Night Babies

by Lucie McKnight Hardy

'All my fears have vanished, and I realise now that my dreams were not nightmares but a sign of what was to come, how this will end. An inevitability.'

Things were looking up for Astrid Aspden and her partner, Kit, until their house flooded. With Astrid's first solo art exhibition just weeks away, her paintings are ruined and excitement has turned to despair.

She is thrown a lifeline when her best friend Flora invites her to stay in a run-down chapel she and her partner, Sim, are renovating in the Brecon Beacons. As Astrid and Kit settle into their new surroundings to salvage her work, they soon learn about the unsettling history of the chapel and what lies beneath the nearby reservoir.

As the weeks go by, tensions simmer between Astrid and Flora as sour memories flare up from their teenage past and deep wounds are laid bare from an ill-fated school trip to Florence. Her relationship with Kit begins to fray as the chapel and the surrounding hostile beauty of the valley begin to intrude on their lives.

Astrid throws herself into her work but the longer she spends in the chapel the more she begins to notice things: handprints on her paintings, shadowy figures reflected in the reservoir and voices whispering in the night. As the darkness of the Welsh valley closes in on Astrid, will she be able to run from the looming horror or be consumed by it?

Whether it is the past, the otherworldly, or the truth—they all haunt this menacing and claustrophobic novel.

400 pages, Kindle Edition

Expected publication January 1, 2026

About the author

I am a writer of novels and short stories.

I grew up in West Wales and am a Welsh speaker. I have also lived in Liverpool, Cardiff, Zurich and Bradford, and have now settled in the far eastern reaches of Herefordshire, at the foot of the Malvern Hills, where I live with my husband, three children and other assorted creatures.

I have worked in the advertising, public relations and marketing industries, and have an MA in Creative Writing from Manchester Metropolitan University.

I am represented by Donald Winchester at Watson Little.

Reviews

[Georgina Reads_Eats_Explores · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some books don’t creep up on you quietly. They barge straight in and start rearranging your head. Night Babies by Lucie McKnight Hardy is one of those. From the first few pages, there’s a pulse of unease, that low hum that tells you something isn’t right, and before you know it, you’re knee-deep in dread.

Astrid Aspden should be having her moment, her first solo exhibition, a fresh start with her partner, Kit. But life being life, there’s a flood, a pile of ruined paintings, and a desperate invitation to stay in her friend’s half-renovated chapel in rural Wales. What starts as a favour becomes a slow, exquisite unravelling.

The chapel, with its rotting edges and strange whispers, is a character in itself, one that doesn’t so much haunt Astrid as consume her. The landscape, too, plays its part: that wild Welsh beauty that appears picture perfect from afar but conceals something ancient and unfriendly beneath. Having walked parts of the Beacons myself, I could practically smell the damp earth and feel the cold air biting at the back of my neck. Hardy captures that kind of setting so precisely that it’s like she’s bottling dread.

Astrid’s mind starts to fray, and Hardy makes sure we feel every thread come loose. Her descent is brilliantly drawn; she’s disturbed, certainly, but the line between internal madness and external haunting is deliciously blurred. The tension between her and her old friend Flora, the echoes of their shared past in Florence, and the growing distance with her partner Kit, all pull at the seams of her sanity. Every relationship in the book feels taut, ready to snap, and when it does well, it’s not a clean break.

The horror here isn’t loud; it’s creeping, psychological, soaked in grief and guilt, the kind that gets under your skin, curls up somewhere dark, and stays there.

I read this via NetGalley, and I’m so sorry to say you’ll have to wait until April to get your hands on it, but trust me, it’ll be worth the wait. Creepy, claustrophobic, and gorgeously written, Night Babies is one of those rare reads that can make you question whether the horror is really in the house or in your own head.

Brooding, brilliant, and quietly devastating, the kind of book that seeps into your bones and doesn’t leave when you turn the last page. I’ll be hunting down everything Hardy has ever written.

[BeccaJBooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was so creepy and disturbing. The atmosphere and setting made this book complete. The rugged landscape and natural beauty elevated this and just made the whole thing such a treat to read. The main character was deeply disturbed, pretty much from the outset, and her descent into 'madness' was perfect. All the peripheral characters were well written and 'fleshed out'. I loved everything about this book.

[Cath · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was lucky enough to get my hands on a proof of this novel before its release next year at the same time as a visit to the Brecon Beacons, making the descriptions of this stunning location even more vivid. An incredible read full of brooding menace. The characterisation of the principal protagonist is developed in each chapter both as the story unfolds and as we glimpse into her psyche through flashbacks to a fraught school trip to Florence. The slow building horror made it impossible for me to put the book down and the gradual descent to the final conclusion was superb. A fabulous half term read.

[Lucy Skeet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Holyyyy shit I’m gonna need everyone to read this when it comes out. This is the type of horror I want to read, literary horror. This was a slow burn until it wasn’t and holy shit the ending!! Nothing prepared me for that.

Thanks so much to John Murray for my copy, review to come soon on insta!

[Contrary Reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh my days! What a creepfest. So many eerie elements coming together. Foreshadowing for days. It felt like the evil was alive and creeping closer. So claustrophobic!