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The Borrowed Hills

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About this listen

 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.©2024 Scott Preston (P)2024 Hodder & Stoughton Limited Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Small Town & Rural
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Great story, original, gripping and beautifully told. The narrator really makes it perfect. It’s described as a neo-Western which is appropriate. It reminds of of Cormac McCarthy in its depiction of brutal men against an unforgiving but beautiful backdrop.

Fantastic

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Brilliantly written, brilliantly read. beautiful descriptions of the fells that captures a fair amount of hardness and ruggedness along the way. gripping story to boot. couldn't get enough of the narration either, what a voice.

exciting and entrancing

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I loved this book... did a four hour stretch on audible because I couldn't leave it alone. Like Snitter with a bone

Brutal, gritty, real

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I’m not familiar with this part of England so I appreciated the story and narration for its difference to many audiobooks I’ve listened to. It felt modern and ancient at the same time.

Sounds of sheep and stones

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Gripped from the start, excellent story turned thriller later on. The writing and narrator brings the rough lands of Cumbria to life.

Gripping

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