In a January 2026 blog post, Welsh author Liam Higginson cited Shirley Jackson and Stephen King as two of his main literary influences. While it's obviously too early to place him in the same rank as these masters of horror, Higginson's debut novel, The Hill in the Dark Grove, is a thoroughly atmospheric and quietly unsettling story that's both original and faithful to the spirit of their works.
Set in the rugged mountains and valleys of Higginson's native North Wales, The Hill in the Dark Grove tells the story of Carwyn Gwynnant and his wife, Rhian. The childless couple in their 60s operate a failing sheep farm that's been in Carwyn's family for generations. Now mired in debt, they fear an auction sale that will transfer their property to "some rich landowner from England" who will turn it into a luxurious vacation estate. They're determined to forestall that event indefinitely through their tireless labor and some clever evasive tactics.
But the novel is far from a conventional story of rural persistence in the face of straitened circumstances. Its mountains are "the abode of witches and giants and gods," and the supernatural has long played a prominent role in the lives and culture of their inhabitants, which Higginson reveals in some of the brief, evocative glimpses of Welsh history, legend, and myth that open each chapter. Its presence grows more insistent as the story unfolds.
When Carwyn stumbles upon a carved stone face in one of his fields, he embarks on a project to excavate a site that gives him the "sense of gazing out across a dizzying abyss of time," even as it emits a "grave-scent that betokened sanctity and death entwined." His tunneling eventually produces a dozen standing stones, suggesting some sort of religious shrine that may date to the Neolithic period. But his dedication to this solitary archeological dig gradually crosses the line into obsession. As he increasingly neglects his farming duties, Rhian's dread that her partner of 40 years has summoned something dark and terrible from the earth overtakes her life. That fear drives the novel's plot and provides its psychological depth.
Higginson's lush descriptions gracefully evoke the beguiling but often treacherous beauty of the Welsh countryside. He traces the changing seasons over a span of roughly 10 months. A summer sun "already a searing ulcer on the blistered sky" and a howling blizzard composed of "shards of ice that pelted her like birdshot," subtly underscore how tightly his characters' lives are tied to forces--natural and supernatural--beyond their control. All of this enhances a sense of terror that's slow building, but no less powerful for that fact. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer
Shelf Talker: Liam Higginson's debut novel is a brooding tale of a Welsh farming couple's encounter with dark forces unleashed from an ancient archeological site.