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The FamiliarSeries

This expansive saga delves into a complex web of interconnected lives, unfolding across diverse cultures and continents. Each installment explores profound themes of identity, destiny, and the perilous choices that shape humanity's future. From bustling cityscapes to secluded enclaves, these narratives promise a thrilling journey filled with suspense, mystery, and unexpected revelations.

The Familiar - Hades
The Familiar - Redwood
The familiar. Volume 1, One rainy day in May
The Familiar - Into the Forest
The Familiar, Volume 3 Honeysuckle & Pain

Recommended Reading Order

  1. 1

    The familiar. Volume 1, One rainy day in May

    • 839 pages
    • 30 hours of reading
    3.7(4011)Add rating

    NATIONAL BEST SELLER  From the author of the international best seller House of Leaves and National Book Award–nominated Only Revolutions comes a monumental new novel as dazzling as it is riveting. The Familiar (Volume 1) ranges from Mexico to Southeast Asia, from Venice, Italy, to Venice, California, with nine lives hanging in the balance, each called upon to make a terrifying choice. They include a therapist-in-training grappling with daughters as demanding as her patients; an ambitious East L.A. gang member contracted for violence; two scientists in Marfa, Texas, on the run from an organization powerful beyond imagining; plus a recovering addict in Singapore summoned at midnight by a desperate billionaire; and a programmer near Silicon Beach whose game engine might unleash consequences far exceeding the entertainment he intends. At the very heart, though, is a twelve-year-old girl named Xanther who one rainy day in May sets out with her father to get a dog, only to end up trying to save a creature as fragile as it is dangerous . . . which will change not only her life and the lives of those she has yet to encounter, but this world, too—or at least the world we think we know and the future we take for granted.(With full-color illustrations throughout.) 

    The familiar. Volume 1, One rainy day in May
  2. 2

    The Familiar - Into the Forest

    • 829 pages
    • 30 hours of reading
    4.2(1546)Add rating

    The Familiar, Volume 1 Wherein the cat is found . . . The Familiar, Volume 2 Wherein the cat is hungry . . . From the universally acclaimed, genre-busting author of House of Leaves comes the second volume of The Familiar, a “novel [which] goes beyond the experimental into the visionary, creating a language and style that expands the horizon of meaning . . . hint[ing] at an evolved form of literature.”* In The Familiar, Volume 2: Into the Forest, the lives of the disparate and dynamic nine characters introduced in “One Rainy Day in May” begin to intersect in inexplicable ways, finding harmonies and echoes in each other. What once seemed remote and disconnected draws closer—slowly, steadily—toward something inevitable. . . . At the center of it all is Xanther, a twelve-year-old girl, for whom the world around her seems to be opening, exposing doors and windows, visions and sounds, questions and ideas previously unknown. With each passing day, she begins to glimpse something she does not understand but unequivocally craves—the only thing that will bring her relief and keep her new friend alive. (With full-color illustrations throughout.) *Library Journal, starred review THE FAMILIAR continues... The Familiar Volume 3 Wherein the cat is blind . . . The Familiar Volume 4 Wherein the cat is toothless . . . The Familiar Volume 5 Wherein the cat is named . . .

    The Familiar - Into the Forest
  3. 3

    The Familiar, Volume 3 Honeysuckle & Pain

    • 841 pages
    • 30 hours of reading
    4.4(1039)Add rating

    The exciting and radical literary event continues with Honeysuckle & Pain, the third episode in the multi-volume novel from the universally acclaimed, genre-busting author of House of Leaves.In The Familiar, Volume 3: Honeysuckle & Pain, Xanther, the 12-year-old girl at the center of our story, discovers a new inner strength as the world around her begins to shift inexorably. The hackers Cas and Bobby feel trapped, but are planning a dramatic and dangerous action that may be the key to their freedom. And on the other side of the world, Tian Li’s missing cat is an itch too powerful to resist, and so she and Jingjing set out to recover what has been lost. With the spectacular visuals and vibrant wordplay that are his trademark, this is a beautiful and singular reading experience that could only come from Mark Z. Danielewski—“America’s foremost literary magus” [The New York Times Book Review].

    The Familiar, Volume 3 Honeysuckle & Pain
  4. 4

    The Familiar - Hades

    • 880 pages
    • 31 hours of reading

    Praise for Mark Z. Danielewski's The Familiar The series at times recalls Ulysses , Infinite Jest , and Cloud Atlas in its complexity, structure, and echoing parallel narratives. . . . The literary world is stronger for having boundary pushers like Danielewski. -Ryan Vlastelica, The A.V. Club So perfectly relatable, so beautifully rendered. . . . So, so worth it in the way that reading [ The Familiar ] rewires your brain. -Jason Sheehan, NPR Books Graphic design works in tandem with storytelling in this fascinating, ongoing, humongous experiment with form and the experience of reading. -John Freeman, The Boston Globe [ The Familiar ] is a 'remediation' of television series like Twin Peaks and Breaking Bad . . . resembles Altman-inflected movies . . . or the time and place-skipping novels of David Mitchell. . . . I'm definitely in. -Tom LeClair, The New York Times Book Review Danielewski has somehow created a format, an experience, that mimics the best of the digital future we've been told to expect, while exploiting the best of print, that which we've been told to mourn. . . . The Familiar is a tour de force. -Allison K. Hill, Los Angeles Daily News [Danielewski is] the most aggressively avant-garde popular writer working today. . . . The Familiar is as much a narrative story as it is an experiment in visual and typographical forms. . . . It all adds up to something between a graphic novel and a novel-novel. -Cady Drell, Newsweek The author is innovating wildly not only with text but also with narrative flow, structure, and multiplicity of meaning. Loose, imagistic words are followed by tightly layered prose and pictures; this varied density creates a deeply nuanced reading experience that works. A must-read. - Library Journal (starred review) A marvel of postmodern storytelling. - Kirkus Reviews This is a book you cannot miss-because there's simply nothing else like it. -Jefferson Grubbs, Bustle

    The Familiar - Hades
  5. 5

    The Familiar - Redwood

    [The Familiar] is not only [Mark Z. Danielewski's] best book since his acclaimed opera prima, House of Leaves; it's even better, and also more accessible. Conceived as the book version of a long-running TV show, its . . . volumes tell the tale of a smart, fragile and epileptic little girl who finds a cat that may or may not be magical. Their encounter sets off a chain reaction that starts with her immediate family and will probably reach almost every corner of the world. There is no writer in America that resembles Mark Z. Danielewski even remotely. His books are disturbing Freudian fairy-tales, monumental and intimate at the same time, discordantly polyphonic, populated by wise children and lost parents, soldiers and storytellers, magical weapons, sentient houses and familiar spirits. Their words interweave on the page with paintings and knitting and calligrams, creating painfully beautiful objects, almost like printed sculptures. They're also Literature in High Capitals, contemporary counterparts of Bouvard et Pécuchet, Mallarmé and Joyce, heirs to the almost mystical hubris of High Modernism, almost too ambitious for their own good and rabidly opposed to the weightlessness of our times. - Javier Calvo, O

    The Familiar - Redwood