From the author of The Madness comes a haunting folk horror fable of lost sisters, old gods, and the terrible power of belief left to rot in the woods.

After the tragic death of their parents, the seven Ward sisters are sent to live with their grandmother on the remote forest island of Beltane, a place suspended between time and shadow. What begins as an attempt to mend their fractured lives soon twists into a waking nightmare, where grief bleeds into childhood fantasy and ancient rites awaken a dark and eerie devotion to Daudir, the Forgotten God of the Wood.

When another cruel tragedy strikes, the sisters are left to fend for themselves, learning to live with death as a constant, lurking presence. The fragile world they’ve carved splinters beneath the weight of isolation, and the forest around them grows restless…

Years later, a cryptic letter summons the surviving sisters home. Drawn back into the wild embrace of their dangerous faith, they confront a truth more terrible than memory, and the dreadful secret that waits, silent and sentient, in the depths of the all-seeing trees.

This lyrical and haunting folk horror explores how trauma can root itself in the soil of childhood, how love can curdle into obsession, and how gods, especially forgotten ones, never stay buried for long. But at its heart, it’s about sisters: how they fracture, survive, return, and reckon with what they’ve made together.

Dawn Kurtagich is the award-winning author of several YA horror novels, including her acclaimed debut The Dead House, And the Trees Crept In (The Creeper Man), Teeth in the Mist, and Blood on the Wind. The Madness and The Thorns are her first books for adults.

The daughter of a British globe-trotter, Kurtagich grew up all over the world, but her formative years were spent in Africa—on a mission, in the bush, in the city, and in the desert. She leaves her North Wales crypt after midnight during blood moons. The rest of the time, she exists somewhere between mushrooms, maggots, and mold.

You can always find the author on her website at www.dawnkurtagich.com.