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?’
Architect 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 his masterpiece, Rose House, is locked up tight.
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 Deniau, and Rose House refuses to speak.
Dr Gisil can enter, but she wasn't there when Rose House called in the death. Yet someone was. Someone died.
And someone, or something, 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
