A secret getaway, a crumbling manor house and a friend group riven by betrayal – what could possibly go wrong?
At the height of lockdown, six friends make an illicit break for freedom. They’re determined to enjoy their summer at Holt House, even if that means ignoring the deep fractures in their group.
Jan is secretly sleeping with Nadya, whose boyfriend, Theo – ever the gracious host – just wants everyone to get high. Kara and Luke can’t stop fighting, and Jan’s ex-lover, Ursie, feels out of place among their excess and privilege.
As tempers flare and old wounds reopen, their friendship begins to strain – politics, racism, antisemitism, sex and lies. And with drugs and desires blurring in the shadows of the house, a more ominous force threatens to ruin their trip…
The Decadence is available from Sceptre Books
Review Coverage of The Decadence:
Featured in the Express ‘Ten Books to Read This Halloween’
Recommended in The Good Web Guide’s ‘Best New Ghost Stories Of 2025′
On the resurgence of horror fiction in the Pharmakon newsletter by Sam Leith
Analysed in Hugh Foley’s Useless Concentration substack
Praise for The Decadence:
‘The Decadence is an exquisitely claustrophobic exploration of the places we do and don’t belong. Sequestered in a pressure cooker of hedonistic excess, the horror creeps in insidiously – from the first tendrils of unease to the final horrible denouement. This is a triumph of the queer gothic.’
Jane Flett, author of Freakslaw
‘Lush, complex, and close to the bone, The Decadence filled me with horror in the best way – the horror of a classic haunted house tale, but also the horror of your twenties, with all its dead-ends, debauchery, self-doubt, and longing’.
Krystelle Bamford, author of Idle Grounds
‘Not since The Haunting of Hill House have I read anything as simultaneously poised, claustrophobic and rank with evil as The Decadence. Bringing together an incestuous cohort of friends, buried secrets and unlimited intoxicants in a location of sentient malevolence, The Decadence is both a deeply unnerving read and a sly commentary on the skeletons in Britain’s closet. If the idea of Iris Murdoch meeting Mariana Enriquez in a country house during lockdown appeals to you, I urge you to read The Decadence. It delivers on its promises in spades.’
Victoria Gosling, author of Bliss & Blunder
‘Lush, sinister, and blackly funny, The Decadence sings with suffused spite and the specific horror of personal and physical inertia. Trapped in idyll, its protagonists suffer both their own worst proclivities and the inverted menace of their closest relationships. Rich, intelligent prose underpins delicate exploration of some of our most profound moral quandaries, while the expansive, decaying house smothers its occupants with the weight of its own gasping history, resulting in a finale as sadistic as it is satisfying.’
Kate Collins, author of A Good House for Children
‘The Decadence‘s group of late twenty-somethings bicker, seethe and hard party their way through a genuinely creepy and evocative contemporary ghost story which weaves together queerness, lockdown flouting, and the malevolent inheritances of history with deftness and aplomb. Leon Craig has a keen eye for observation and a very dark and distinctive imagination and this novel intrigues and unsettles’
Sharlene Teo, author of Ponti
‘A gothic, lascivious tale about longing, lust and loneliness’
Sally Oliver, author of The Weight of Loss
‘Layered, observant, and genre-bending, The Decadence is darkly funny and aware of the complexities of modern friendship in relation to class and politics and the present moment in our shared history.’
Timothy Ogene, author of Seesaw
‘Seeking a reprieve from the drudgery of the COVID pandemic, a group of twentysomethings sneak into an isolated medieval manor for a week of debauchery, only to find themselves very much not alone. As old wounds are reopened and friendships pushed to the breaking point, Holt House draws the revellers deeper into its hateful history, gradually exposing their darkest selves. A drug-fuelled cross between The Decameron and The Haunting of Hill House, The Decadence is Craig at her unsettling, gothic best’
Hesse Phillips, author of Lightborne
‘In The Decadence, Leon Craig gives voice to a generation in troubled times. Whilst escaping a world falling apart in the name of freedom, the characters discover that freedom is a complicated thing. Wild hallucinations and horrible addictions, secret sexual histories and bottled-up resentments all come tumbling out of the closets during their drug-addled days away from the city, crashing in spectacular fashion alongside the ghosts of British colonial history. A queer collision between Bertolucci’s The Dreamers and Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, Leon Craig is a bold new voice for a fraught generation at the precipice of a civilization no longer itself.’
Jonathan Garfinkel, author of In a Land Without Dogs The Cats Learn to Bark
‘Immured in their own torture-prison of self-reflection, the characters of The Decadence live in different shades of existential dread as they wobble through the kaleidoscopic, drug-soaked pages of this incandescent debut. Thought-provoking, terrifying and startlingly intelligent, this is a novel of horrors that hide in the shadows and those that exist rawly in daylight for all to see’
Alice Ash, author of Paradise Block
‘In The Decadence, lust and loathing wear the same skin, and the houses are haunted by desire as much as any ghost. An unflinching look at the destructive allure of belonging and the perils of abandoning oneself to achieve it. You may never find your way back.‘
Gianni Washington, author of Flowers from the Void
‘Leon Craig’s debut novel is a clever, contemporary take on the classic ‘haunted house’ story — a kind of millennial version of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, complete with sex, drugs and ‘woke’ politics. The Decadence is incredibly unsettling, yet undeniably seductive and surprising at every turn’
Caitlin Blackwell Baines, author of How to Build a Haunted House