Metabook, a new ebook publishing company, will release Wally Lamb’s sixth novel, I’ll Take You There, exclusively as a digital app next year.

“Landing a new work from Mr. Lamb is a major coup for Metabook, which was founded last year and specializes in multimedia, interactive storytelling,” writes New York Times contributor Alexandra Alter. “With an original novel by Mr. Lamb, author of best sellers like I Know This Much is True and We Are Water, Metabook is establishing itself as a serious player in the growing marketplace for book apps.”

I’ll Take You There’s “core” is still a written narrative—it’s about a film professor who runs a Monday night film club in a theater that happens to be haunted by a ghost—but it includes other features such as an original soundtrack, a full cast of audio drama characters, and a documentary about Lamb.

The downside to the digital app: it will work only on Apple devices and fans will have to buy it from the iTunes app store.

Still, Lamb told the New York Times that he’s excited to venture into interactive books with Metabook.

“I’m thinking to myself, wow, this is really cool, it’s something a little bit different,” he said.

Eli Horowitz, a former editor and publisher at McSweeney’s and creator of the serialized app, “The Silent History,” says the appetite for new forms is out there.

“At its core, it’s all about finding fresh ways to engage the reader. The challenge here is to make sure any flexibility of interaction is strategically designed—substantial enough to feel relevant, but limited enough to preserve the larger narrative.”

Image Credit: Metabook.