An aging tyrant sits on the Golden Lion Throne and rules all of the known universe, while his son grows dangerously impatient for the crown. A quasi-religious order of black-robed women move their secret breeding program one momentous step closer to creating the god-child they call the Kwisatz Haderach. And a minor family among nobility, HOUSE ATREIDES, chooses a course of honor that will bring it to destruction at the hands of its mortal enemy, HOUSE HARKONNEN-or take it to new heights of power.

Covering the decade when Shaddam wins his throne, the teenager Leto Atreides becomes the unexpected ruler of HOUSE ATREIDES, and Pardot Kynes uncovers one of the planet Dune's greatest secrets, HOUSE ATREIDES captures the grandeur and drama of Frank Herbert's epic. And while this new novel solves some of DUNE's most baffling mysteries, it presents new puzzles springing from the sands where one day Paul-Muad'dib Atreides, the hero of DUNE, will walk. But now, in these years before Paul's birth, an unforgettable new epic begins . . .