9 Books Featuring Strange and Magical Houses

Despite being inanimate objects, people attribute many kinds of emotions to their homes, including grand, adored, menacing, and haunted. In these 9 books, homes come to life—not simply as plot devices but also as actual locations endowed with supernatural abilities. Learn about an intriguing bed & breakfast, a home with infinite hallways, magnificent castles, and more!

Gallant

V. E. Schwab

Olivia Prior has grown up in Merilance School for Girls, and all she has of her past is her mother’s journal—which seems to unravel into madness. Then, a letter invites Olivia to come home to Gallant. Yet when Olivia arrives, no one is expecting her. But Olivia is not about to leave the first place that feels like home; it doesn’t matter if her cousin Matthew is hostile, or if she sees half-formed ghouls haunting the hallways.Olivia knows that Gallant is hiding secrets, and she is determined to uncover them.

Release Date: March 1, 2022

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House of Leaves

Mark Z. Danielewski

Oh man was there a book. It is still to this day a book I mention it to any book lover if asked for a recommendation. The best books stick with you, often reminding you of the power, and potential, of storytelling, and House of Leaves is one of those books.”—Michael Seidlinger, in this Bookmarked volume on Mark Z. Danielweski’s classic of experimental contemporary literature, House of Leaves. No one could have anticipated the small but devoted following this terrifying story would soon command.

Release Date: July 1, 2000

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Howl’s Moving Castle

Diana Wynne Jones

Sophie has the great misfortune of being the eldest of three daughters, destined to fail miserably should she ever leave home to seek her fate. But when she unwittingly attracts the ire of the Witch of the Waste, Sophie finds herself under a horrid spell that transforms her into an old lady. Her only chance at breaking it lies in the ever-moving castle in the hills: the Wizard Howl’s castle.

To untangle the enchantment, Sophie must handle the heartless Howl, strike a bargain with a fire demon, and meet the Witch of the Waste head-on.

Release Date: August 7, 2001

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Practical Magic

Alice Hoffman

For more than two hundred years, the Owens women have been blamed for everything that has gone wrong in their Massachusetts town. Gillian and Sally have endured that fate as well: as children, the sisters were forever outsiders, taunted, talked about, pointed at. Their elderly aunts almost seemed to encourage the whispers of witchery, with their musty house and their exotic concoctions and their crowd of black cats. But all Gillian and Sally wanted was to escape.

One will do so by marrying, the other by running away. But the bonds they share will bring them back—almost as if by magic…

Release Date: August 5, 2003

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The Little Stranger

Sarah Waters

One postwar summer in his home of rural Warwickshire, Dr. Faraday, the son of a maid who has built a life of quiet respectability as a country physician, is called to a patient at lonely Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for over two centuries, the Georgian house, once impressive and handsome, is now in decline, its masonry crumbling, its gardens choked with weeds, the clock in its stable yard permanently fixed at twenty to nine. Its owners—mother, son, and daughter—are struggling to keep pace with a changing society, as well as with conflicts of their own. But are the Ayreses haunted by something more sinister than a dying way of life?

Release Date: April 30, 2009

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Piranesi

Susanna Clarke

Piranesi’s house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house. There is one other person in the house-a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge.

Release Date: September 7, 2021

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Gideon the Ninth

Tamsyn Muir

The Emperor needs necromancers.

The Ninth Necromancer needs a swordswoman.

Gideon has a sword, some dirty magazines, and no more time for undead nonsense.

Tamsyn Muir’s Gideon the Ninth unveils a solar system of swordplay, cut-throat politics, and lesbian necromancers.

Her characters leap off the page, as skillfully animated as arcane revenants. The result is a heart-pounding epic science fantasy.

Release Date: July 14, 2020

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Under the Whispering Door

TJ Klune

When a reaper comes to collect Wallace from his own funeral, Wallace begins to suspect he might be dead. And when Hugo, the owner of a peculiar tea shop, promises to help him cross over, Wallace decides he’s definitely dead. But even in death he’s not ready to abandon the life he barely lived, so when Wallace is given one week to cross over, he sets about living a lifetime in seven days. Hilarious, haunting, and kind, Under the Whispering Door is an uplifting story about a life spent at the office and a death spent building a home. At the Publisher’s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Release Date: September 21, 2021

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House of Suns

Alastair Reynolds

Six million years ago, at the dawn of the star-faring era, Abigail Gentian fractured herself into a thousand male and female clones, which she called shatterlings. She sent them out into the galaxy to observe and document the rise and fall of countless human empires. Since then, every two hundred thousand years, they gather to exchange news and memories of their travels.

Only there is no Gathering. Someone is eliminating the Gentian line. And now Campion and Purslane — two shatterlings who have fallen in love and shared forbidden experiences — must determine exactly who, or what, their enemy is, before they are wiped out of existence . . .

Release Date: April 21, 2020

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