Rose/House is a breathtaking and taut sci-fi gothic thriller from Arkady Martine, Hugo Award-winning author of A Memory Called Empire.

“I’m a piece of architecture, Detective. How should I know how humans are like to die?”



All of Basit Deniau’s houses are haunted.

Detective Maritza Smith grew up in China Lake and knows the late architect’s most iconic creation, Rose House, is no exception. And a house embedded with an artificial intelligence is a common thing; but a house that is an artificial intelligence, infused in every load-bearing beam and fine marble tile? That is something else altogether. That is Rose House.

Deniau’s been dead a year, and the house is locked up tight, as commanded by his will. But one evening Detective Smith receives an alarming call from Rose House: there is a dead body inside.

It is not Basit Deniau, and it is not Dr. Selene Gisil, a former protégé and the sole person permitted to come into Rose House once a year. It is someone else. But Rose House refuses to communicate any further and hangs up.

No one can get inside Rose House except Dr. Gisil, who was abroad when the death was reported. Detective Smith must summon her back to the Mojave Desert and gain access to the house—and to the dead body—before it’s too late.

For someone may be there still.

Also by Arkady Martine:

A Memory Called Empire

A Desolation Called Peace

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.



Praise for this book

A 2024 HUGO NOMINEE FOR BEST NOVELLA

“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.”

—Publishers Weekly, STARRED review

"Not only is it a great haunted house novel, but Martine’s exceptional eye for structures and systems (as seen in her Teixcalaan series) really shines here as she looks into architecture and design and the way such things shape our very perceptions of the world."

—Drew Broussard, LitHub

“Tight and unsettling...a story that’s stylish, discomforting, and strangely believable... Rose/House is a freaky love letter to architecture, weird and otherwise.”

—Jake Casella Brookins, Locus

“[Haunting of Hill House is] a hard act to riff on without simply producing a lesser version, and yet Rose/House manages it dramatically and delightfully.”

—Reactor

“While a mystery story raises questions in order to answer them and reset order in a disordered world, Rose/House deconstructs that process and reassembles the pieces into something other – or perhaps Other. The spirit that haunts this story is not that of the locked-room puzzle but something stranger and not at all reassuring.”

—Russell Letson, Locus

Praise for A Memory Called Empire



“A mesmerizing debut . . . it left me utterly dazzled.”

—The New York Times Book Review



“Exquisite . . . a compelling journey with a rich world and fascinating characters”

—The Los Angeles Times

"Interesting, detailed, lavish."

—The Wall Street Journal

"[An] all around brilliant space opera, I absolutely love it."

—Ann Leckie, author of Ancillary Justice

"In A Memory Called Empire, Arkady Martine smuggles you into her interstellar diplomatic pouch, and takes you on the most thrilling ride ever."

—Charlie Jane Anders, author of All The Birds in the Sky

"[A] gorgeously crafted diplomatic space opera . . . Readers will eagerly away the planned sequels to this impressive debut."

—Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Politics and personalities blend with an immersive setting and beautiful prose in a debut that weaves threads of identity, assimilation, technology, and culture to offer an exceedingly well-done sf political thriller."

—Library Journal, starred review

"This is both an epic and a human story, successful in the mode of Ann Leckie and Yoon Ha Lee. A confident beginning with the promise of future installments that can't come quickly enough."

—Kirkus, starred review




About the AuthorArkady Martine is the Hugo Award-winning author of A Memory Called Empire and A Desolation Called Peace. She is a speculative fiction writer and, as Dr. AnnaLinden Weller, a historian of the Byzantine Empire and a city planner. She currently works on clean energy policy and utility regulation in New Mexico. Under both names, she writes about border politics, rhetoric, propaganda, and the edges of the world. Arkady grew up in New York City and, after some time in Turkey, Canada, Sweden, and Baltimore, lives in Santa Fe with her wife, the author Vivian Shaw.
Title: Rose/House
Author(s): Arkady Martine
ISBN: 9781250387516
Copyright 2025
Release Date: March 11, 2025
Publisher: Tor Publishing Group
Countries: United States, Canada | Learn more about available countries
Language: English
Format: None available | Learn More about our supported formats
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