Slade House - by David Mitchell (Paperback)

About the Book

"Down the road from a working-class British pub, along the brick wall of a narrow alley, you just might find the entrance to Slade House. A stranger will greet yhou by name and invte 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 extend an invitation to someone who's different or lonely: a precocious teenager, a divorced policeman, a shy college student. But what really goes on inside? For those who find out, it's already too late"--

Book Synopsis

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

Review Quotes

"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

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.