The White Devil: A Novel

“Evans is so good at nail-biting narrative.” —WashingtonPost “[A]crackling literary mystery. . . . Harrow itself contains Shirley Jackson levelsof gloomy passages and dark secrets. Smart, scary, sexy, and gorgeously writtento boot.” —Booklist (starredreview) Joe Hill’s Horns meets Donna Tartt’sThe Secret History in this bold new thriller from Justin Evans, authorof the critically acclaimed A Good and Happy Child. Whenseventeen-year-old Andrew Taylor is transplanted from his American high schoolto a British boarding school—a high-profile academy for the sons of England’sfinest—his father hopes that the boy’s dark past will not follow him fromacross the Atlantic. But blood, suspense, and intrigue quickly surround Andrewonce again as he finds himself struggling with a deadly mystery left unsolvedby a student from Harrow School’s past—the enigmatic poet Lord Byron.

From the Back Cover

Set in a four-hundred-year-old boys' boarding school in London, a chilling gothic thriller by the author of the critically acclaimed A Good and Happy Child . . .A fierce and jealous ghost . . .A young man's fight for his life . . .The Harrow School is home to privileged adolescents known as much for their distinctive dress and traditions as for their arrogance and schoolboy cruelty. Seventeen-year-old American Andrew Taylor is enrolled in the esteemed British institution by his father, who hopes that the school's discipline will put some distance between his son and his troubled past in the States.But trouble—and danger—seem to follow Andrew. When one of his schoolmates and friends dies mysteriously of a severe pulmonary illness, Andrew is blamed and is soon an outcast, spurned by nearly all his peers. And there is the pale, strange boy who begins to visit him at night. Either Andrew is losing his mind, or the house legend about his dormitory being haunted is true. When the school's poet-in-residence, Piers Fawkes, is commissioned to write a play about Byron, one of Harrow's most famous alumni, he casts Andrew in the title role. Andrew begins to discover uncanny links between himself and the renowned poet. In his loneliness and isolation, Andrew becomes obsessed with Lord Byron's story and the poet's status not only as a literary genius and infamous seducer but as a student at the very different Harrow of two centuries prior—a place rife with violence, squalor, incurable diseases, and tormented love affairs. When frightening and tragic events from that long-ago past start to recur in Harrow's present, and when the dark and deadly specter by whom Andrew's been haunted seems to be all too real, Andrew is forced to solve a two-hundred-year-old literary mystery that threatens the lives of his friends and his teachers—and, most terrifyingly, his own.

About the Author

Justin Evans, the author of A Good and Happy Child, is a digital media executive in New York City, where he lives with his wife and their two children.

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