Genre: Classics
Length: 118 pages
Audiobook Length: 4 hours and 26 minutes
First Published: 1898
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Publisher’s Description
One of the most disturbing ghost stories ever written, a tale of imagined danger and real dread.
A young governess arrives at a secluded country estate, hired by the manor’s often-absent master to look after his orphaned niece and nephew. The young woman, a parson’s daughter, is immediately charmed by eight-year-old Flora—and Miles, two years older, seems like a perfect little gentleman when he is unexpectedly sent home from his boarding school.
But Miles’s steadfast refusal to reveal the cause of his expulsion is troubling, as are the staff’s whispered stories about the previous governess, Miss Jessel, and her lover, the mysterious valet, Peter Quint, both of whom are now dead. Most disturbing of all are the spectral figures wandering the grounds of Bly that only the new governess can see: a woman and a dark man who seem to take a special interest in Miles and Flora. No longer sure of what is real and whom she can trust, the governess desperately tries to hold on to her sanity and protect the innocent children from forces too sinister to name.
Quotes from The Turn of the Screw
Of course I was under the spell, and the wonderful part is that, even at the time, I perfectly knew I was.
I was a screen– I was their protector. The more I saw, the less they would.
And if I wavered for the instant it was not with what I kept back.
THEY have the manners to be silent, and you, trusted as you are, the baseness to speak!
Movie Trailer for The Turning (2020)
About Henry James
Henry James was an English-American author best known for his novels The Portrait of a Lady, The Ambassadors and The Wings of the Dove. He is also well-known for his ghost story The Turn of the Screw. He died in 1916 at the age of 72.
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