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The Little Stranger
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 15 hrs and 49 mins
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Publisher's summary
Sarah Waters's trilogy of Victorian novels Tipping the Velvet, Affinity, and Fingersmith earned her legions of fans around the world, a number of awards, and a reputation as one of today's most gifted historical novelists. With her most recent book, The Night Watch, Waters turned to the 1940s and delivered a tender and intricate novel of relationships that brought her the greatest success she has achieved so far.
With The Little Stranger, Waters revisits the fertile setting of Britain in the 1940s - and gives us a sinister tale of a haunted house, brimming with the rich atmosphere and psychological complexity that have become hallmarks of Waters's work.
The Little Stranger follows the strange adventures of Dr. Faraday, the son of a maid who has built a life of quiet respectability as a country doctor. One dusty postwar summer in his home of rural Warwickshire, he is called to a patient at Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for more than two centuries, the Georgian house, once grand and handsome, is now in decline - its masonry crumbling, its gardens choked with weeds, the clock in its stable yard permanently fixed at 20 to nine. But are the Ayreses haunted by something more ominous 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.
Abundantly atmospheric and elegantly told, The Little Stranger is Sarah Waters's most thrilling and ambitious novel yet.
Critic reviews
"[A] marvelous and truly spooky historical novel. … As a strange spot on an old and mouldering ceiling takes on a sinister appearance and bodies begin to accumulate, Waters’s precise and chilling prose lets Dr. Faraday have his way with the story." ( Boston Globe)
"Waters (The Night Watch) reflects on the collapse of the British class system after WWII in a stunning haunted house tale whose ghosts are as horrifying as any in Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House....Faraday, one of literature's more unreliable narrators, carries the reader swiftly along to the devastating conclusion." ( Publishers Weekly)
Featured Article: It Was the Best of Scribes—The Best British Authors
With its esteemed history and bold contemporary scene, Britain lays claim to some of the most exciting literature in audio. With the hundreds of incredible British writers throughout the centuries, a person could devote their whole literary life solely to British authors and still never run out of amazing things to listen to. Whether you're an avid Anglophile or just want to discover the best English novelists for yourself, here’s a list of the best for you to choose from!
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Bridgestead is a peaceful spot: a babbling brook, rolling hills, and a working mill at its heart. Pretty and remote, nothing exceptional happens...until the day that Master of the Mill Joshua Braithwaite goes missing under dramatic circumstances, never to be heard of again. Now Joshua's daughter is getting married and wants to make one last attempt at finding her father. Kate Shackleton has always loved solving puzzles. So who better to get to the bottom of Joshua's mysterious disappearance?
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Fluff & Nonsense
- By Sara on 01-03-15
By: Frances Brody
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Evergreen Falls
- By: Kimberley Freeman
- Narrated by: Jennifer Vuletic
- Length: 12 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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A long-forgotten secret, a scandalous attraction and a place where two women's lives are changed forever. 1926: Violet Armstrong is one of the few remaining members of staff working at the grand Evergreen Spa Hotel as it closes down over winter. Only a handful of guests are left, including the heir to a rich grazing family, his sister and her suave suitor. When a snowstorm moves in, the hotel is cut off and they are all trapped. No-one could have predicted what would unfold.
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Soooo Boring
- By Merford on 10-09-19
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Death in Berlin
- By: M. M. Kaye
- Narrated by: Kate Udall
- Length: 9 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Miranda Brand is visiting Germany for what is supposed to be a month's vacation. But from the moment that Brigadier Brindley relates the story about a fortune in lost diamonds - a story in which Miranda herself figures in an unusual way - the vacation atmosphere becomes transformed into something more ominous. And when murder strikes on the night train to Berlin, Miranda finds herself unwillingly involved in a complex chain of events that will soon throw her own life into peril.
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Why these narrators
- By Rhian on 09-01-13
By: M. M. Kaye
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The Muse
- A Novel
- By: Jessie Burton
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin, Maria Elena Infantino
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England, 1967. Odelle Bastien is a Caribbean émigré trying to make her way in London. When she starts working at the prestigious Skelton Institute of Art, she discovers a painting rumored to be the work of Isaac Robles, a young artist of immense talent and vision whose mysterious death has confounded the art world for decades. The excitement over the painting is matched by the intrigue around the conflicting stories of its discovery.
