Synopsis
A taut, uncanny sci-fi thriller from Arkady Martine, Hugo Award-winning author of A Memory Called Empire.
‘Exquisitely creepy’
Adrian Tchaikovsky, Hugo Award-winning author of the Children of Time series
‘I’m a piece of architecture, Detective. How should I know how humans are like to die?’
Basit Deniau’s houses were haunted to begin with.
A house embedded with an artificial intelligence is a common thing; a house that is an artificial intelligence, infused in every load-bearing beam and fine marble tile with a thinking creature that is not human? That is something else altogether. But now Deniau’s been dead a year, and Rose House is locked up tight, as ordered by the architect’s will.
Dr Selene Gisil, a former protégé, is the sole person permitted, once a year, to enter Rose House. But now, there is a dead person inside. It is not Basit Deniau, and it is not Dr Gisil. It is someone else. And Rose House won’t communicate any further.
No one but Dr Gisil can get inside Rose House. Dr Gisil was not in North America when Rose House called in the death. But someone did. And someone died there.
And someone may be there still.
‘A sharp, clever blend of science fictional gothic and crime’
The Guardian
Details
08 January 2026
9781035065677Reviews
An exquisitely creepy exploration of the boundaries of life, death, the real and the artificialAdrian Tchaikovsky, Hugo Award-winning author of the Children of Time series
A sharp, clever blend of science fictional gothic and crimeThe Guardian
Martine’s soaring, crystalline prose evokes Shirley Jackson’s Hill House if designed by Frank Gehry. She builds a twisted cathedral of story and fills every inch with equal parts beauty and a creeping, inescapable sense of wrongness. Readers will be flooredPublishers Weekly, Starred Review
Tight and unsettling . . . a story that’s stylish, discomforting and strangely believable . . . Rose/House is a freaky love letter to architecture, weird and otherwiseJake Casella Brookins, Locus
