**Shortlisted for the Portico Prize 2019**

The astonishing new work of non-fiction from the prize-winning author of The Gallows Pole and The Offing

Under the Rock is about badgers, balsam, history, nettles, mythology, moorlands, mosses, poetry, bats, wild swimming, slugs, recession, floods, logging, peacocks, community, apples, asbestos, quarries, geology, industrial music, owls, stone walls, farming, anxiety, relocation, the North, woodpiles, folklore, landslides, ruins, terriers, woodlands, ravens, dales, valleys, walking, animal skulls, trespassing, crows, factories, maps, rain - lots of rain - and a great big rock.

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'Extraordinary, elemental ... never less than compelling: this is a wild, dark grimoire of a book' -

TLS

'Exceptionally engaging ... beguiling ... this is a startling, unclassifiable book' - Stuart Kelly,

The Scotsman

'Compelling ... admirable and engrossing. Myers writes of the rain with a poet's eye worthy of Hughes' - Erica Wagner,

New Statesman

'A bone-tingling book' - Richard Benson, author of

The Valley and

The Farm

'A truly elemental read from which I emerged subtly changed... It has all the makings of a classic' - Miriam Darlington, author of

Otter Country and

Owl Sense