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Mixed narration
- By Amy Fleury on 08-05-16
By: Jessie Burton
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A Great Deliverance
- Inspector Lynley, Book 1
- By: Elizabeth George
- Narrated by: Donada Peters
- Length: 11 hrs and 2 mins
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Into Keldale's pastoral web of old houses and older secrets comes Scotland Yard Inspector Thomas Lynley, the eighth earl of Asherton. Along with the redoubtable Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers, Lynley has been sent to solve a savage murder that has stunned the peaceful countryside. For fat, unlovely Roberta Teys has been found in her best dress, an ax in her lap, seated in the old stone barn beside her father's headless corpse. Her first and last words were "I did it. And I'm not sorry".
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good debut novel
- By Stevon on 11-11-19
By: Elizabeth George
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A Share in Death
- By: Deborah Crombie
- Narrated by: Michael Deehy
- Length: 7 hrs and 3 mins
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A week's holiday in a luxurious hotel is just what Scotland Yard's Superintendent Duncan Kincaid needs. But his vacation ends dramatically with the discovery of a dead body in the whirlpool bath. Despite a suspicious lack of cooperation from the local constabulary, Kincaid's keen sense of duty won't allow him to ignore the heinous crime, impelling him to send for his enthusiastic young assistant, Sergeant Gemma James. But the stakes are raised significantly when a second murder occurs....
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series readers, start here
- By connie on 02-09-13
By: Deborah Crombie
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Asylum
- By: Patrick McGrath
- Narrated by: Sir Ian McKellen
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
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In the summer of 1959 Stella Raphael joins her psychiatrist husband, Max, at his new posting - a maximum-security hospital for the criminally insane. Stella soon falls under the spell of Edgar Stark, a brilliant sculptor who has been confined to the hospital for murdering his wife in a psychotic rage. But Stella's knowledge of Edgar's crime is no hindrance to the volcanic attraction that ensues -a passion that will consume Stella's sanity and destroy her and the lives of those around her.
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So enjoyed this book!
- By Mebythesea on 10-07-08
By: Patrick McGrath
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A Change of Climate
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- By: Hilary Mantel
- Narrated by: Sandra Duncan
- Length: 12 hrs and 11 mins
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Ralph and Anna Eldred are an exemplary couple, devoting themselves to doing good. 30 years ago as missionaries in Africa, the worst that could happen did. Shattered by their encounter with inexplicable evil, they returned to England, never to speak of it again. But when Ralph falls into an affair, Anna finds no forgiveness in her heart, and 30 years of repressed rage and grief explode, destroying not only a marriage but also their love, their faith, and everything they thought they were.
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Beautifully written
- By Patricia S. on 10-11-15
By: Hilary Mantel
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Rebecca
- By: Daphne du Maurier
- Narrated by: Anna Massey
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Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.... The novel begins in Monte Carlo, where our heroine is swept off her feet by the dashing widower Maxim de Winter and his sudden proposal of marriage. Orphaned and working as a lady's maid, she can barely believe her luck. It is only when they arrive at his massive country estate that she realizes how large a shadow his late wife will cast over their lives - presenting her with a lingering evil that threatens to destroy their marriage from beyond the grave.
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Easily the best audiobook I have ever heard!
- By Kid at Heart on 11-10-18
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Named of the Dragon
- By: Susanna Kearsley
- Narrated by: Katherine Kellgren
- Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins
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The charm of spending the Christmas holidays in South Wales, with its crumbling castles and ancient myths, seems the perfect distraction from the nightmares that have plagued literary agent Lyn Ravenshaw since the loss of her baby five years ago. Instead she meets an emotionally fragile young widow who's convinced that Lyn's recurring dreams have drawn her to Castle Farm for an important purpose - and she's running out of time.
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Not Kearsley's best
- By Sindy on 06-27-16
By: Susanna Kearsley
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What listeners say about The Little Stranger
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- christina
- 12-22-10
Boring
Oh my! Frightfully boring. I'm a fan of her other books, but this one falls short.
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- MamaBear
- 08-04-21
Well worth time and patience
I loved this deeply atmospheric novel. It would be an excellent novel for a book club to discuss. It begins slowly, and doesn’t contain any jump scares, and yet I found the horror continued to grow right through to the end.
Fans of Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw should listen to this one. Also fans of Susan Black, and Simone St. James.
Simon Vance is a superb narrator who never distracts from the story. Every character is sketched through their distinctive voices.
Set in England, during the rise of the Labour government in the aftermath of WW2, it’s a story about change, and about the holds the past might have on us. The “haunting” is not only set against the backdrop of social change, but is a part of those changes.
This was an era of drastic shifts in almost every part of society, and the end of the tradition of feudalism that had remained in England up until that time. Many of the “noble families” of England - from county squires, to dukedoms - lost their acreages and great houses to massive taxation.
