Nowhere Burning

A refuge for lost children may also be their prison...
High in the mountains sits Nowhere, a verdant valley surrounded by walls of rock. People have lived at Nowhere for centuries, though never for long, and rarely happily. Its last owner was its most famous: movie star Leaf Winham, who built Nowhere House as his refuge, to hide from his fame... and to hide his crimes. Only when Nowhere House went up in flames were the graves discovered, the last resting places of five young men who would never go home.
Years later, fourteen-year-old Riley pulls her brother Oliver from his bed in the middle of the night, drawn by the promise of Nowhere. It is rumoured that the valley is now a refuge for lost children that adults cannot enter, and Riley hopes to find a new family there. Beyond the barred gates, Marc has come to make a documentary about the Nowhere Children and the legacy of Leaf Winham. But the children are fierce in defending their valley and their secrets. There is darkness in the ruins of Nowhere House, something which asks a terrible price for sanctuary...

Catriona Ward was born in Washington, DC, and grew up in the US, Kenya, Madagascar, Yemen and Morocco. She read English at the University of Oxford and spent several years working as an actor in New York. When she returned to the UK she worked on her first novel while writing for a human rights foundation, then took an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. Her first novel, Rawblood, was published in 2015 and won the August Derleth Award for Best Horror Novel in 2016. She won again in 2018 for Little Eve, which also won the prestigious Shirley Jackson Award. In 2021 she published her bestselling novel The Last House on Needless Street, which was both a Richard and Judy Book Club and BBC Two Between the Covers Book Club pick. It was awarded the August Derleth Award in 2022, making Ward the only woman to prize three times. She was shortlisted again for her fourth novel, Sundial, in 2023. Her fifth novel, Looking Glass Sound, was shortlisted the Fingerprint Genre-Busting Book of the Year in 2024. Her next novel, Nowhere Burning, will be published by Viper in 2025.