Rose/House

For this staggering novella, two-time Hugo Award winner Martine (the Teixcalaan space opera series) brings her impressive SF chops closer to home—inside of a home, in fact: Rose House, the AI-infused creation of legendary architect Basit Deniau, a building that can think for itself. On his death, Deniau specified that his life’s work should be locked permanently away in Rose House, and that the building should be sealed, accessible only to his former student Dr. Selene Gisil. Now Rose House sits alone in the desert, haunting itself and guarding its hoard, until one night it discovers a dead man within its halls and contacts Det. Maritza Smith to investigate. Selene, living in Turkey, has denounced Deniau and would rather never return to Rose House—until she, too, learns of the impossible corpse. To crack the case and understand the house’s dark mysteries, Selene and Maritza enter Rose House, knowing that the last person who did so never left, and that whatever killed him may still be inside. 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 floored. Agent: Howard Morhaim, Howard Morhaim Literary (Mar.)