Scoop: New book from 'House of Leaves' writer coming this Halloween
Pantheon Books will publish Mark Z. Danielewski's "untitled novel" this fall, 25 years after 'House of Leaves' freaked everyone out.
According to an email from publicist Demetri Papadimitropoulos, Pantheon Books will publish a new untitled novel by Mark Z. Danielewski three days before Halloween on October 28, 2025 while celebrating the 25th anniversary of House of Leaves, which was one of the most harrowing reading experiences of my young life.
House of Leaves started as a 100-page short story called Redwood, written over three “sleepless days and nights” with a fountain pen in 1990, before Danielewski transformed it into an experimental novel between 1993 and 1999. After finding an agent who fell in love with it, 32 publishers turned the bizarre manuscript down before Pantheon editor Edward Kastenmeier scooped it up.
In the decades since, House of Leaves has become a cult classic for its unusual form and subtle horror. Ostensibly, it’s about a fictional documentary film, The Navidson Record, which is itself about a house in rural Virginia that’s (much) larger on the inside than it is on the outside. But the main draws of the book are its stylistic departures from a novel’s typical form, including footnotes, highlighted text, typeface changes, handwritten passages, and more that I won’t spoil.
Details about Danielewski’s new novel are under wraps beyond the pub date, though October 28 may hint at another horror-infused book.
Born in NYC and now based in LA, Danielewski followed the 700-page House of Leaves (2000) with a much shorter novel, Only Revolutions (2006), which was a finalist for the National Book Award that year despite polarized reviews. Between 2015 and 2017, he published five of 27 (!) planned volumes of The Familiar before abandoning the series to become the literary equivalent of Sufjan Steven’s albums for all fifty states.
In other news
ICYMI my new book, A Danger to the Minds of Young Girls (Atria / One Signal Publishers, December 9, 2025), is available for preorder now. As we face new book bans in our own time, this is “the definitive biography of overlooked queer icon Margaret C. Anderson, whose fight to publish James Joyce’s Ulysses led to her arrest and trial for obscenity.”
Forthcoming in The Frontlist
Behind the book with Amal El-Mohtar, author of The River Has Roots (March 4, Tordotcom), and her cover designer Spencer Fuller.
This is exciting! I’m actually reading House of Leaves for the first time and thoroughly enjoying the ride.