18 February 2026
* FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE LAST HOUSE ON NEEDLESS STREET *
‘A dark, grimly compelling and very twisty tale’ – GUARDIAN
‘A beguiling, haunting modern fairy tale’ – DAILY EXPRESS
‘Beautifully written. Too compelling to put down’ – LITERARY REVIEW
The Nowhere Children are expecting you…
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 a 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 lost young men who would never go home.
Years later, Nowhere valley has become a sanctuary for runaway children, a place where adults cannot enter. Drawn by this promise, fourteen-year-old Riley pulls her brother Oliver from his bed in the middle of the night, hoping to find a new family. But the Nowhere Children are fierce in defending their valley and their secrets. For something dark lives in the ruins of Nowhere House, something that asks a terrible price for sanctuary…
‘Nowhere Burning is nothing short of spellbinding’ – OLIVIE BLAKE
‘So sharp and beautiful it draws blood and leaves scars’ – GRADY HENDRIX
‘Gorgeous, dangerous, mythic and horrific. A remarkable storyteller’ – A.J. FINN
Can you talk a bit about the inspiration for your latest novel, Nowhere Burning? How did this story begin for you?
I was driving through southern California with my family when my brother in law pointed at an unmarked dirt road, leading up into the hills. ‘That’s Neverland Ranch,’ he said. It was a moment of cognitive dissonance – Neverland was an idea, not a place, in my imagination. It looms. I started wondering what went on there.
To be clear Nowhere is not Neverland – they are very different. But the idea of a great decaying estate, full of rusting fairground rides, was irresistible. I wondered what might happen if children in need of a haven found sanctuary there – and also a cost.
The novel draws comparisons to classic stories of lawless children, such as Peter Pan and The Lord of the Flies, and the character of Leaf Winham (the disgraced movie star who built Nowhere House, with its fairground rides, menagerie and Ferris wheel) has parallels with a certain dead celebrity. Did you have these references in mind while writing or did they materialise over the course of the book?
I knew I wanted to talk about power, the mythology of fame, and the culture of impunity. I wanted to explore the way the land can absorb that mythology in its own right. Can you find safety in a place where horror resides? How much do we create that horror through storytelling?
The landscape is such a key part of the storytelling in this novel, you really get the sense that Nowhere valley is alive and somehow altering the characters who end up there. What made you decide on the Colorado Rockies as the place to set Nowhere Burning?
Landscape is one of the first things I start with when I write a novel. It’s a gothic impulse – the sublime, the wild, the fragility of our lives in nature. Mountains don’t care about us. The beauty of the Colorado Rockies in particular is spectacular. We don’t have too many wildernesses left, these days – we both yearn for them and fear them. The mountains can protect you – they can also, of course, swallow you whole.
The novel follows a large cast of characters and we experience it through multiple points of view. Was this always your plan, or did you begin with one character’s voice and then decide to broaden the perspectives?
Riley is the heart of this book. Her love for her little brother, her determination to protect him governs everything she does. I tend to write in interlocking first person narratives – everyone in the book is telling the truth, as they see it. The story lies somewhere in the spaces between. I like to put the reader so closely into someone’s head that it’s almost uncomfortable.
There’s some fantastically unsettling folk horror running through the novel. Were there are films or books that either inspired you or that you’d recommend to people looking to explore more of this sub-genre?
Lord of the Flies, Peter Pan, Midsommar – all these are influences. It’s old wisdom – that you must pay the land for its bounty, for sheltering you. The Wicker Man and even Shirley Jackson’s iconic short story, The Lottery, explore this. And The Nowhere children pay the land in a particularly unsettling way.
But Nowhere Burning also harks back to the adventure stories I read as a child – The Call of the Wild, The Silver Brumby, The Last of the Mohicans, A Light in the Forest. It is exhilarating to be removed from everyday modern human concerns, and these books transport you. I was so excited when I first saw the cover for Nowhere Burning. It captures this feeling beautifully – we see two children, walking together, into the unknown wild.
