The Needfire - Cover reveal time!

Introducing MK Hardy and their brilliant debut Scottish Gothic novel

Hi all, I am writing this from under a heated blanket AND a cat, for extra cozy after getting home from the last of my November events last night. I am delighted to be hosting MK Hardy on the blog today - they are the powerhouse talented duo behind a book that is going to rampage through your hearts next year. The cover of this creepy, brilliant debut novel - The Needfire - is being revealed across the interwebs today and MK Hardy have jumped onto my blog to introduce themselves, their book and the making of its stunning cover. Enjoy! And get this book onto your tbrs stat!

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We're Morag and Erin, and together we write as MK Hardy.

The Needfire is a Scottish, historical, supernatural, sapphic, Gothic eco-horror! It's the story of a woman who leaves her life in Glasgow for a marriage of convenience to a Scottish baron. She moves to his bleak coastal estate in the far north of the country, and there she finds that things are not all they seem…

The context

Though set in the 1890s, The Needfire exists in the long shadow of the Highland Clearances, which was a movement that began in the late 1700s where the landowners of Scotland decided that it would be more profitable to graze sheep than have people lease their farmland. They evicted their tenants en masse, forcing them to take up tiny subsistence crofts on the coast, to move to the big cities, or to emigrate to North America or Australasia.

The Clearances left a legacy that's literally written on the land, scarring it permanently - you can see the evidence all over the Highlands of Scotland if you know what to look for. In The Needfire, however, the legacy of the Clearances is more than just a guilty memory and some barren fields: it makes itself felt in a very real and (hopefully!) unsettling way.

You will like The Needfire if…

The Needfire is for anybody who's ever wanted to see a mash-up of Sarah Waters and Daphne du Maurier with a little more of the supernatural to it, for fans of Mike Flanagan’s haunted houses and lush, romantic Gothic movies like Crimson Peak, and for everybody who likes to see that witchy lesbian subtext become text once in a while.

The cover

For the cover design, we were really hoping for someone to capture key elements of the book in a decorative style that would look great on a display with other spec-lit-leaning novels, while also having a unique edge and striking a fantastical chord. Easy, right? Holly MacDonald is an experienced and thoughtful designer who immediately connected with the novel and was determined to capture key motifs from the book in her design.

The final piece combines hand-drawn artwork and delicately layered branches and flourishes in a dramatic colour scheme that perfectly encapsulates the mood of the story. An early element that we loved was the inset female figures who are, in the end, the heart of the story, and we were delighted to see this smart bit of symbolism make it all the way to the final design..

We're so proud of the cover Holly has created for us, and honoured to have The Needfire in her stable alongside fantastic covers such as those of Babel, The Book Eaters, and Eleanor Olyphant is Completely Fine.

The Needfire releases from Solaris Books in July 2025 (UK)

Pre-order from all good bookstores here.

Add on Goodreads or Storygraph.

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Huge thank to Erin and Morag for coming onto my blog, and thank you all for reading. Wishing you restful weekends full of tea, cats and perhaps a dash of creepy Gothic happenings, just to keep you on your toes…