Catriona Ward is widely regarded as one of contemporary horror’s most distinctive voices, known for her bold, inventive storytelling and her ability to consistently upend readers’ expectations. The American-born British novelist has won three British Fantasy Awards and a Shirley Jackson Award, and she became the first woman to receive the August Derleth Award for Best Horror Novel twice, for Rawblood and Little Eve. Her breakout gothic sensation, The Last House on Needless Street, established her as a word-of-mouth phenomenon. Ward now returns with her sixth novel, Nowhere Burning, a dark and twisted take on Peter Pan that fans of Riley Sager or William Golding’s seminal masterpiece, Lord of the Flies, will not be able to put down.
Nowhere Burning follows Riley, who drags her younger brother Oliver into the night to head for “Nowhere,” the burned-out ranch of disgraced movie star Leaf Winham, exposed as a murderer after a fire destroyed his mountain estate. Rumour has it that a tribe of feral teenagers now occupies the property, a land abandoned to its own devices, beyond the reach of adults. Here, Riley seeks sanctuary, a new family, and a clean break, but the Nowhere Kids guard their territory fiercely, and once inside “Nowhere,” she is forced to confront the paradox of the place: that freedom and captivity are terrifyingly entwined, demanding the complete and unconditional devotion of its inhabitants. And, as if that were not enough, it soon becomes apparent that something even more sinister lies in wait in “Nowhere’s” charred bones.
In anticipation of the publication of Nowhere Burning in the UK on February 19, 2026, and in the US on February 24, CinemaChords caught up with Ward to discuss writing under readers’ expectations of her signature “big twists,” the challenges of reimagining a cultural touchstone like Peter Pan, and the ways the novel renders the idea of refuge into its opposite, a space of power play and menace.
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