Darker Days by Thomas Olde Heuvelt - ISBN: 9780857508195
Paperback
Small town, dark pact: happiness has a terrifying annual price.

Darker Days

$27.95

  • Paperback

    416 pages

  • Release Date

    4 November 2025

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Summary

Drawing on the darkness to be found in small-town American and familial life, the story of a group of individuals who’re trapped by a Faustian pact made over one hundred years before - a compelling, terrifying novel of which Stephen King would be very proud …

When the darker days fall, the debt must be paid… get ready for the chilling new folk horror from the Hugo Award-winning, bestselling author of HEX - from the publisher of The Exorcist and perfect for fans of Shirley Jackson and …

Book Details

ISBN-13:9780857508195
ISBN-10:0857508199
Author:Thomas Olde Heuvelt
Publisher:Transworld Publishers Ltd
Imprint:Bantam Books
Format:Paperback
Number of Pages:416
Release Date:4 November 2025
Weight:505g
Dimensions:234mm x 152mm x 30mm
What They're Saying

Critics Review

Darker Days is a meticulous work of terror, a harrowing drop into a moral nightmare. If you can imagine the philosophical oomph of Bergman’s The Seventh Seal joined to the rustic shocks of Midsommer, and all of it transported to America’s suburbia, you’d have something like Darker Days. It’s a scream. – JOE HILL, Sunday Times bestselling author of King Sorrow
No one builds agonizing tension like Thomas Olde Heuvelt. Darker Days is his best yet - a terrible sacrificial offering that doesn’t reveal its shocking nature until the very last page. – CATRIONA WARD, author of The Last House on Needless Street
Thomas Olde Heuvelt is back with another wicked, fascinating, chilling tale, expertly balancing the supernatural with the horrors inherent in human nature. Darker Days reinforces that Olde Heuvelt is one of the most vital and exciting voices in modern horror. – MIKE FLANAGAN, director of ‘Doctor Sleep’ and ‘The Haunting of Hill House’
This masterly work of horror, gripping and terrifying on more than one level, is probably Heuvelt’s best novel yet. * Guardian *
What price would you pay for a life of privilege? Darker Days is a new take on the Faustian bargain completely in keeping with our new age of greed and entitlement, with a twist at the end you won’t see coming. This is Olde Heuvelt at the height of his powers. – ALMA KATSU, author of The Hunger
A rich, witty and often gruesome tale that encompasses black humour and disturbing horror. Full of morally dubious but fascinating characters, questions about the nature of evil and moments of almost near-cinematic tensions, it’s a compelling and though provoking read. * SFX *
The devilish genius behind Hex brings us a new collision of sly suburban satire and devastating folkloric nightmare … the perfect read for fans of Shirley Jackson, Sarah Langan, and stories you wanna read from behind your fingers, as if that’ll somehow keep you safe from the escalating darkness. – NAT CASSIDY, bestselling author of When the Wolf Comes Home and I Know A Place
Darker Days begins on an uncomfortably grim and mysterious note. Olde Heuvelt increases the dread and tension over the course of this labyrinthine and distressing novel until the pressure is almost unbearable. There’s a distinctly unpleasant current of inevitability coursing beneath every page of this genuinely distressing work—the inevitability of ritual, retribution, sacrifice, and death. This is a daring and uncompromising jewel of horror fiction. Reminiscent of the flawless work of Stephen King, Michael McDowell, and Robert R. McCammon, but still completely its own singular and disturbing vision. – ERIC LaROCCA, author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke
Utterly creepy and mesmerising. * Irish Independent *
Darker Days is a remarkable and disturbing morality tale about the true cost of lucky lives. It’s a tremendous achievement by Thomas Olde Heuvelt as well as a frightening gift for readers. – OWEN KING, author of The Curator

About The Author

Thomas Olde Heuvelt

Thomas Olde Heuvelt is an international bestselling author from The Netherlands. His breakthrough novel Hex was published in over twenty-five countries and hailed as ‘totally, brilliantly original’ by Stephen King and as ‘phenomenal, phenomenal’ by film director Mike Flanagan. His follow-up novels Echo and Oracle have since seen global publication, the former boasts, according to the Guardian, ‘possibly the most frightening prologue ever written’, while the latter was judged by The New York Times to be his ‘sharpest, most compelling work to date’.

Olde Heuvelt, whose last name in Dutch dialect means ‘Old Hill’, was the first translated author to win a Hugo Award (for his short fiction, in 2015). He lives in the south of France with his partner and pet lizard.

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