Slade House

David Mitchell

Book cover for Slade House
Book cover for Slade House

Slade House

Slade House

David Mitchell

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Description

A headlong adrenaline-rush of a new novel from one of our most beloved and original writers: Slade House, which has its origins in Mitchell's famously Twitter-released short story last year, is his most entertaining and accessible novel yet. A cycle of linked ghost stories perfect for any dark and stormy night.

An ordinary road in a town like yours: bus routes and red-brick houses. A dank narrow alley, easy to miss, even when you're looking for it. A small black metal door set into the wall: no handle, no keyhole, but at your touch it opens onto a sunlit garden, sloping up to a house that doesn't quite make sense... Go through, and the door closes discreetly behind you. In David Mitchell's exhilarating new novel, five "guests" separated by nine years enter Slade House for a brief visit--only to vanish without trace from the outside world. Who draws them to the heart of Slade House, and why is the house missing from maps? Beginning in 1979 and ending in 2015, these five interlacing narratives will enchant Mitchell's readers, old and new, with a signature blend of mystery, realism and the supernatural.

About the Author

David Mitchell is the award-winning and bestselling author of Slade House, The Bone Clocks, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, Black Swan Green, Cloud Atlas, Number9Dream, and Ghostwritten. Twice shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Mitchell was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time in 2007. With KA Yoshida, Mitchell translated from the Japanese the internationally bestselling memoir The Reason I Jump. He lives in Ireland with his wife and two children.

Critical Reviews

"A fiendish delight . . . [David] Mitchell is something of a magician."--The Washington Post

"Entertainingly eerie . . . We turn to [Mitchell] for brain-tickling puzzle palaces, for character studies and for language."--Chicago Tribune

"A ripping yarn . . . Like Shirley Jackson's Hill House or the Overlook Hotel from Stephen King's The Shining, [Slade House] is a thin sliver of hell designed to entrap the unwary. . . . As the Mitchellverse grows ever more expansive and connected, this short but powerful novel hints at still more marvels to come."--San Francisco Chronicle

"Like Stephen King in a fever . . . manically ingenious."--The Guardian (U.K.)

"Slade House, the tricky new confection by David Mitchell, is a haunted house story that savors of Dickens, Stephen King, J. K. Rowling and H. P. Lovecraft, but possesses more psychic voltage than any of them."--Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"Tightly crafted and suspenseful yet warmly human, Slade House is the ultimate spooky nursery tale for adults."--The Huffington Post

"The joy in Slade House is in the discovery. It's in seeing different people make the same mistakes over and over again. . . . It's in thinking that you'd be smarter, of course. That you'd see through all this B-movie schlock (like creepy portraits, sad ghosts and stairways that go nowhere), find the secret door, and escape. Only to find that you're already trapped."--NPR

"Diabolically entertaining . . . dark, thrilling, and fun . . . One needn't have read any of Mitchell's past books to enjoy Slade House. Those who do crack it open will find inside a thoroughly entertaining ride full of mind games, unexpected twists, and even a few laughs."--The Daily Beast

"A smart, spooky thrill ride . . . If you haven't yet read Mitchell, choosing this novel just might make a believer of you."--Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

"Plants died, milk curdled, and my children went slightly feral as I succumbed to the creepy magic of David Mitchell's Slade House. It's a wildly inventive, chilling, and--for all its otherworldliness--wonderfully human haunted house story. I plan to return to its clutches quite often."--Gillian Flynn, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Gone Girl and The Grownup

"I gulped down this novel in a single evening. Intricately connected to David Mitchell's previous books, this compact fantasy burns with classic Mitchellian energy. Painstakingly imagined and crackling with narrative velocity, it's a Dracula for the new millennium, a Hansel and Gretel for grownups, a reminder of how much fun fiction can be."--Anthony Doerr, author of All the Light We Cannot See, winner of the Pulitzer Prize

Publishing Information

Publisher: Random House Trade
Pub date: 2016-06-28
Length: 272 pages

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