The Captive

A darkly comedic, cinematic horror about a revolutionary group who kidnap an heiress, only to discover she’s pregnant with the antichrist, and she’s about to give birth.

From Ned Beauman, the Man Booker Prize longlisted author of The Teleportation Accident and Clarke Award winning author of Venomous Lumpsucker. Perfect for fans of Grady Hendrix and Joe Hill.

For months, Luke and his underground revolutionary group have been planning their biggest operation yet: kidnapping 23-year-old Adeline Woolsaw. They don’t want a ransom – they want to expose the Woolsaw Group, the source of Adeline’s parents’ enormous wealth, a vast yet largely anonymous company that runs everything from military bases and mental hospitals to commuter trains, call centres, and prisons.

But the revolutionaries get a shock when they bundle Adeline into their van. She’s about to go into labour. And she may not object to being kidnapped, if it allows her and the baby to escape her despotic parents.

It quickly becomes apparent that this is no ordinary child. He’s capable of setting off deadly weather events and summoning plagues of vermin. And that’s just the beginning. Luke discovers that Adeline’s parents engineered the pregnancy as part of a dark bargain with an ancient evil of nearly limitless power. Now the Woolsaws and their henchmen will stop at nothing to get the infant back, so they can establish an infernal new kingdom on Earth with their grandchild on the throne.

Kit Burgoyne (pen name of Booker-nominated author Ned Beauman) is a ruthlessly funny new voice in horror: witty, appalling, and as adept at skewering today’s plutocratic overlords as he is at conjuring our most primeval nightmares.