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A new novel by the author of The Loney, which was praised by Stephen King as "an amazing piece of fiction."
In the wink of an eye, as quick as a flea,
The Devil he jumped from me to thee.
And only when the Devil had gone,
Did I know that he and I'd been one ...
Every autumn, John Pentecost returns to the farm where he grew up, to help gather the sheep down from the moors for the winter. Very little changes in the Endlands, but this year, his grandfather - the Gaffer - has died and John's new wife, Katherine, is accompanying him for the first time.
Each year, the Gaffer would redraw the boundary lines of the village, with pen and paper but also through the remembrance of tales and timeless communal rituals, which keep the sheep safe from the Devil. But as the farmers of the Endlands bury the Gaffer and prepare to gather the sheep, they begin to wonder whether they've let the Devil in after all.
"Starred Review. Hurley explores the mysteries of human behavior and how they might explain strange events - not to mention the evil that men do - better than demonic influence...A complex and highly satisfying work." - Kirkus
"Starred Review. an intensely suspenseful tale memorable for what it says about unshakable traditions that are bred in the bone." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. Like Hurley's celebrated debut, this beautifully told gothic story of love, obligation, and legacy blends genres superbly. Hurley is considered one of the leading figures in what is called the British folk-horror revival." - Booklist
"While not as gripping as The Loney, the work's dark tone and slow buildup of suspense will still interest readers of gothic fiction." - Library Journal
"The power of belief, the tyranny of tradition and the unsettling nature of a landscape that changes in a flicker from welcome to menace add up to a gorgeously written novel that leaves the reader wondering and perturbed." - Metro (UK)
"Impressively uncomfortable reading." - Times Literary Supplement (UK)
"The new master of menace. This chilling follow-up to The Loney confirms its author as a writer to watch ... Hurley doesn't need the Devil's help to grip you. His taut writing does that for him. Nature's routine cruelties are caught with a fierce accuracy that Ted Hughes would have admired." - Sunday Times (UK)
"This impeccably written novel tightens like a clammy hand around your throat." - Daily Mail (UK)
"This is a story with pull. Its lively, building sense of evil is thoroughly entangled with the assumptions of the way of life depicted, that apparently timeless relationship of the smallholder and the moor... The devil flickers and dances in the woods, and John Pentecost's self-deceptions are bared for the reader in a horrific climax." - Guardian (UK)
"This vivid tale of demonic high jinks in an isolated rural community is not for the lily-livered ... Hurley is a superb storyteller." - The Times (UK)
"Hurley's masterly second novel amply confirms the promise of his prize-winning debut" - Mail on Sunday (UK)
"Hurley's riveting, disturbing novel is about the ways in which both communities and families create myths to make sense of their pasts, and about how the comforting embrace of these myths can turn, if they are allowed to become too powerful, into a stranglehold." - The Literary Review (UK)
"[Hurley] beautifully captures a bleak landscape and the feeling of something evil and unknowable in the moors, the hills and the byways ... Hurley's nature descriptions are lithe and lyrical." - Sunday Express (UK)
"Like his debut, it is a work of gooseflesh eeriness … [Hurley's] prose is precise and his eye gimlet." - The Spectator (UK)
"Hidden horrors surface. Eerie malevolence flickers. Nature's routine cruelties are caught with a fierce accuracy that Ted Hughes would have admired." - The Sunday Times (UK)
"His haunted Lancashire is unlike any other location in English fiction." - The Daily Telegraph (UK)
"Hurley is a fine writer, with concerns that place him a little to the left of the literary mainstream, a remove that makes him extremely interesting." - Irish Times
This information about Devil's Day was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Andrew Michael Hurley is based in Lancashire. His first novel, The Loney, was published in twenty languages, and won the Costa Best First Novel Award and the Book of the Year at the British Book Industry Awards. Devil's Day, his second novel, was picked as a Book of the Year in five newspapers, and won the Encore Award.
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