Book of the Month: Idle Grounds by Krystelle Bamford

We are delighted to be able to offer five copies of New Writers Awardee Krystelle Bamford's highly-rated debut novel Idle Grounds in our May Book of the Month competition, courtesy of our friends at Hutchinson Heinemann.

The book has been described as a chilling, evocative and darkly comic debut about childhood, legacy, and the burdens and privileges we carry with us and you can win a copy by answering the question at the bottom of this page by midnight on 31 May 2025.

All entrants must reside in the UK and full terms and conditions apply. Check out our competitions page to find more giveaways.

About Idle Grounds

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?

Interview with Krystelle Bamford

How did you first get into writing?

As a reader, definitely. We had a really good public library in my hometown, and an amazing (and terrifying) children’s librarian named Mrs. Polly. My parents were both big readers, so we had lots of books around the house. When I got to uni, I started to write poetry, and that’s all I did writing-wise for years and years. I remember talking to a poetry professor and she was like ‘What are you planning to do after graduation?’ and when I told her that I wanted to be a poet she paused for a beat, and then said ‘And what will you do in the meantime?’ Little did I know how right she was!

I only started to write fiction after I had kids – lock-down happened and I was going to my day-job as a receptionist in a mostly empty building, and suddenly I had hours to myself. I wrote some short stories, and a very messy novel which no one will ever see, and then Idle Grounds. I was completely taken aback by how much I loved writing longer-form fiction, and have no idea why it took me so long to get there.

What can readers expect from Idle Grounds?

Idle Grounds is a short adult literary novel about a group of young cousins mucking around at a family birthday party when they see something unnerving from the window. The youngest child spooks, and the rest of the book follows the cousins on their search for her, an odyssey which takes them across the family property and into the woods. Suddenly, nothing in their world is behaving as it should. As the children navigate the frightening new rules of their environment while trying to unpick a family mystery their parents can’t quite shake, time is ticking down for at least one of them.

It’s based in part on my childhood in New England in the late eighties, and it was an absolute joy (despite the darkness at the heart of the book) to write myself back there, especially moored as I was behind an office desk during lock-down!

What intrigued you about writing a novel for adults from a child's perspective?

The way children think is so interesting – they’re both constrained by what they don’t know, but also a lot freer to intuit, call things like they see them, and make wild leaps of imagination. They’re capable of incredible kindness and loyalty, while at the same time being pretty amoral and easily lead. Basically, children don’t play by adult rules, and that’s a wonderful place to start from.

The voice of Idle Grounds is a slippery one, and arrived more or less fully formed. The story is told from some point in the future, presumably by an adult with some adult knowledge of the world, while also being very much rooted in the children’s perspective. Because the narrator is so in-between, it gave me a lot of leeway with what I was able to tell the reader. I found it so much fun to change gears quickly, from utter, in-the-moment terror to an aside about some film they’d seen on TV or a candy bar they’d loved but is now no longer available. Basically, kids are surprising, and writers like being surprised!