The Turn of the Screw

James's chilling ghost story of innocence and evil

One summer a young governess is sent to take charge of Miles and Flora, two beautiful, charming orphans living in a country house. But silence covers their past. Then the servants reappear who, before they died, had looked after the children. As winter closes in, the young governess struggles to keep her charges from the unnatural influences which they seem strangely to desire.

Terror makes this a ghost story, while uncertainty makes it horrifying. Are the apparitions the governess' invention? And if so, does the evil lie not in the children, but in love–sick young women– and in adult society itself?

The most comprehensive paperback edition available, with introduction, notes and chronology of James Life and times