The Borrowed Hills

SHORTLISTED FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES YOUNG WRITER OF THE YEAR AWARD 2025

SHORTLISTED FOR THE AUTHOR'S CLUB BEST FIRST NOVEL AWARD 2025

LONGLISTED FOR THE ONDAATJE PRIZE 2025

'Viscerally vivid . . . a sucker-punch of a novel, edged with knife-sharp black humour and shot through with moments of startling beauty . . . half Tarantino and half pitch-black northern realism' Guardian

'A tremendously exciting novel . . . A brilliantly realized voice: Steve's every utterance is the product of where he comes from . . . as blunt and brutal as the fells he works among' Times Literary Supplement

'A spiky, precisely focused novel with flavour, intensity, and oodles of character' The Times

'Preston's debut arrives like a punch to the gut . . . This is an elemental tale shaded in tones of heroism, machismo, moral intensity, and mythmaking. It's also a love song to the landscape . . . Gritty, gripping, and fearlessly committed' Kirkus

'Exhilarating, and so eccentric and epic, it feels like a Coen brothers film. A brilliant, new, modern voice . . . so unique, so dark and so bleak, and yet it rises to breathtaking heights of poetry' Russel T Davies

'Taught, intelligent and beautifully told' M. J. Hyland

'A startlingly original addition to the literature of northern England' Ian McGuire

'A powerful evocation of a landscape and a way of life' Joseph Kanon

With foot and mouth disease spreading across the hills of Cumbria, emptying the valleys of sheep and filling the skies with smoke, two neighbouring shepherds lose everything and put aside their rivalry to join forces. They set their sights on a wealthy farm in the south with its flock of prize-winning animals. So begins the dark tale of Steve Elliman and William Herne.

Their sheep rustling leads to more and more difficult decisions, and Steve's only distraction is his growing fascination with William's enigmatic and independent wife, Helen. As their home comes under the sway of a lawless outsider, it is left to Steve to save himself and Helen in a savage conflict that threatens an ancient way of life.

Lyrical, cinematic and steeping in folklore, Scott Preston creates an uncompromising vision of farmers lost in brutal devotion to their flocks, the aching love affairs that men and women use to sustain themselves and the painful consequences of a breathtaking heist gone bad. The Borrowed Hills is a thrilling adventure that reimagines the American Western for the fells of northern England.