An epic, gripping novel about murder, truth, artistic obsession, and the dangers of storytelling, from the inimitable John Darnielle.

Gage Chandler is descended from kings. That’s what his mother always told him.

Now he is a true-crime writer with one grisly success—and movie adaptation—to his name, along with a series of subsequent lesser efforts that have paid the bills but not much more. But he is being offered the chance for the big break: to move into the house—what the locals call “The Devil House”—in which a briefly notorious pair of murders occurred in 1980s, apparently the work of disaffected teens. He begins his research with diligence and enthusiasm, but soon the story leads him into a puzzle he never expected—back into his own work and what it means, back to the very core of what he does and who he is.

John Darnielle has long been known to millions of Mountain Goats fans as a storyteller of uncanny sensitivity and mythic power. In Universal Harvester, and in Wolf in White Van before it, he has proven himself a novelist of the highest order. With Devil House, Darnielle rises above with a novel that blurs the line between fact and fiction, that combines daring formal experimentation with a gripping tale of crime, writing, memory, and artistic obsession.

• Picardor: 432 pages
  
• Publisher: MCD (October 4, 2022)
• ISBN-13: 978-1250862884