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Slade House: A Novel Audiobook
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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
“Diabolically entertaining . . . dark, thrilling, and fun . . . a thoroughly entertaining ride full of mind games, unexpected twists, and even a few laughs.”—The Daily Beast
“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. Painstakingly imagined and crackling with narrative velocity, it’s a Dracula for the new millennium, a reminder of how much fun fiction can be.”—Anthony Doerr, author of All the Light We Cannot See, winner of the Pulitzer Prize
“David Mitchell doesn’t break rules so much as he proves them to be inhibitors to lively intelligent fiction.”—#1 New York Times bestselling author Dean Koontz
From the Hardcover edition.
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"Slade House is a deranged garden of forking paths, where all the flowers are poisonous and every escape is choked with thorns. David Mitchell has long been acknowledged as one of the finest—if not the finest—literary minds of his generation, but he’s also one of the most suspenseful, and he proves it in every gripping, vertiginous setpiece. In some ways, this book reads as if Wes Craven hired Umberto Eco to reinvent A Nightmare on Elm Street. Yet that doesn’t quite do justice to its white-hot intensity: I think that five minutes inside Slade House would leave Freddy Krueger trembling and crying for Mama. I read in a constant state of terror and joy and could not turn the pages fast enough."
— Joe Hill, New York Times bestselling author of NOS4A2 and Horns
Quotes
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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 -
Mitchell is one of the best writers going these days, and Slade House will haunt you for days—and nights.
— San Antonio Express-News -
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 -
David Mitchell doesn’t break rules so much as prove them inhibitors to lively, intelligent fiction. Slade House is a fractal offshoot of his remarkable The Bone Clocks, an eerie haunted-house tale that takes as much from quantum mechanics as from traditional supernatural lore, a spellbinding chiller about an unnatural greed for life and the arrogance of power.
— Dean Koontz, #1 New York Times bestselling author -
What can’t David Mitchell do? Slade House is a page-burning, read-in-one-sitting, at times terrifying novel that does for the haunted-house story what Henry James did for the ghost story in The Turn of the Screw. It has all the intelligence and linguistic dazzle one expects from a David Mitchell novel, but it will also creep the pants off you. Just as Slade House won’t let go of its unsuspecting guests, you won’t be able to put this book down. Welcome to Slade House: Step inside.
— Adam Johnson, author of Fortune Smiles and The Orphan Master’s Son, winner of the Pulitzer Prize -
Sharp, fast, flat-out spooky, Slade House is such a hypnotic read that you are likely to miss your subway stop in order to keep reading. And by you, I mean me.
— Daniel Handler, New York Times bestselling author of the Lemony Snicket series -
The ultimate haunted house story . . . both fresh and consistently spooky . . . a work that almost demands to be read in a single sitting. Just be sure to leave the lights on when you do.
— BookPage -
Another triumph of David Mitchell’s voracious imagination.
— The Daily Telegraph (U.K.) -
Irresistible.
— Mail on Sunday (U.K.) -
So dazzling it seems to defy its own gravitational rules.
— Metro (U.K.) -
A ripping little Victorian gothic yarn, and one of which @edgarallanpoe would have been proud . . . Slade House plunges us into full psycho-mystic fantasy-horror—and it’s a hoot.
— Esquire (U.K.) -
Prepare to be dazzled.
— Tatler (U.K.) -
[A] triumph . . . Mitchell’s most pleasurable book to date, which also features some of his finest writing.
— Literary Review (U.K.) -
David Mitchell turned all the firepower of his formidable gifts on the lures, and the perils, of immortality. . . . Yet, as ever, Mitchell grounds his fantasy in high-definition, close-up scenes of daily experience. . . . Mitchell’s zestful, joyous recreation of the minutiae of everyday life has a redemptive role. Against the accursed privilege of the immortals, he helps us love the time that dooms us.
— The Independent (U.K.) -
[Mitchell is] a master of genre verisimilitude.
— The National (A.E.) -
A complex, twisty little gem that fans of the author will absolutely devour . . . Slade House reinforces the notion that there really is no one out there like David Mitchell.
— Shelf Awareness -
Deliciously inventive and hard to put down.
— Library Journal -
“An eerie haunted house tale that takes as much from quantum mechanics as from traditional supernatural lore.”
— Dean Koontz, #1 New York Times bestselling author -
“Superb . . . Mitchell offers his most accessible book yet—a haunted-house story in the vein of such classics as The Turn of the Screw and The Haunting of Hill House. . . . Suggest to fans of Audrey Niffenegger, Karen Russell, and Steven Millhauser, and expect it to be read as a Halloween staple for years to come.
— Booklist -
Mitchell serves up a story that wouldn’t be out of place alongside The Turn of the Screw. Ingenious, scary, and downright weird . . . [a] delicious ghost story.
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review) -
“A wildly inventive, chilling, and—for all its otherworldliness—wonderfully human haunted house story.”
— Gillian Flynn, #1 New York Times bestselling author -
“A Dracula for the new millennium, a Hansel and Gretel for grown-ups, a reminder of how much fun fiction can be.”
— Anthony Doerr, Pulitzer Prize-winning author -
“Devilishly fun.”
— Washington Post -
“So dazzling it seems to defy its own gravitational rules.”
— Metro (UK) -
“Entertainingly eerie…Mitchell’s take on the classic ghost story, complete with his version of a haunted house…The last thing we expected from Mitchell is simplicity, but here it is, burnished to a hellish bronze.”
— Chicago Tribune -
“If you choose to take the tour, expect to encounter Mitchell’s wildly inventive literary riffs along with the unrelenting tension and supernatural thrills.”
— BookPage
Awards
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An October 2015 LibraryReads Pick
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An Amazon Editor’s Top Pick for Fall
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A Publishers Weekly Top 10 Book for Fall
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A BookPage Top Pick for November 2015
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A New York Times Editor’s Choice
Slade House Listener Reviews
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About David Mitchell
David Mitchell is the award-winning and bestselling author of The Bone Clocks and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, named a best book of the year by Time, Washington Post, Financial Times, New Yorker, Globe and Mail, and the New York Times. He has been nominated for the Man Booker Prize five times and hailed as “the novelist who’s shown us fiction’s future” (Washington Post), as well as named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time in 2007. He lives in Ireland with his wife and two children.
About the Narrators
Thomas Judd is a voice talent and Earphones Award–winning audio narrator.
Tania Rodrigues is a London-based actor and voice artist and an Earphones Award–winning narrator. She brings a unique cultural perspective to her work, coming from a family with roots in India, Portugal, and Britain. She grew up in Hong Kong and has since lived in both the UK and US. She trained at the Drama Studio in London and completed a BA degree with honors in English and drama. She has narrated many award-winning audiobooks, including the Booker Prize winner The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai.