The Captive Kit Burgoyne 9781835412039

A darkly comedic, cinematic horror about a revolutionary group who kidnap an heiress, only to discover she's pregnant with the antichrist, and she's about to give birth.

From Ned Beauman, the Man Booker Prize longlisted author of The Teleportation Accident and Clarke Award winning author of Venomous Lumpsucker. Perfect for fans of Grady Hendrix and Joe Hill.

For months, Luke and his underground revolutionary group have been planning their biggest operation yet: kidnapping 23-year-old Adeline Woolsaw. They don't want a ransom - they want to expose the Woolsaw Group, the source of Adeline's parents' enormous wealth, a vast yet largely anonymous company that runs everything from military bases and mental hospitals to commuter trains, call centres, and prisons.

But the revolutionaries get a shock when they bundle Adeline into their van. She's about to go into labour. And she may not object to being kidnapped, if it allows her and the baby to escape her despotic parents.

It quickly becomes apparent that this is no ordinary child. He's capable of setting off deadly weather events and summoning plagues of vermin. And that's just the beginning. Luke discovers that Adeline's parents engineered the pregnancy as part of a dark bargain with an ancient evil of nearly limitless power. Now the Woolsaws and their henchmen will stop at nothing to get the infant back, so they can establish an infernal new kingdom on Earth with their grandchild on the throne.

LITHUB MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS 2025 WATERSTONES BEST HORROR 2025

Every chapter or two something unexpected and urgent happens. Faces peel off. People are burned alive. There's lots and lots of blood... a gory, wildly entertaining romp.
-Sam Leith, The Guardian Book of the Day

Let me speak from experience: this is the sort of book you pick up just to read the first page and next thing you know you're a dozen chapters deep, cackling at each mad new development. THE CAPTIVE is a Molotov cocktail of a book, only that's not burning gasoline you smell, it's dollar bills and brimstone.
-Nat Cassidy, USA Today bestselling author of WHEN THE WOLF COMES HOME and MARY

What would happen if Rosemary's baby belonged to Patty Hearst? An absolute blast (in more ways than one). I tore through this devilishly delightful, razor-sharp treat and enjoyed every minute.
-Jennifer Thorne, bestelling author of Diavola

Enthralling, terrifying and endlessly surprising.
-M. R. Carey, bestselling author of The Girl with all the Gifts

A deadpan horror thriller that feels perfectly timed for our present moment-SFX

A madcap take on the classic devil-baby story.
-LitHub

Sharp, bleak, funny, and disturbingly prescient, The Captive is a pitch-black blast of evil unpredictable fun.
-Justin Taylor, author of Reboot

Ultimately, Kit Burgoyne's The Captive is not simply another clever, tense thriller; it plunges headlong into fanaticism, power, and that uneasy place where you begin to question if the good men and the evil guys are actually all that different . . . Thought-provoking.
-Bestsellers World

Rosemary's Baby, but make it Patty Hearst! Come for the set-up, stay for the garden party. You'll know it when you see it.
-CrimeReads

A bloody, barbed and preposterously good time, with the grit and propulsion of Keith Rosson's Fever House, the supernatural slight of hand of Thomas Tryon's The Other, and a deep-rooted conspiracy that I imagine can only be completely unique to it, The Captive is exactly the offal-plastered zinger I was desperate for it to be.
-FanFiAddict

Welds together the visceral terror of supernatural horror with the sharp, incisive blade of anti-capitalist satire.
-Ginger Nuts of Horror

PRAISE FOR NED BEAUMAN

It reads like P. G. Wodehouse crashing into Philip K. Dick, with a touch of Iain M. Banks. Of course, it's smart and timely, but the writing is often very beautiful, and the ideas and their implications vertiginous. Martin Macinnes, author of INFINITE GROUND

Ned Beauman is a speculative genius, and Venomous Lumpsucker is an incredible invention . . . This book holds all the great pleasures of the best science fiction novels, hyperbole, technical prowess-but with unusual humour and sensitivity to what it feels to live in this moment. Elvia Wilk

An endlessly inventive, witty and bleak literary thriller set in the not-so-distant future, when environmental collapse has wrecked much of our ecosystem. Running the gamut from strange culinary practices to shady corporate dealing, it'll make you laugh and make you think. Stephen Bush, Financial Times, Best books for summer

[Beauman] has always had the curious knack of wrongfooting his readers with a beating heart where one has expected only cleverness . . . Beauman is able to push his fantastic conceits just that one uncomfortable step further . . . the ideas themselves are powerful, and earn their keep within the fictional frame Nikhil Krishnan, Daily Telegraph

Beauman writes beautifully on the level of the sentence... Beauman's world-building is impeccable, the narrative voice (part Douglas Adams, part Thomas Pynchon, part Jonathan Swift) is often appealing. Literary Review

Enormously pleasurable . . . a near-faultless technical performance . . . Beauman is a master of English prose, a highly self-conscious creator of sophisticated entertainments who almost never makes a false move on the page . . . It's Beauman's best book yet - and that's saying something -Kevin Power Guardian

Scabrously funny and satirical -Jamie Buxton, Books of the Year Daily Mail

Confirms his reputation as one of the foremost satirists of his generation -Simon Ings The Times

Frighteningly assured Katie Guest, Independent on Sunday

'This first novel is as oddball and rambunctious as it sounds. It's also funny, raw and stylish.' New York Times

I hugely enjoyed Ned Beauman's clever-dick conflation of modern east London with Thirties Berlin . . . the antihero Egon Loeser is as deft and witty a portrait of blinkered self-obsession as I have read Nick Curtis, Evening Standard Books of the Year

Funny and startlingly inventive . . . Beauman is a writer of prodigious talent, and there are enough ideas and allusions and comic set pieces in this work, longlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize, to fill myriad lesser novels. FT

[Beauman] is blisteringly funny, witty and erudite . . . Beauman manages to combine the intrigue of a thriller with the imagery of a comedy. It makes for an excellent read. Daily Telegraph

This is an unquestionably brilliant novel, ribald and wise in equal measure . . . a witty and sometimes deeply moving fictional exegesis of the Modernist twilight. TLS

A glorious, over-the-top production, crackling with inventive wit and seething with pitchy humour . . . A beguiling success . . . Ingenious . . . There is such an easy felicity in Beauman's writing and such a clever, engaging wit . . . that one feels he could write something as much fun every two years. The prospect of which makes me very, very happy indeed. Scotsman

An extraordinary, Pynchonesque flea-circus of a book...Ned Beauman's pyrotechnical comic novel, his second, is as violently clever as you'd expect from his earlier book, BOXER, BEETLE... [a] frantically entertaining pasteboard extravaganza The Sunday Times

A hoot - very clever and charming, with an awesone range of reference. Sunday Telegraph

Funny, scandalous, decadent and erudite, THE TELEPORTATION ACCIDENT is a hugely enjoyable madness with flavours of Pynchon, Huysmans and Jerome K. Jerome. Nick Harkaway

Ned Beauman is a writer of unceasing invention and his second novel is replete with ideas. Metro

Popping with ideas, fizzing with vitality and great fun to quaff. Independent on Sunday