Cinder House
core novella 2025 Cinder House
Record
| First published | 2025 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novella |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 3.77 (7,524 ratings, collected 2026-08-20) |
| Page count | 144 |
| First-edition ISBN | 9781250341716 |
Synopsis
Cinder House, a 2025 novella by Freya Marske, reimagines the Cinderella story as a ghost story. When Ella is sixteen, she and her father are murdered by her stepmother; her father's spirit departs for good, but Ella herself rises again as a ghost, bound permanently to the house her stepmother has since inherited. Invisible to almost everyone, she can be seen only by the house's owners, leaving her confined and largely powerless within its walls even as life continues around her. Ella eventually forges a wary friendship with a fairy charm-seller who visits the property, and together they strike a bargain granting her three nights of near-living freedom outside the house's boundaries. The novella deliberately inverts familiar fairy-tale figures, the doting father and the wicked stepmother among them, using Ella's confinement to explore powerlessness and the limits of a conventional happy ending.
Where it sits
- Universe: Cinder House
- Series: not part of a registered series (standalone work within its universe)
- Author: Freya Marske
Notes
- Published by Tordotcom, 2025.
Sources
- Freya Marske, author site: Cinder House
- Novella review: Cinder House
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinder_House
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