Excerpt from Slade House by David Mitchell, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"My sister and I are a different species," says Jonah, "but the experiment part is redundant. We pass ourselves off as normal, or anything we want to be. Do you want to play fox and hounds?"

"We walked past a pub called The Fox and Hounds." "It's been there since the 1930s. Smells like the 1930s too, if you ever go in. My sister and I borrowed its name for a game. Want to play? It's a race, basically."

"I didn't know you had a sister."

"Don't worry, you'll meet her later. Fox and hounds is a race. We start off at opposite corners of the house. We both shout, 'Fox and hounds, one two three!' and on the 'three' we start running, anti-clockwise, until one of us catches the other. The catcher is the hound and the one who's caught is the fox. Simple. Up for it?"

If I say no to Jonah he might call me a wuss or a spazzo. "Okay. But shouldn't it be called 'fox and hound' if there's only one hound?"

Jonah's face goes through two or three expressions I can't read. "Henceforth, Nathan, it'll be known as 'fox and hound.' Slade House looms up. The red ivy's redder than red ivy nor¬mally is. The ground floor windows are too high off the ground to see inside, and anyway they only reflect the sky and clouds. "You stay here," Jonah tells me at the front right corner. "I'll go round the back. Once we start, run anti-clockwise—up this way." Off Jonah trots down the side of the house, which is walled by a holly hedge. While I'm waiting, I notice someone moving in the window nearest to me. I step closer, peering up. It's a woman. Another guest at Lady Norah Grayer's soirée, I suppose, or maybe a servant. She's got one of those beehive hairstyles that ladies on Dad's old LPs had; her forehead's fur¬rowed and her mouth's slowly opening and closing like a gold¬fish. Like she's repeating the same word over and over and over. I can't hear what she's saying because the window's shut, so I tell her, "I can't hear you." I take a step forwards, but she vanishes and there's only reflected sky. So I take a step back, and she's there again. It's like one of those pictures you get in cereal boxes where it looks like the image is moving when you tilt it slightly. The beehive woman could be saying, "No, no, no"; or "Go, go, go"; or it might be "Oh, oh, oh." Before I work it out, I hear Jonah's voice down the holly path, saying, "Ready, Nathan?"

I shout, "Ready!" and when I look back at the window the beehive woman's gone, and I can't get her back wherever I stand or however I tilt my head. I take up my starting position at the corner.

"Fox and hound!" calls Jonah, and I call it too. "One, two—"

"Three!" I shout back and leg it down the holly path—slap slap slap go my shoes, and the echo's whack whack whack. Jonah's taller than me and maybe he'd beat me over a hundred meters, but I could still end up as the hound and not the fox because it's stamina that counts over longer distances, and I'm at the end of the side path already, where I was expecting a view of Cranbury Avenue, but there's just a long brick wall and fir trees and a narrow strip of lawn that goes by in a blur. I pound along and swing round on a drainpipe, sprint down another chilly side path sliced with blades of light coming through a high fence with brambles poking between the slats, then I'm out front again where I smack into a butterfly bush and but¬terflies blizzard up all orange and black and red and white and one goes in my mouth so I spit it out and I leap over the rock¬ery and nearly trip up when I land but I don't. Along I run past steps climbing to the front door, past the beehive woman's window but she's gone now and then round the corner and I'm pounding back down the echoey holly path, starting to get a stitch in my side but I'll ignore it, and the holly's scratching the back of my hand like it's pushing in, and I wonder if Jo¬nah's gaining on me or I'm gaining on Jonah but not for long because I'm back at the back of Slade House, where the fir trees are thicker and bigger and the wall blurrier, and I keep running running running round the corner to where the brambles really are choking through the fence now, scratching my shins my neck and now I'm afraid I'll be the fox not the hound, and round the front the sun's gone in, or gone out, or gone away, and the flowers are withered and there's not a sin¬gle butterfly on the butterfly bush, just dead ones smeared into the path, powder-paint skid marks with one half-dead one, flapping a bit . . .

From the book Slade House by David Mitchell. Copyright © 2015 by David Mitchell. Reprinted by arrangement with Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.