Cover of The House on the Strand

The House on the Strand

by Daphne Du Maurier

5.0
(1 ratings)
265 pages2024Hachette+ORMISBN 9780316252997

About this book

A man becomes addicted to a drug that allows him to time travel into the past in this gothic thriller that is "prime du Maurier" ( New York Times). Dick Young is lent a house in Cornwall by his friend Professor Magnus Lane. During his stay he agrees to serve as a guinea pig for a new drug that Magnus has discovered in his scientific research. When Dick samples Magnus's potion, he finds himself doing the impossible: traveling through time while staying in place, thrown all the way back into Medieval Cornwall. The concoction wears off after several hours, but its effects are intoxicating and Dick cannot resist his newfound powers. As his journeys increase, Dick begins to resent the days he must spend in the modern world, longing ever more fervently to get back into his world of centuries before, and the home of the beautiful Lady Isolda . . . Praise for Daphne Du Maurier: "No other popular writer has so triumphantly defied classification . . . She satisfied all the questionable criteria of popular fiction, and yet satisfied the exacting requirements of "real literature," something very few novelists ever do." ―Margaret Forster, author of Daphne Du Maurier: The Secret Life of the Renowned Storyteller "She wrote exciting plots, she was highly skilled at arousing suspense, and she was, too, a writer of fearless originality" — The Guardian

Publication Details

Publisher
Hachette+ORM
Published
2024
Pages
265
ISBN
9780316252997
Language
en

About Daphne Du Maurier

Daphne du Maurier was born on 13 May 1907 in London, England, United Kingdom, the second of three daughters of Muriel Beaumont, an actress and maternal niece of William Comyns Beaumont, and Sir Gerald du Maurier, the prominent actor-manager, son of the author and Punch cartoonist George du Maurier, who created the character of Svengali in the novel Trilby. She was also the cousin of the Llewelyn Davies boys, who served as J.M. Barrie's inspiration for the characters in the play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up. As a young child, she met many of the brightest stars of the theatre, thanks to the celebrity of her father. These connections helped her in establishing her literary career, and she published some of her early stories in Beaumont's Bystander magazine. Her first novel, The Loving Spirit, was published in 1931, and she continued writing successfull gothic novels in addition to biographies and other non-fiction books. Alfred Hitchcock was a fan of her novels and short stories, and adapted some of these to films: Jamaica Inn (1939), Rebecca (1940), and The Birds (1963). Other of her works adapted were Frenchman's Creek (1942), Hungry Hill (1943), My Cousin Rachel (1951), and "Don't Look Now" (1973). She was named a Dame of the British Empire. In 1932, she married Frederick "Boy" Browning, with whom she had three children, Tessa, Flavia and Christian. Her husband died in 1965, and she passed away on 19 April 1989 in Fowey, Cornwall. After her death, it was revealed that she was bisexual.

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