The White Devil
'An intelligent, bristling ghost story with a stunning sense of place', Gillian Flynn, author of Gone Girl
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Do you believe in ghosts?
Fleeing expulsion and the death of a close friend, Andrew Taylor is sent to spend his final year at the prestigious public school Harrow. It is an eccentric place, a rambling ancient building filled with the sons of the rich and famous, and Andrew feels distinctly out of place
Andrew bears a striking resemblance to Lord Byron, a former pupil of Harrow - and that is when the trouble begins. He senses a malevolent presence, and when a classmate dies, his fears become all too real. Then Andrew discovers some old letters hidden in a bricked-up basement, which hint at a secret history buried in the school's past. But what is the link between these letters and the strange events that are happening at the school now and is he also in danger?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Harrow, the elite English boys school, provides the setting for Evans's gripping second novel (after A Good and Happy Child). Andrew Taylor, a 17-year-old American expelled from a Connecticut prep school for heroin use, gets into Harrow thanks to his father's generous gift to the school, one of whose more illustrious alumni is Lord Byron. In a cemetery on nearby Harrow-on-the-Hill, Andrew is horrified to witness the murder of a fellow student and resident of the Lot, a dilapidated dormitory reputed to be haunted, at the hands of a pale skeletal figure in an old-fashioned frock coat. Soon plagued by nightmares, Andrew learns that someone resembling this gaunt figure appeared in a performance of John Webster's Jacobean tragedy, The White Devil, at Harrow in 1803. Meanwhile, cast in the role of Lord Byron in a play written by drunken and bitter housemaster Piers Fawkes, Andrew finds himself adopting Byron's exotic lifestyle amid a love affair, a TB epidemic, and various bizarre elements in this disturbing gothic thriller.
