The Borrowed Hills cover art

The Borrowed Hills

Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

The Borrowed Hills

By: Scott Preston
Narrated by: David Crellin
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

LIMITED TIME OFFER | £0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Premium Plus auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Terms apply.

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

Listeners also enjoyed...

Drayton and Mackenzie cover art
Human, Animal cover art
Our London Lives cover art
The Cold, Cold Ground cover art
The Fathers cover art
Nightmare Alley cover art
All stars
Most relevant
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

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

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

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

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

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

A difficult listen at times, but totally enthralling. Highly recommended but be prepared for sone bloody episodes.

Gripping story

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

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

Gripping

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

See more reviews