lengths people go to to keep faith . . . I raced through it -- Kiran Millwood Hargrave, author of VARDO You liked The Wasp Factory? Meet Little Eve -- Natasha Pulley, author of THE WATCHMAKER OF FILIGREE STREET