Tor UK snaps up supernatural house horror

The synopsis reads:

The new house is meant to be a fresh start for Claire and her family, a move away from the grim threats of declining San Francisco and towards a safe, affluent suburban life. But even as they unpack boxes and hang pictures, Claire begins to realise that something is wrong. The house is hungry – and it gradually dawns on Claire that it’s eating anything that was once alive: fresh cut flowers, wooden furniture, her daughter’s favourite toy. Everything that the house consumes disappears without a trace. Only Claire and Tom, the owners of the house, remember that it ever existed.

As she comes to understand the extent of the house’s power Claire persuades Tom to put it on the market. But they soon discover that the house calls to the worst kind of people: those who will feed it what it most hungers for – human flesh. Unwilling to let it fall into such hands, Claire forms an uneasy alliance with her home. She feeds it cow hearts, hires a decorator to fix it up, and starts to learn its secrets. But when she wakes one night to find a body dumped through the basement window, slowly being devoured, Claire begins to wonder why she and her family were drawn to the house in the first place.

Sophie Robinson comments: ‘The House that Eats the Dead is the freshest, most original and superbly fun take on the haunted house trope I have ever come across. Bold, with full throttle pacing, sharp black humour and expert dread, readers are in for a brilliantly wild ride. I can’t wait to publish in Summer 2026.’

Author Max Doty says: ‘Once, when I brought up the subject of selling our house, my wife shushed me, warning that it would hear me. This was sort of a joke. And also not. The idea of a house with emotions took root from there. What if a house had desires? Hurt feelings? Hungers? Once those questions arose, I couldn’t stop writing about them. I hope that The House that Eats the Dead provides some interesting answers. I’m so thankful that the book has found an ideal home in Tor Nightfire, and I’m incredibly grateful to have found a publisher who loves the house as much as I do.’

Agent Maria Brannan says: ‘Max has crafted such a compulsive story with a brilliantly dark thread of hunger that tugged me through the pages alongside Claire and her family. I'm delighted that Sophie and the Tor team will be bringing The House that Eats the Dead to life and I can't wait for readers to step through the door of the house and find themselves immersed in this deeply unnerving, claustrophobic spiral of a horror novel.’

Tor UK will publish The House that Eats the Dead on Tor Nightfire on 20th August 2026.

About the author
Max Doty is a veteran game-writer who served as the Head of Content for Choices: Stories You Play and Surviving High School for which he also wrote two spin-off novels. His screenplay Almost Kings won Netflix’s inaugural Find Your Voice award and was made into a feature film. Max regularly contributes to reddit’s NoSleep forum as scarymaxx, where his works often appear at the top of the charts. He holds a BA and an MA from Stanford University as well as an MFA from Arizona State University. The House that Eats the Dead is his first horror novel. 

About Tor UK
Tor UK specializes in speculative fiction and is a destination for the best in imaginative storytelling. A sister company to Tor Books in the US, Tor UK publishes an impressive array of award-winners, bestsellers, household names and talented debut authors. Tor’s mission is to publish out-of-this-world genre fiction and bring readers books that spark joy. It strives every year to increase the diversity of its list, publishing authors from minority backgrounds and increasing positive representation of gender issues through fiction. 

Launching in Spring 2025, Nightfire is a boutique horror list at Tor, showcasing the very best of literary and commercial fiction. (www.panmacmillan.com/tor)

About Pan Macmillan
Pan Macmillan is an international consumer book publisher based in the UK, publishing a very broad range of books in all formats, including print, ebook and audio, for today’s readers. Its adult book imprints include Bluebird, Macmillan, Macmillan Business, Macmillan Audio, Macmillan Collector’s Library, Mantle, One Boat, Pan, Picador and Tor. Children’s Book imprints include Macmillan Children’s Books, Campbell, Kingfisher and Two Hoots. (www.panmacmillan.com)

Pan Macmillan is part of Macmillan Publishers International Ltd (MPIL), a division of the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group (www.holtzbrinck.com), a large family-owned media company based in Stuttgart.