It’s the US paperback publication day for Melanie Golding’s debut psychological thriller, Little Darlings.
Published by Crooked Lane in the States and HarperCollins in the UK, Little Darlings is an unsettling, taut and tense thriller inspired by the ghostly folktale, “The Brewery of Eggs”, and is guaranteed to spark debate. It has been translated into eleven languages to date and optioned for screen by Free Range Films, the team behind the adaptations of My Cousin Rachel and Death of Stalin.
Since hardback publication in April 2019, Little Darlings has been selected as a Library Reads Pick. It’s received rave reviews from a number of publications, including The New York Times, who said that ‘Golding’s portrait of the female body as a reproductive spectacle – how creation tears it apart and disables it – is unforgettable‘, and Bustle who said it was ‘lyrical and atmospheric.’
We can’t wait for readers to get their hands on Little Darlings…
Everyone says Lauren Tranter is exhausted, that she needs rest. And they’re right; with newborn twins, Morgan and Riley, she’s never been more tired in her life. But she knows what she saw: that night, in her hospital room, a woman tried to take her babies and replace them with her own…creatures. Yet when the police arrived, they saw no one. Everyone, from her doctor to her husband, thinks she’s imagining things.
A month passes. And one bright summer morning, the babies disappear from Lauren’s side in a park. But when they’re found, something is different about them. The infants look like Morgan and Riley—to everyone else. But to Lauren, something is off. As everyone around her celebrates their return, Lauren begins to scream, These are not my babies.
Determined to bring her true infant sons home, Lauren will risk the unthinkable. But if she’s wrong about what she saw…she’ll be making the biggest mistake of her life.
Compulsive, creepy, and inspired by some of our darkest fairy tales, Little Darlings will have you checking—and rechecking—your own little ones. Just to be sure. Just to be safe.
Melanie Golding is a graduate of the MA in the creative writing program at Bath Spa University, with distinction. She has been employed in many occupations including farm hand, factory worker, childminder and music teacher. Throughout all this, because and in spite of it, there was always the writing. In recent years she has won and been shortlisted in several local and national short story competitions.
