Determined to find a better life for her younger brother Jasper, Opal, when she gets the chance to step inside the Starling House, the estate of the 19th-century author of her favorite book, and make some extra cash, finds things taking a sinister turn. - (Baker & Taylor)

"Eden, Kentucky, is just another dying, bad-luck town, known only for the legend of E. Starling, the reclusive nineteenth-century author and illustrator who wrote The Underland--and disappeared. Before she vanished, Starling House appeared. But everyone agrees that it's best to let the uncanny house--and its last lonely heir, Arthur Starling--go to rot. Opal knows better than to mess with haunted houses or brooding men, but an unexpected job offer might be a chance to get her brother out of Eden. Too quickly, though, Starling House starts to feel dangerously like something she's never had: a home. As sinister forces converge on Starling House, Opal and Arthur are going to have to make a dire choice: to dig up the buried secrets of the past and confront their own fears, or let Eden be taken over by literal nightmares. If Opal wants a home, she'll have to fight for it."-- - (Baker & Taylor)

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER | A REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK

“This book has everything you could possibly want this fall...a cursed town, a haunted house, a vivid & eerie setting—plus, characters willing to risk everything.” —Reese Witherspoon (Reese’s Book Club October ’23 Pick)

Starling House is a gorgeous, modern gothic fantasy from the New York Times bestselling author of The Ten Thousand Doors of January.

I dream sometimes about a house I’ve never seen….

Opal is a lot of things—orphan, high school dropout, full-time cynic and part-time cashier—but above all, she's determined to find a better life for her younger brother Jasper. One that gets them out of Eden, Kentucky, a town remarkable for only two things: bad luck and E. Starling, the reclusive nineteenth century author of The Underland, who disappeared over a hundred years ago.

All she left behind were dark rumors—and her home. Everyone agrees that it’s best to ignore the uncanny mansion and its misanthropic heir, Arthur. Almost everyone, anyway.

I should be scared, but in the dream I don’t hesitate.

Opal has been obsessed with The Underland since she was a child. When she gets the chance to step inside Starling House—and make some extra cash for her brother's escape fund—she can't resist.

But sinister forces are digging deeper into the buried secrets of Starling House, and Arthur’s own nightmares have become far too real. As Eden itself seems to be drowning in its own ghosts, Opal realizes that she might finally have found a reason to stick around.

In my dream, I’m home.

And now she’ll have to fight.

Welcome to Starling House: enter, if you dare.

A Book of the Month Club Pick
An October 2023 Indie Next Pick
A LibraryReads October 2023 Hall of Fame Pick
Apple, Best Books of October
EW.com, Fall Book Must Reads 2023
Washington Post, Noteworthy Books for October
Paste Magazine, The Must-Read Fantasy Books of Fall 2023
PopSugar Best New Fantasy Books of 2023
BookPage, Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2023
Observer, Must-Read Books of Fall 2023
Polygon, 12 Best New SFF for the Fall
LitHub, October’s Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books
Bookish, October’s Most-Anticipated Books
Gizmodo, October's Huge List of New Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror Books

Alix E. Harrow is the Hugo Award winning author of The Ten Thousand Doors of January, The Once and Future Witches, and various short fiction. Her Fractured Fables series, beginning with the novella A Spindle Splintered, has been praised for its refreshing twist on familiar fairy tales. A former academic and adjunct, Harrow lives in Virginia with her husband and their two semi-feral kids. - (McMillan Palgrave)

Booklist Reviews

In Harrow's latest (after A Mirror Mended, 2022), a redheaded girl named Opal dreams of drowning and of a decrepit house. She ignores the dreams, too busy taking care of her younger brother and figuring out where they might find their next meal. When she ventures to Starling House, she meets Arthur Starling, who has been fighting a lifelong battle against what lies beneath, and who swears he will be the house's last warden. But Opal, hard edged and hungry, wants something different. Starling House is a brilliant book; Harrow's world building and writing style speak to her authorial experience and love of the story she writes. It is at once fantasy and reality, tied up in an inextricable knot that speaks truth about the things we need and the things we want, what we wish we could do to those who try to make us feel less than, and what reality calls for. This is a tale readers can get lost in, and they will still be in it long after the final page. Copyright 2023 Booklist Reviews.

Library Journal Reviews

In 19th-century Kentucky, E. Starling wrote a well-known fantasy called The Underland and then disappeared, leaving behind the now tumbledown Starling House, inhabited by its last moody heir, Arthur. Opal takes a job there, hoping to earn money to help her brother. But the house starts feeling like home, and soon she's teaming up with Arthur to uncover its secrets. From the Hugo Award—winning Harrow; with a 250,000-copy first printing. Prepub Alert. Copyright 2023 Library Journal

Library Journal Reviews

The town of Eden, KY, has its share of bad luck, and Opal has seen much of it her entire life. She will do anything to get her younger brother out of Eden and on a path to a better life. When an opportunity arises at the infamous Starling House, Opal won't let scary stories, dire warnings, or a moody heir get in her way. The house, built by a reclusive author, has intrigued Opal since her childhood. However, it seems that family secrets are not limited to the Starlings, and Opal will have to face down her own legacy that ties her to the house, the beasts of Underhill, and those who want the dark secrets for their own use. Harrow's captivating prose centers her flawed, cynical protagonists in a haunting plot of horrible actions, fog-hidden beasts, and moving connections between family, friends, and lovers. Fans of Shirley Jackson and Catriona Ward should pick this up. VERDICT Harrow's (A Mirror Mended) mash-up of twisted fairy tales and Southern gothic fiction is a haunting story of longing, lies, and generational curses.—Kristi Chadwick

Publishers Weekly Reviews

Hugo Award winner Harrow (The Ten Thousand Doors of January) does it again in this tender and triumphant haunted house story. The closest thing to a home that Opal has ever known is the motel room where she lives with her younger brother, Jasper, but she's plagued by mysterious dreams about wandering through Starling House, the most notorious building in the coal-mining town of Eden, Ky., complete with perpetually slamming doors and a light that cuts through the town's thick, rising mist. None of the townsfolk have ever seen the inside save for the unsettling and reclusive Starling family, but in Opal's dreams she knows the interior intimately. She feels called to investigate her connection to the house and the family, but along the way she'll have to determine which secrets she's ready to uncover and who and what she's willing to fight for. Harrow's prose cuts straight to the heart as she melds a story of family legacy and historical oppression with a stirring call to speak the truth. Readers will be left chewing on this tale long after the last page, and Starling House will no doubt take its place alongside fiction's most memorable haunted houses. (Oct.)Correction: An earlier version of this review incorrectly described the protagonist as a teenager.