★ 本書錄音採用英式發音
★ 英語級數：Lower-Intermediate（初中級）
亨利．詹姆士（Henry James, 1843– 1916），美國作家。父親老亨利．詹姆斯是著名學者，兄長威廉．詹姆斯（William James）是知名的哲學家和心理學家。亨利．詹姆士一生未娶，但社交生活活躍，長期旅居歐洲，對十九世紀末的歐美上層生活有入微的觀察。他一生創作小說二十餘部，也寫了許多短篇故事、中篇小說、劇本、雜誌文章和旅遊書籍。
《碧廬冤孽》（The Turn of the Screw ），是一則知名的鬼故事。在十九世紀末，鬼故事盛行，人們很著迷於超自然力量。故事的主人翁是一位年輕的女家庭教師，講述自己的親身遭遇。女家庭教師受雇於一位年輕英俊的男子，負責照顧年幼的姪子和姪女。他們住在碧廬（Bly）鄉間的一座大房子裡，女家庭教師在這裡看到了（或是自以為看到了）兩位過世的鬼魂。
她確信兩個鬼魂可以跟孩子溝通，而且鬼魂還打算傷害孩子，於是她決定要把自己的學生救出來。但是，是孩子們真的身陷危險之中，還是女家庭教師精神錯亂了？作者將結局留給讀者去思考。
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Published in 1898, The Turn of the Screw is Henry James’s best-known ghost story. Ghost stories were very popular at the end of the 19th century, when there was also much interest in the supernatural.
James begins his novella with a prologue, an introduction to the main story. A group of friends is spending Christmas together in an old country house. One evening they decide to tell each other ghost stories. One of the guests says that he once read a very frightening one. Of course everyone wants to hear it, so he has the pages of the story sent from his house in London. A couple of nights later he reads it to his friends. The story forms the main part of the novella. It is written by a young governess about her first job.
She is employed by a young, handsome man to look after his young nephew and niece—Miles aged 10 and Flora aged 8. They live in a large house in the country called Bly and they are both very beautiful and good. Soon after her arrival the governess sees—or imagines she sees—the evil ghosts of two dead servants, a man called Quint and a woman called Miss Jessel. She is convinced that the ghosts are communicating with the children and that they are going to hurt them. She decides that she must save her pupils before it is too late.
Are the children really in danger? Or is the governess mad? Henry James leaves it to the reader to decide.