Old Country
On sale
7th March 2023
Price: £9.99
‘It is almost impossible to put down’ – Lisa Tuttle, GUARDIAN
‘A stonking great slice of American folk horror: modern trauma layered with ancient evil’ – DAILY MAIL
The ranch was our dream home. Nestled in the arms of a valley below the Teton mountains, acres upon acres of wilderness, our nearest neighbours over a mile away . . .
Beautiful, serene – isolated.
Perfect. Until, naturally, the only neighbours for miles turned out to be crazy and delivered us a dire warning: The valley is cursed. Every season a spirit will manifest itself in increasingly disturbing ways, starting with an eerie light in the pond, and will kill you if you don’t light a fire and-
We made them leave then. Put it to the back of our minds and went about living our new, nearly perfect, lives.
Then spring came, and so did the light . . .
With piercing psychological insight and a profound feeling for the natural world, Old Country unspools an unrelenting narrative of terror and suspense.
*****
‘What started as the spookiest of tales on Reddit – I should know, as I love them – sparked a tour-de-force of a novel that perfectly renders the tensions of living in isolation and the unforgiving passage of the seasons’ – Thomas Olde Heuvelt, author of HEX and Echo
‘Old Country ramps up our day-to-day household rituals to dizzying heights of horror. Domestic bliss has never been more terrifying’ – Clay McLeod Chapman, author of Whisper Down The Lane
‘I genuinely found it very hard to put down . . . Is there such a thing as humanistic horror? If not, I think these guys might have just invented it’ – James Brogden, author of Hekla’s Children
‘A stonking great slice of American folk horror: modern trauma layered with ancient evil’ – DAILY MAIL
The ranch was our dream home. Nestled in the arms of a valley below the Teton mountains, acres upon acres of wilderness, our nearest neighbours over a mile away . . .
Beautiful, serene – isolated.
Perfect. Until, naturally, the only neighbours for miles turned out to be crazy and delivered us a dire warning: The valley is cursed. Every season a spirit will manifest itself in increasingly disturbing ways, starting with an eerie light in the pond, and will kill you if you don’t light a fire and-
We made them leave then. Put it to the back of our minds and went about living our new, nearly perfect, lives.
Then spring came, and so did the light . . .
With piercing psychological insight and a profound feeling for the natural world, Old Country unspools an unrelenting narrative of terror and suspense.
*****
‘What started as the spookiest of tales on Reddit – I should know, as I love them – sparked a tour-de-force of a novel that perfectly renders the tensions of living in isolation and the unforgiving passage of the seasons’ – Thomas Olde Heuvelt, author of HEX and Echo
‘Old Country ramps up our day-to-day household rituals to dizzying heights of horror. Domestic bliss has never been more terrifying’ – Clay McLeod Chapman, author of Whisper Down The Lane
‘I genuinely found it very hard to put down . . . Is there such a thing as humanistic horror? If not, I think these guys might have just invented it’ – James Brogden, author of Hekla’s Children
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Reviews
A stonking great slice of American folk horror: modern trauma layered with ancient evil
I admired the way the authors wrote about these completely impossible events and still managed to make them plausible, frightening and totally compelling
What started as the spookiest of tales on Reddit-I should know, as I love them-sparked a tour-de-force of a novel that perfectly renders the tensions of living in isolation and the unforgiving passage of the seasons of the natural world. On top of that, Old Country delivers an unyielding sense of dread and suspense. I can't wait for more from the Query brothers
Action-packed horror . . . Fans of Stephen King and Paul Tremblay will find this a satisfying escape into the woods
An extraordinarily assured debut: uncanny yet real, both lyrical and brutal, rich with truth about life and death
Who cooks? Who cleans? Who kills? Old Country ramps up our day-to-day household rituals to dizzying heights of horror. Domestic bliss has never been more terrifying
An artful chiller. Old Country stirs up our primal dread of a hostile wilderness, indifferent to man, that's reminiscent of such great works as Algernon Blackwood's The Wendigo
If you're a fan of creeping, atmospheric folk horror, the Brothers Query deliver. This book will have you peering out your window at the dark spaces between the trees, certain that someone - or something - is out there watching you back. Highly recommended
[Old Country] captures the incomprehensible terror of an ancient supernatural entity with great skill. The set-pieces are physically and emotionally brutal, and many times I genuinely found it very hard to put down. More than that, Harry's and Sasha's attempts to rationalise something that makes no effort to be accommodating becomes a powerful metaphor not just for their attempts to cope with the aftermath of his war-trauma, but also for humanity's relationship with the natural world. I like that there's no cosy resolution - no happy-ever-after, no world-consuming nihilism; this is a tale that says we must make our own peace with the horrors that we find, and so I suppose it's quite a celebration of the strength of the human spirit. Is there such a thing as humanistic horror? If not, I think these guys might have just invented it
This is classic supernatural horror, made freshly compelling with believable characters and perfect pacing. It is almost impossible to put down