The Turn of the Screw

Henry James famous classic The Turn of the Screw brings riveting, eerie suspense in a tale of ghostly haunting.

Written in a way that confounds yet thrills the reader, The Turn of the Screw alternately puzzles and enthrals those who have read it. The protagonist is a governess whose manuscript is read by Douglas, a friend of the unnamed narrator - sent into the countryside to care for two children, Miles and Fiona, she soon begins noticing strange happenings around the country home. 

With the children themselves acting strangely, the governess is determined to find the reason behind their behaviour and the oddities of the locality. The figures of a man and a woman appear regularly in the grounds, each appearance driving the curious governess to evermore effort, her aim being to prevent these supernatural forces from keeping their hold on the summer house. 

The author preferred to make ghosts more a strange, ethereal part of reality than the stereotypes of the late Victorian era, which would have spectres howling, screaming or behaving violently against the living. James was fixated upon the eerie, out-of-place and atmospheric evil which constituted the ghostly - an interest which is expressed with sublime subtlety in The Turn of the Screw.