Beginning with his acclaimed 2018 debut novel The Loney, the English writer Andrew Michael Hurley has spooked readers with his tales of strange rural communities – and now they're moving to film and TV. His publisher bills him as "the master of menace", Stephen King is a big fan, and the film version of his third novel, Starve Acre, starring Morfydd Clark from Amazon's The Rings of Power and ex-Doctor Who Matt Smith, has been shocking audiences across the US and the UK this year. As the author of chilling literary fiction, Andrew Michael Hurley has earned a large following with his first three books – and is now releasing his fourth, short-story collection Barrowbeck.
A British writer with an international readership, his debut novel The Loney was translated into 20 languages and earned stellar reviews: The Washington Post critic Nancy Hightower described it as "masterful" and "unsettling in the most compelling way". Earlier this year, a small-screen adaptation of it was announced, which is set to be made by Jonathan Van Tulleken, a director of hit TV series Shogun and the upcoming show Blade Runner 2099. Work in the horror genre is rarely lauded for the quality of its writing, but Hurley's novels have broken the mould, winning both plaudits and prestigious literary prizes.
"Gothic has enjoyed quite a high literary status – if we think of the enduring classics like Wuthering Heights, Rebecca, Frankenstein – whereas books classified simply as 'horror' haven't always be.