Garden House Nine by Declan Thornwood

Martin only wants to go home.

Teela is supposed to be discovering herself.

Unfortunately, the intelligent house where they meet has not successfully checked anyone out for 312 years.

Martin is a middle-aged Irishman from a version of Earth that has not yet made First Contact. Garden House Nine classifies him as a member of staff and promptly puts him to work.

Teela comes from humanity's distant future. She is young, confident and accompanied by Siv, an artificial intelligence woven into her clothing. She was warned not to open the impossible door that brought her here. She opened it anyway.

The house provides comfortable rooms, excellent meals and an alarming number of mechanical arms. What it cannot provide is a working departure route. Its administrators have been absent for centuries, its rules no longer make sense, and its remaining inhabitants may have been stranded far longer than Martin or Teela.

Then a juvenile dragon lands on the lawn, something in the garden begins asking for jam, and forgotten parts of the house start waking up.

To find a way out, Martin and Teela must explore sealed corridors, untangle the house's failing systems and discover what happened to the people who once ran it. Along the way, two travellers from opposite ends of human history begin to realise that finding home and finding where you belong may not be the same thing.

Warm, whimsical and quietly mysterious, Garden House Nine will appeal to readers who enjoy the hopeful, character-led science fiction of Becky Chambers and the cosy humour of Travis Baldree, with eccentric artificial intelligences and a garden that takes its jam very seriously.