On January 29th, 2026, Solstice Books are due to publish ON SUNDAYS SHE PICKED FLOWERS by Yah Yah Scholfield! Here’s the synopsis…
Lone Women meets Sorrowland in this sinister and surreal Southern Gothic debut about a woman who escapes her family home to the uncanny woods of northern Georgia and must now contend with haints, ghosts and a literal beast in the woods.
When Judith Rice ran away from the house she grew up in, she thought she severed her abusive mother’s hold on her. Seventeen years later, she’s made a home for herself in a cottage secluded deep in the forests of northern Georgia. Jude believes she’s settled into a quiet life.
But when an enigmatic woman shows up on her doorstep, Jude’s tentative peace is threatened by the stranger’s presence. The woman is beautiful but unsettling, captivating but uncanny. Caught between her desire for this woman and the violence that seems to simmer just beneath her skin, Jude’s past and present clash as the woman stirs up memories that force her to reckon with the violence of her escape years ago.
Haunting and thought-provoking, On Sundays She Picked Flowers is a propulsive debut exploring retribution, family trauma and the power of building oneself back up after breaking down.
UK-based book reviewers can request the novel on NetGalley now. The novel has already racked up a fair number of great early reviewers. Here are just a few of them…
‘[S]lickly stylish and graphically cannibalistic…Scholfield’s prose is impressive… Caitlin Starling fans will enjoy this gory mix of toxic sapphic romance and body horror.’ — Publishers Weekly
‘Yah Yah Scholfield has written one of the most visceral, intense, brutal, and yet honest, works of horror I have read in a long time. ON SUNDAYS SHE PICKED FLOWERS is about the trauma of family, relationships, and the monsters we let in when we fail to confront what wounds us. You will devour this book—unless it devours you first.’ — P. Djèlí Clark
‘ON SUNDAYS SHE PICKED FLOWERS marks the debut of a ferociously talented writer. Yah Yah Scholfield writes with insight, beauty and the wildness of real art. This is a love story, a healing story, a tale of hard-won survival. Real, in the way all good fairy tales are.’ — Victor LaValle
‘ON SUNDAYS SHE PICKED FLOWERS is a luminous, weighty Southern Gothic imbued with suffering, rage, secrets, and isolation… an arresting, astounding exploration of inherited trauma, retribution, and the fortitude necessary to continue on.’ — Her Infinite Archive
‘Atmospheric and engrossing. On Sundays… is written with the same dark love and shadow magic it explores. An essential debut.’ — Johnny Compton, author of The Spite House
‘ON SUNDAYS SHE PICKED FLOWERS is a beauty of a debut. Scholfield’s sharp prose effortlessly carries scenes of sweetness and brutality. It grabbed me from the first page, did not let me go till the final one, and I can still feel it lingering long after the end. This is the kind of novel I crave as a reader.’ — Erin E. Adams, author of Jackal and One of You
Zeno represents Yah Yah Scholfield in the UK and Commonwealth, on behalf of the JABberwocky Literary Agency in New York.