Idle Grounds
- Author Krystelle Bamford
- Narrator Robyn Holdaway
- Publisher Cornerstone
- Run Time 5 hours and 2 minutes
- Format Audio
- Genre Family life fiction, Modern and contemporary fiction, Narrative theme: Sense of place.
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Listen to a sample
What to expect
Brought to you by Penguin.
As always with these things it started with a birthday party.
On a bright summer day in 1989 New England, Abi, three years old, vanishes from her aunt’s secluded home. Upstairs, her young cousins are looking out of the window. Something is unfolding in the distance at the edge of the forest – something sinister that is watching them back.
The adults don’t seem to notice that the youngest of the group has disappeared. Too busy bickering over politics and reminiscing about the family’s domineering late matriarch, Beezy, they leave the children with no choice but to get Abi back themselves. As the cousins embark on a quest through their grandmother’s sprawling estate, buried family secrets come to light and long-awaited plans are set in motion. Will they lose themselves while trying to find her?
Idle Grounds is a chilling, evocative and darkly comic debut about childhood, legacy, and the burdens and privileges we carry with us.
'Deviously subtle and intoxicatingly sinister, Idle Grounds conjures up a new language of nightmare symbolism to fill the reader's heart with dread. A deservedly assured debut!' LEON CRAIG
© Krystelle Bamford 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025
Critics Review
This debut novel is superb
[An] extremely accomplished debut
Bamford conjures, in vivid, amplified language, how children fluidly and unpredictably make sense of the world … [Idle Grounds] is unsettlingly, sharply funny at times, with carefully built-up layers of dis-ease delivered in a comic deadpan
Atmospheric . . . . captures an ambling quest that is by turns funny, lyrical and surreal . . . Bamford keeps us guessing until the very end
Idle Grounds is a masterclass in misdirection
Unsettling, puckish, and brilliantly written, this novel is an absolute one-off. I loved it
Magical, perplexing and funny in a wholly original way
Every sentence positively bristles with unease. One of the most atmospheric novels I have read in a long time. Beautifully written
[A] gorgeous, spirited debut. Absorbing … the writing is so enthralling
An acid trip of a novel. Weird, sinister and darkly funny. I can’t wait to see what Bamford does next
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