Tor UK, part of Pan Macmillan, has signed ROSE/HOUSE by Hugo Award-winning author Arkady Martine.
Editorial director Sophie Robinson acquired UK and British Commonwealth rights (excluding Canada) from Chris Scheina at St Martin’s Press. North American rights were also acquired from Kelly Lonesome at Tor US.
The novella was originally published by Subterranean Press as a special limited edition hardcover and has since been shortlisted for Best Novella at the 2024 Hugo Awards. The book will be released on March 13, 2025.
“Basit Deniau’s houses were cursed from the start,” the synopsis reads. “A house embedded with artificial intelligence is a perfectly normal thing: a house that is artificial intelligence and has embedded a thinking creature that is not human in every supporting beam and every fine marble tile? That’s something else entirely. But now Deniau has been dead for a year and Rose House is locked tight, as the Architect’s will commanded.”
The synopsis continues: “Dr. Selene Gisil, a former protégé, is the only person allowed to enter Rose House once a year. Now there is a dead person in Rose House. It is not Basit Deniau and it is not Dr. Gisil. It is someone else. But Rose House is not communicating. No one except Dr. Gisil can enter Rose House. Dr. Gisil was not in North America when Rose House reported the death. But someone was there. And someone died there. And maybe someone is still there.”
Robinson said: “If Shirley Jackson had gotten her hands on AI while writing Haunting of Hill Houseit would have looked something like ROSE/HOUSE: sharp, unsettling with an atmospheric fear that built up so much that I could hardly breathe by the end. I am delighted that we can make this extraordinary work available to even more readers.”
Martine added: “Rose/House is my arthouse fever dream novella – deserts, architecture and artificial ghosts wrapped up in my eternal fascination with the Gothic – who said ‘Gothic is a story about a girl falling in love with an evil house’? He wasn’t wrong. I’m excited to bring Rose/House to a wider audience in the UK and Europe and it’s a pleasure to be able to work with Tor UK again.”
