Pine

WINNER of the McIlvanney Prize 2020

Shortlisted for Bloody Scotlands Scottish Crime Debut of the Year 2020

Longlisted for the Highland Book Prize 2020

Hugely atmospheric, exquisitely written and utterly gripping LUCY FOLEY, author of The Hunting Party

Its both eerie and thrilling at once, and had me under its spell until the end SOPHIE MACKINTOSH, author of Blue Ticket and The Water Cure

They are driving home from the search party when they see her. The trees are coarse and tall in the winter light, standing like men.

Lauren and her father Niall live alone in the Highlands, in a small village surrounded by pine forest. When a woman stumbles out onto the road one Halloween night, Niall drives her back to their house in his pickup. In the morning, shes gone.

In a community where daughters rebel, men quietly rage, and drinking is a means of forgetting, mysteries like these are not out of the ordinary. The trapper found hanging with the dead animals for two weeks. Locked doors and stone circles. The disappearance of Laurens mother a decade ago.

Lauren looks for answers in her tarot cards, hoping she might one day be able to read her fathers turbulent mind. Neighbours know more than they let on, but when local teenager Ann-Marie goes missing its no longer clear who she can trust.

In the shadow of the Highland forest, Francine Toon captures the wildness of rural childhood and the intensity of small-town claustrophobia. In a place that can feel like the edge of the word, she unites the chill of the modern gothic with the pulse of a thriller. It is the perfect novel for our haunted times.