Slade House: A Novel

David Mitchell

Oct 2015 · Sold by Random House

About this ebook

The New York Times bestseller by the author of The Bone Clocks and Cloud Atlas | Named One of the Best Books of the Year by San Francisco Chronicle, NPR, Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, The Telegraph, National Post, BookPage, and Kirkus Reviews

Keep your eyes peeled for a small black iron door.

Down the road from a working-class British pub, along the brick wall of a narrow alley, if the conditions are exactly right, you’ll find the entrance to Slade House. A stranger will greet you by name and invite you inside. At first, you won’t want to leave. Later, you’ll find that you can’t. Every nine years, the house’s residents—an odd brother and sister—extend a unique invitation to someone who’s different or lonely: a precocious teenager, a recently divorced policeman, a shy college student. But what really goes on inside Slade House? For those who find out, it’s already too late. . . .

Spanning five decades, from the last days of the 1970s to the present, leaping genres, and barreling toward an astonishing conclusion, this intricately woven novel will pull you into a reality-warping new vision of the haunted house story—as only David Mitchell could imagine it.

Praise for Slade House

“A fiendish delight . . . 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.)

“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 . . . the ultimate spooky nursery tale for adults.”—The Huffington Post

Ratings and reviews

I usually don't read a book's Goodreads reviews before reading the book itself. I never do so with a book I have committed to review, so I didn't realize until I read Albert's review just now that Slade House is a bit of a sequel to The Bone Clocks (although I did pick up on one of the Grayer twins using that term to refer to their victims). I'm a stickler for reading series books in order, but in this case I am glad I hadn't read The Bone Clocks first. Not understanding the "world" from which the Grayers came, I waited with bated breath every nine years to see who could stop them. The penultimate scene left me wishing that I knew more about the Horologists, so I am delighted The Bone Clocks is already waiting for me. This may turn out to be a happy unforeseen consequence for Mitchell and his publisher. Like Goodreads reviewer Ethan, I struggled when I read Cloud Atlas years ago, and that experience dampened my enthusiasm when The Bone Clocks came out. The short and accessible Slade House proved to be just the nudge I needed to return to Mitchell's longer work. I received a free copy of Slade House through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Well written. I am.a student of English literature and long for the days of Galsworthy where a novel lasted longer than a bath and a bedtime read, which is exactly how long this book took : one night of reading ! Too short for the money paid. It's not only this writer. But all of the modern fiction writers seems to be cheating themselves out of more of a challenge of writing something long and lasting.

Awesome read! I ordinarily can't finish a book in a day let alone a few hours but I did for this! Also, brilliant strong female characters both good and evil. Would definitely recommend!

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.