Woodworm

‘Tense, chilling’ MARIANA ENRIQUEZ

'Lays bare intergenerational horror, feminine rage and the taking back of power' STYLIST

'Incredible' FINANCIAL TIMES

The house breathes.

The house contains bodies and secrets.

The house is visited by ghosts, by angels that line the roof like insects, and by saints that burn the bedsheets with their haloes.

Nobody ever leaves.

The house was built by a small-time hustler as a means of controlling his wife, and even after so many years, their daughter and her granddaughter can’t leave.

They may be witches or they may just be angry, but when the mysterious disappearance of a young boy from a local wealthy family draws unwanted press attention, the two isolated women, already subjects of public scorn, combine forces with the spirits that haunt them in pursuit of something that resembles justice.

Layla Martínez’s eerie debut novel Woodworm is class-conscious horror that drags generations of monsters into the sun.

Translated by Sophie Hughes and Annie McDermott

**Readers love Woodworm**

‘It draws you in and slams the door behind you’
‘A monstrous debut’
‘I want to read this book again and again’
‘Biting and inventive’
‘Shirley Jackson by way of Lina Wolff’
‘Deeply, and wonderfully, unsettling’
‘Evokes horrific imagery with a poetic, gnashing tongue’
‘Extraordinary!’