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Idle Grounds

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Idle Grounds

By: Krystelle Bamford
Narrated by: Robyn Holdaway
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About this listen

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

©2025 Krystelle Bamford (P)2025 Penguin Audio Family Life Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Heartfelt
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Critic Reviews

Unsettling, puckish, and brilliantly written, this novel is an absolute one-off. I loved it (Claire Fuller)
Magical, perplexing and funny in a wholly original way (Rachel Yoder)
Every sentence positively bristles with unease. One of the most atmospheric novels I have read in a long time. Beautifully written (Jennie Godfrey)
An acid trip of a novel. Weird, sinister and darkly funny. I can't wait to see what Bamford does next (Amy Twigg)
Deliciously uncanny New England Gothic. In refreshingly idiosyncratic prose, Bamford captures all of childhood’s strangeness and cruelty. The landscapes of Idle Grounds are haunted not only by the old ghosts of family history but by the new ghosts that are born as each generation grows up (Allen Bratton)
This book is like nothing else I’ve ever read. Equal parts alluring and off-kilter, with moments of genuine poetry, Idle Grounds is a peculiar and beguiling novel with a fiendish core (Jane Flett)
I knew I would like Idle Grounds very much, and it was doubly pleasant to realise I was right. Bamford writes from the shared consciousness of the junior branch of an entire family, and it felt as unnerving and delightful as when an eight-year-old takes you into their confidence for five minutes, in order to unload their pet likes and dislikes onto you . . . Reading this book expanded my memory and powers of retrieval and recall (Daniel Lavery)

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In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.