Blood Harvest » (First Edition)

S. J. BOLTON grew up in Lancashire, England, and now lives near Oxford with her family. An ITW and Mary Higgins Clark Award nominee, her fascination with British folklore, especially the dark and haunting side of those legends, fuels her writing. This is her third novel.

The Fletchers' beautiful new house is everything they dreamed it would be. Built between two churches in Heptonclough, a small village on the moors that time forgot, it ought to be paradise for this young family of five, but they barely have a chance to settle in before they find that they’re anything but welcome. Someone seems to be trying to drive them away--at first with silly pranks but then with threats that become increasingly dangerous, especially to the oldest child, ten-year-old Tom Fletcher, who begins to believe that someone is always watching him.

The adults in Tom’s life are trying to help, including his parents; the vicar next door, younger and more dashing than you’d expect a vicar to be; and a therapist, Evi Oliver, who believes him more than she wants to. But there are other clues that something isn’t quite right in Heptonclough, including the mysterious accidental deaths of three toddlers over the last ten years. It is not until Tom’s siblings, two-year-old Milly and five-year-old Joe Fletcher, go missing in turn that the little village’s evil secret turns the Fletchers’ dreams into a nightmare.

With Sacrifice, Awakening, and now Blood Harvest, S. J. Bolton displays time and time again her remarkable talent as a beguiling storyteller, a master of thrills, and the mistress of her own brand of modern Gothic tale.

Publishers Weekly

In Bolton’s superb third thriller, the Fletchers—mother Alice, father Gareth, 10-year-old Tom, six-year-old Joe, and two-year-old Millie—receive an icy welcome on moving to isolated Heptonclough, England. When Tom swears he sees a young girl watching him from the shadows, everyone assumes it’s his overactive imagination or maybe local kids playing a joke. But when one such prank puts Millie’s life in danger, the Rev. Harry Laycock, a vicar who’s also new to the area, suspects something more sinister might be at work. Through Dr. Evi Oliver, a psychiatrist, Harry meets a patient of Evi’s, Gillian Royle, who’s still distraught over the death of her young daughter in a mysterious house fire three years earlier. Harry soon discovers disturbing links between the death of Gillian’s daughter and the fates of two other girls. Bolton (Awakening) expertly balances the gothic supernatural elements with a crackling psychological plot, leaving readers breathless until the last page. (June)