Laura Evans was born in the north of England and grew up in the Midlands. She studied Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at the University of Cambridge before coming in a roundabout way to journalism, where she became a magazine editor specializing in travel and nature. A lifelong city dweller who romanticizes the countryside (but knows it would eat her alive), she spent several years in both London and Bristol before making her way to the medieval city of Norwich, where she lives with her family.

Praise for Little Wild

"Evans' debut is a refreshing, queer-friendly update to the classic gothic...An immersive delight."
--Booklist

"Forbidden love meets witchy magic . . . A lyrical, peculiar, romantic, and fantastic mélange."
--Kirkus

"A beguiling gothic debut, reminiscent of Du Maurier. Absolutely mesmerizing."
--Lucy Rose, author of The Lamb

"Little Wild throws the door open on a long-ago summer in an English country house to reveal, in perfect prose, the secrets and passions within. It's a study of sex, money and class between the wars and much more, gradually asserting its glorious weirdness with relish and masterful control. Snare House can claim a place with Atonement's Tallis family home, The Little Stranger's Hundreds Hall and Manderley in the list of places that haunt the reader long after the book has been closed. Debut novels don't get much better than this."
--Erin Kelly, author of He Said/She Said and The Poison Tree

"Little Wild is a country house novel with claws. Told in spiky, glittering prose, Laura Evans brings us into a world of simmering class tensions and long-buried secrets. As Margaret and Joanie's plan unravels in the sweltering, claustrophobic heat, the novel shape-shifts into something almost mythical in its beauty and strangeness."
--Danielle Giles, author of Mere

Publisher: Henry Holt & Company

Pub date: 2026-06-23

Length: 320 pages