“…the kind of book you stay up
all night to finish.”
“A dark, strange, and joyful book about sticking by your best friends in the face of a monstrous world.”
Coming June 2023
Three girls went into the woods. Only two came back, covered in blood and with no memory of what happened. Or did they?
Being fifteen is tough, tougher when you live in a boring-ass small town like Little Hope, California (population 8,302) in 1996. Donna, Rae and Kat keep each other sane with the fervour of teen girl friendships, zine-making and some amateur sleuthing into the town's most enduring mysteries: a lost gold mine, and why little Ronnie Gaskins burned his parents alive a decade ago.
Their hunt will lead them to a hidden cave from which only two of them return alive. Donna the troublemaker can't remember anything. Rae seems to be trying to escape her memories of what happened, while her close-minded religious family presses her for answers. And Kat? Sweet, wannabe writer Kat who rebelled against her mom's beauty pageant dreams by getting fat? She's missing. Dead. Or terribly traumatised, out there in the woods, alone.
As the police circle and Kat's frantic mother Marybeth starts doing some investigating of her own, Rae and Donna will have to return to the cave where they discover a secret so shattering that no-one who encounters it will ever be the same.
PRE-ORDER
US pre-orders
“Funny, uncanny, rich with dark nostalgia. Girls of Little Hope lures you deep into the woods, switching up the trail of breadcrumbs so you never quite know if you're getting closer to safety, or nearer to the truth. A comfortingly creepy reminder that friendships are the greatest adventure, and that we're never in this alone.”
“A perfect blend of small-town angst and creeping horror that hits on a cellular level. Irreplaceable friendships meet unstoppable forces in a brilliant novel that gives you a hug but then gets its hooks into you. A dark shard of genius from two uniquely-talented minds.”
“Twisty and clever, it grips you from the first page and doesn't let you go.
This book kept me up at night, for all
the right reasons.”
Praise for
Girls of Little Hope
Freebies
GIRLS OF LITTLE HOPE MIXTAPE
Listen to a playlist of songs that inspired the novel, featuring all of Donna, Rae and Kat's favourite Riotgrrrls.
MAGPIES ZINE
Download, print and assemble your very own copy of Magpies, Donna, Rae and Kat's magnificent zine. If you do, please tag us in a photo so we can see it! Dale is @joeyhifi on Twitter and @dalehalvorsen on Instagram.
Sam is @sambeckbessinger on TikTok and Instagram.
GET TO KNOW US
Dale and Sam are besties, horror dorks, and 90s kids. They are frequent collaborators on various kinds of creative mischief. Including Girls Of Little Hope, a horror short story called This Book Will Find You (co-written with Lauren Beukes), and a super-top-secret 'if we tell you we'd have to kill you' TV series for a network in the US.
Sam Beckbessinger is the bestselling author of Manage Your Money Like a Fucking Grownup. Her interactive story about climate change, Survive the Century, was featured in New Scientist and Gizmodo, and she was one of the writers on Realm and Marvel’s Jessica Jones: Playing With Fire serialised novel. She teaches creative writing at Bath Spa University, writes kids' TV, and is weirdly obsessed with spreadsheets. She grew up on a farm near Durban, South Africa (where she had a pet donkey named Mr Magoo) but now lives in London. Follow her exploits at www.sambeckbessinger.com.
Dale Halvorsen co-created the Vertigo Comics horror series Survivors' Club, along with Lauren Beukes and Ryan Kelly. He collaborated with Lauren and Carlos Ezquerra on the one-shot Durham Red and Strontium Dog comic for 2000AD and CHUM in Strange Sports Stories for DC Comics. He is also an international award-winning book cover designer, graphic designer, and illustrator. He can not remember loved ones' birthdays, but he can embarrassingly recall horror movie run times, facts like Ash's car from the original Evil Dead was owned by Sam Raimi and has appeared in many of his movies and the voice of Scream's Ghost Face Roger L. Jackson is the voice of Mojo Jojo in Power Puff Girls. You can find him as @JoeyHifi on Twitter or @dalehalvorsen
on Instagram.