The Little Stranger (Movie Tie-In)

by Sarah Waters

Overview

Soon to be a major motion picture—releasing August 31 in the US—the nationally bestselling and chillingly rendered ghost story—"several sleepless nights are guaranteed" (Stephen King, Entertainment Weekly).

One postwar summer, in his home in rural Warwickshire, Dr. Faraday is called to a patient at Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for more than two centuries, the Georgian house, once impressive and handsome, is now in decline. Its owners—mother, son, and daughter—are struggling to keep pace with a changing society. But are the Ayreses haunted by something more sinister than a dying way of life? Little does Dr. Faraday know how closely, and how terrifyingly, their story is about to become entwined with his.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780525541585
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	07/31/2018
Edition description:	Media Tie-in
Pages:	528
Sales rank:	111,788
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.80(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Sarah Waters is the New York Times bestselling author of The Paying Guests, The Little Stranger, The Night Watch, Fingersmith, Affinity, and Tipping the Velvet. She has been shortlisted three times for the Man Booker Prize, has been a finalist twice for the Orange Prize, and was named one of Granta’s best young British novelists, among other distinctions. Waters lives in London.

Read an Excerpt

ONE

I first saw Hundreds Hall when I was ten years old. It was the summer after the war, and the Ayreses still had most of their money then, were still big people in the district. The event was an Empire Day fête: I stood with a line of other village children making a Boy Scout salute while Mrs Ayres and the Colonel went past us, handing out commemorative medals; afterwards we sat to tea with our parents at long tables on what I suppose was the south lawn. Mrs Ayres would have been twenty-four or -five, her husband a few years older; their little girl, Susan, would have been about six. They must have made a very handsome family, but my memory of them is vague. I recall most vividly the house itself, which struck me as an absolute mansion. I remember its lovely ageing details: the worn red brick, the cockled window glass, the weathered sandstone edgings. They made it look blurred and slightly uncertain—like an ice, I thought, just beginning to melt in the sun.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "The Little Stranger (Movie Tie-In)"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Sarah Waters.
Excerpted by permission of Penguin Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Editorial Reviews

Praise for The Little Stranger:

"A classic gothic page-turner."—USA Today

"Waters, a master at stoking anticipation, withholds the truth about her ghost until the final pages...subtle, surprising, and deeply, deeply chilling."—NPR

"Haunted by the spirits of Henry James and Edgar Allan Poe...Waters is just one turn of the screw away from 'The Fall of the House of Usher.' She keeps the lightening flashing in every gloomy chapter, and you can't help but gasp, 'It's alive!'"—The Washington Post

"Sarah Waters is an excellent, evocative writer, and this is an incredibly gripping and readable novel."—The New York Times Book Review  (Editor's Choice)

"With its subtly orchestrated suspense and spot-on portrayal of English class divisions, Waters's literary ghost story delights."—People

"A virtuoso writer...If you want a ghost story that creeps up your spine, The Little Stranger delivers."—The Seattle Times

"A near-perfect gothic novel... It's an astonishing performance, right down to the book's mournful and devastating final sentence."— Salon

"Waters creates an atmosphere of quiet dread that's unnerving and compelling."—Time

"Marvelous and truly spooky."—The Boston Globe

"Rich with historic detail and slow, deliberate building toward the revelation of its secrets, [The Little Stranger] delights even as it leaves you unnerved."—The Miami Herald

"Like the gloomy English weather, an air of impending doom lingers over every chapter of The Little Stranger...an up-all-night page-turner that provides a cogent dose of social commentary."—The Cleveland Plain Dealer

From the Publisher