The Captive

From a new voice in horror comes a satirical Rosemary’s Baby for our conspiratorial present in which anti-capitalist activists unwittingly unleash terrifying demonic forces when they kidnap a pregnant heiress.

From Ned Beauman, the Man Booker Prize–longlisted author of The Teleportation Accident and Clarke Award–winning author of Venomous Lumpsucker.

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 centers, and prisons.

But the revolutionaries get a shock when they bundle Adeline into their van. She’s about to go into labor. 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.

Kit Burgoyne (pen name of Booker-listed author Ned Beauman) is a ruthlessly funny new voice in horror: witty, appalling, and as adept at skewering today’s plutocratic overlords as he is at conjuring our most primeval nightmares.

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Audiobook: 30 September 2025