Reader Score
77%
77% of readers
recommend this book
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
"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