Lost in the Garden

Blackwell's Exclusive Edition of 1,500 copies Signed and Numbered by the author


Winner Fiction Nero Book Awards 2024

Wibalin Natural Black with White Pigment Foil, pink sprayed edges.

‘Eerily enchanting and profoundly inventive, Adam S. Leslie’s Lost in the Garden is a dreamy and unsettling masterwork written with such care and aplomb. In this perfectly composed and dazzlingly intricate folk horror phantasmagoria, reality becomes infected while a charming and yet deeply sinister strangeness crawls from page to page, chapter to chapter. This is one of the freshest and most spiritually rewarding novels I’ve read in quite some time.’ -- Eric LaRocca, author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke

Like an old wives’ tale, like a piece of wisdom passed down through generations which no one questioned of even thought about too hard. Like folklore. It was just something everyone knew, a rule to be followed. Don’t go to Almanby.

Heather, Rachel and Antonia are going to Almanby.

Heather needs to find her boyfriend who, like so many, went and never came back.

Rachel has a mysterious package to deliver, and her life depends on it.

And Antonia - poor, lovestruck Antonia just wants the chance to spend the day with Heather.

So off they set through the idyllic yet perilous English countryside, in which nature thrives in abundance and summer lasts forever, and as they travel through ever-shifting geography and encounter strange voices in the fizz of shortwave radio, the harder it becomes to tell friend from foe.

Creepy, dreamlike, unsettling and unforgettable - you are about to join the privileged few who come to understand exactly why we don't go to Almanby.

"I have read 'Lost in the Garden' twice now, and I suspect I shall be reading it on and off for the rest of my life. It is rare to find a book that is quite literally sui generis these days, and one must treasure those that are. In essence it is the story of a road trip, with quirky meanderings, troubling happenings, living ghosts and existential crises occuring throughout . . . the story whips you along and you cannot help wanting to know what happens next. There are some extremely good jokes and a great homage to the allure of the ice-cream van, something that a 70s boy like myself finds most evocative. Whatever genre you favour you will find something that chimes here; science fiction, fantasy, crime, road-trip, domestic comedy, folk horror, you name it, it's here. Maybe not Mills & Boon. Do yourself a favour and treat yourself to a read like no other." - Peter McMullin, Blackwell's Oxford