House On The Strand - Softcover

Du Maurier, Daphne

Softcover

ISBN 10: 009986570X ISBN 13: 9780099865704

Publisher: Random House UK, 1992

Synopsis

In this haunting tale, Daphne du Maurier takes a fresh approach to time travel. A secret experimental concoction, once imbibed, allows you to return to the fourteenth century. There is only one catch: if you happen to touch anyone while traveling in the past you will be thrust instantaneously to the present.

Magnus Lane, a University of London chemical researcher, asks his friend Richard Young and Young's family to stay at Kilmarth, an ancient house set in the wilds near the Cornish coast. Here, Richard drinks a potion created by Magnus and finds himself at the same spot where he was moments earlier—though it is now the fourteenth century. The effects of the drink wear off after several hours, but it is wildly addictive, and Richard cannot resist traveling back and forth in time. Gradually growing more involved in the lives of the early Cornish manor lords and their ladies, he finds the presence of his wife and stepsons a hindrance to his new-found experience. Richard eventually finds emotional refuge with a beautiful woman of the past trapped in a loveless marriage, but when he attempts to intervene on her behalf the results are brutally terrifying for the present.

Echoing the great fantastic stories of H. P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe, The House on the Strand is a masterful yarn of history, romance, horror, and suspense that will grip the reader until the last surprising twist.

About this title

About the Author:

In addition to The Scapegoat and The House on the Strand, Dame Daphne du Maurier (1907-1989) wrote more than twenty-five acclaimed novels, short stories, and plays, including Rebecca, Jamaica Inn, Frenchman's Creek, and "The Birds."

From AudioFile:

Michael Maloney's tense reading, punctuated by musical interludes, at first gives this production the feel of a soap opera. But his intensity energizes this bleak, chilly novel of a man unhappy in his own life and obsessed with the past, which he can visit, or view, through an experimental time-travel drug. In a novel filled with unsympathetic characters, Maloney makes protagonist Dick seem more sympathetic than he would otherwise be. He indicates various characters skillfully through small shifts of voice; his American accent for Dick's wife is flawless. No one could make this novel fun; Maloney makes it involving. A printed insert on the story's background is helpful but contains many spoilers. W.M. © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House UK
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 009986570X
• ISBN 13: 9780099865704
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 288