Leigh Bardugo’s first adult novel Ninth House finds a home at Gollancz

Rachel Winterbottom, Commissioning Editor at Gollancz, has acquired UK & Commonwealth rights (ex. Canada) for New York Times No. 1 bestselling author Leigh Bardugo’s Ninth House, plus one sequel. This follows swiftly on the heels of the recently announced Netflix series that will be based on Bardugo’s Grishaverse, as portrayed in her young adult novels, published with the Hachette Children’s Group.

This is Bardugo’s first book for adults. For fans of Deborah Harkness, Susanna Clarke and Neil Gaiman, Ninth House follows a woman who finds herself drawn into the occult dealings of the secret societies of Yale University in order to solve a murder.

 Galaxy ‘Alex’ Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale’s freshman class. Raised in the Los Angeles hinterlands by a hippie mom, Alex dropped out of school early and into a world of shady drug dealer boyfriends, dead end jobs, and much, much worse. By age twenty she is the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved multiple homicide. Some might say she’s thrown her life away. But Alex is offered a second chance: to attend one of the world’s most elite universities on a full scholarship.

What’s the catch, and why her? Still searching for answers, Alex arrives in New Haven tasked by her mysterious benefactors with monitoring the activities of Yale’s secret societies, known to be haunts of the future rich and powerful. But their occult activities are revealed to be more sinister and extraordinary than any paranoid imagination might conceive.

They tamper with forbidden magic. They raise the dead. And, sometimes, they prey on the living.

Rachel Winterbottom said: ‘We are so thrilled to be welcoming Leigh Bardugo to Gollancz house for her first adult novel. She is an exceptional talent and Ninth House has all the Leigh trademarks we love – it’s breathtakingly imaginative, sharply humorous and full of complicated characters you’ll instantly adore, all set against a hidden world just one step away from our own. We cannot wait to invite everyone in.’

Leigh Bardugo said: ‘This story began nearly twenty years ago, when I got my first glimpse of a mausoleum big enough to be an office building – right in the middle of the Yale campus. It’s about murder and magic, but also about power and privilege and what it means to be a young woman who is out of second chances.’

Bardugo’s agent Joanna Volpe at New Leaf said: ‘Leigh first told me about this project eight years ago, as the story she had been burning to write—the dark and dangerous mysteries surrounding Yale’s secret societies. While she had other deadlines to contend with first, she kept coming back to Ninth House. I couldn’t be happier about the book finally making its way to the shelves soon, and we’re delighted to be working with Gollancz on bringing it to readers around the world.’

Ninth House will be published on the 1st October 2019 in hardback, ebook and audio download.