Paradise
Ben Tufnell
Estranged from his father who holds him responsible for the car accident that killed his mother, Nash is drifting. After a violent incident, he is recruited by a shady organisation whose intentions may be much darker than he anticipated.
After a job goes badly wrong, Nash’s is taken by his mysterious employers to an isolated location to await a decision on his fate.
Paradise is a crumbling cottage deep in a forest; Nash is free to leave the house but must not leave the woods. It is winter, and this wild and remote place is unknowable and terrifying. He attempts to map the woods, to find a way out, but they resist him, the land seemingly shifting and changing.
Forging a friendship with Brigid, the daughter of Paradise’s housecleaner, Nash begins to understand and appreciate the woods that have become his home. Brigid is lively, rural, wild, sure of herself and at home in the natural world. He is confused, paranoid, scared, urban, alienated. But she longs for his world, and he longs for hers.
Now the wheel of the year is turning and spring is coming. Brigid is to be crowned as May Queen at the village’s Beltane festivities, and she wants him to come. But Nash’s fate has been decided, and they are coming to deliver the verdict…
Paradise is the brilliant new novel from Ben Tufnell, an uncategorizable Kafkaesque eco-thriller combining elements of crime, noir, folk horror and nature writing, addressing the most urgent of contemporary issues.
Praise for Paradise
'Paradise is a compelling fusion of literary noir with eco-fable – page turning and profound, I loved this book, Tufnell is a tour de force of imaginative power.'
– James Miller, author of Lost Boys
Praise for The North Shore
‘Exposes the shallowness of our human grasp on the lands we call home, digging into networks of roots and strata of geohistory to imagine what has preceded us — and what might follow in our wake.’
– TLS
‘Weird, astonishing.’
– Amy Twigg, author of Spoilt Creatures
'Unnerving beauty.'
– Naomi Booth, author of Sealed
‘That rare beast, a work of folk horror that holds its own with the classics whilst exhibiting genuine points of difference.’
– Nina Allan, author of A Granite Silence
'A haunting evocation of place.’
– Kiran Millwood Hargrave, author of The Mercies
About the Author
Ben Tufnell is a writer and curator based in London. His short stories have been published by Conjunctions, Litro, Lunate, Nightjar Press, Storgy and Structo, amongst others, and included in Best British Short Stories 2024 (Salt Publishing).
He has been longlisted or highly commended for the BBC National Short Story Award, the Sean O’Faolain Short Story Prize, The White Review Short Story Prize and the Disquiet Fiction Prize, and shortlisted for the Society of Authors’ ALCS Tom-Gallon Trust Award for short fiction.
His debut novel, The North Shore, was published by Fleet (Little, Brown) in 2023.
Paperback ISBN: 9781914391583
Ebook ISBN: 9781914391590
Publication date: March 2026
Formats: Paperback / eBook