The Turn of the Screw

A young governess takes her first post at Bly, a remote English country house, with simple instructions: care for two orphaned children and never bother their uncle in London. The children, Miles and Flora, are beautiful and strangely perfect. Then the governess begins to see figures on the grounds (a man on the tower, a woman across the lake) and learns that two former servants, now dead, once held an unwholesome influence over her charges. She becomes convinced the dead have come back for the children. The question that has divided readers for over a century: is she protecting them, or is the horror coming from somewhere else entirely?

Henry James builds the dread sentence by sentence, never once showing his hand. It is the rare ghost story that gets scarier the more you think about it, and as a voice in your ear, its slow tightening is almost unbearable in the best way.

At roughly 43,200 words, The Turn of the Screw runs about 5 hours at 1x narration speed. That figure is an estimate based on a typical narration pace. The exact length depends on the voice and the playback speed you choose.

The Turn of the Screw is in the public domain, so the complete text is free on Project Gutenberg and LoudReader has the entire Project Gutenberg catalog built in. To listen:

1. Download LoudReader for Mac or iPhone (free, no account).
2. Search for “The Turn of the Screw” in the built-in catalog and add it to your library.
3. Press play. A natural offline voice reads the book while each word highlights on screen, and your place is saved between sessions.

LoudReader reads with natural offline voices, so the whole book works on a plane or underground. It is fully on-device and private, your library never leaves your device. Listening is unlimited on the free tier.