The economy of villages no longer revolved around working in these great homes, or tenant farming their lands. The government took on the role of caring for the poor, and supporting the working class - many of whom left the countryside for manufacturing jobs in the cities.
This is the story of a family and a great house, teetering on the brink of economic and physical ruin, unable to adapt to the changes sweeping over it. It’s about the ties that bind the family to the house, and the ultimate costs of those attachments. It’s a story about the house itself, what might walk there, and why.
It’s also the story of an observer. Our narrator is a bachelor doctor from the village, who has watched this house and the people in it since he was a child. As he becomes drawn further into the story of this house and family, it’s put to the reader to decide how reliable a narrator he is.
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- Tawney
- 07-17-18
Taut and spooky
Really well done. Sarah Waters can spin a tale, and Simon Vance can tell one. Loved it
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- Ree
- 11-21-20
Spectacular Haunted House story in the Gothic Tradition
I fell in love with Hundreds Hall the first moment it appeared on the page. Sarah Waters has written a masterpiece of psychological suspense and class friction in post war England, wrapped up in a gorgeously told haunted house story. The Narration is flawless, and the book is every bit as much fun to listen to as it is to read. Take your favorite elements of Shirley Jackson, Henry James, and Daphne Du Maurier, let them steep together in a cup of gothic horror motifs, and you have this spectacular slow burn of a story that haunts you long after you see or hear the final words.
For people who prefer modern, mainstream horror, this will likely fall flat. It is a creepy story but not a scary one. It begins slowly, gathering speed and intensity gradually, like a Victorian locomotive, and you have to be patient and let it get its wheels under it. It is a story that germinates and grows, expanding through the pages with nuance and layers and beautiful detail, the true horror lying in the determination of what’s real and what’s other and the realization that there’s no solace to be found in either answer.
5 stars and then some.
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- Justen E.
- 06-25-18
keeps you hooked the whole time but...
although it wasn't what I thought it was going to be it was still a great story. a good mix of drama and thriller. if you like stories that don't have a happy ending. then this is the book for you.
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- Paul Ebeling
- 08-30-18
Great story and setup... lackluster ending.
pace and characters were well-rounded. ending was uninpired. for all the leadup , there was no real payoff.
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- Stephanie
- 10-25-23
A Thinking Person’s Ghost Story
Beautifully written and masterfully performed by Simon Vance, this historical horror story will stay with you long after the last word fades. The main character, Dr Faraday, begins as a kind and genial narrator, but after the first disaster occurs, he's revealed to be unreliable in his recollection of the strange events at Hundreds Hall. Full of perfect period details, sharp characterizations, and rising dread, I can't recommend this audiobook strongly enough.
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Overall
- Rose
- 07-03-09
First, pour yourself a mug of hot tea or cocoa
A leisurely pleasant start to this book, for me the equivalent of turning on the TV and seeing the opening credits of a black-and-white movie made in Britain circa WWII: an old manor house looms into view, cut to interior, a young woman looking out the window as rain pelts the glass. BTW, this is not a scene from the book or from any particular movie. It's meant more to describe the feelings such a beginning evokes in me. From the first words (read wonderfully by Simon Vance), I wanted to brew a pot of tea and butter some toast before retreating to an overstuffed chair in front of a glowing fireplace to enjoy this subtly eerie tale.
The first four chapters held my interest well. By the end of the fifth chapter I was suitably chilled to the point that I required the company of two small dogs: I just couldn't be alone at this point. That night, as I lay in bed listening, I had to add a "magic blanket" to the mix. (You know, the type of blanket that prevents unseen hands from grabbing your feet or lightly running a finger up your spine.)
Sarah Waters' prose, her exacting choice of words, has an understated charm, nothing flashy that distracted me as I listened. If you like books/movies such as 'The Uninvited' or 'Rebecca,' you will not be disappointed by 'The Little Stranger.'
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52 people found this helpful
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- Cariola
- 06-09-09
Nothing to Rave About
This is the first novel by Sarah Waters that I've read or listened to, although I've seen several in dramatizations. People had raved to me about her work, but if this novel is typical, I'm not greatly impressed. It's a fairly routine gothic novel--decaying mansion, mysterious noises, strange messages, people going bonkers. Waters does dig into her characters' psychological depths and offers up some commentary on social class. Simon Vance's narration, as always, was admirable.
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- Ron MItkowski
- 06-25-18
Best first story...
it's the best ghost story I've ever come across. also an amazing job by Vance.
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