The Steps

FORTHCOMING

PRE-ORDER below for delivery or or before 30th April 2026

The first time Derek was ever afraid of the children

was two or three weeks in, when Angelo

screamed at them for ruining his life and headbutted

the plate in front of him until it was shrapnel

Derek’s childhood sweetheart Sophie and her children, raw from tragedy, move from Canada to his home in England. There they attempt to forge a life together – but their new family is shadowed by grief, myth, and a lingering sense of the uncanny. Through shifting perspectives, from Jules, the delicate middle child, to fierce Ema, debut novelist Juliano Zaffino paints an unforgettable portrait of love, loyalty, and the stories we tell ourselves to survive.

Blending psychological suspense with intimate family drama, and with echoes of Virginia Woolf and Shirley Jackson, The Steps is both deeply moving and eerily unsettling, a meditation on trauma, family bonds, and the thin line between tenderness and violence.

PRAISE FOR JULIANO ZAFFINO

‘Examines queer identity and the flesh, takes ideas of the body, and pierces them through with millennial angst’ – Florence Welch

‘Rare and beautiful and ultimately very human’ – Rebecca Lucy Taylor

‘A liturgy of the body, of desire, and the hazards and recompenses of love’ – Seán Hewitt