The Little Stranger is a brooding and evocative tale set in Warwickshire, England in the late 1940s. World War II is over, but privation continues. Narrator Dr. Faraday, the son of simple, working-class folk, is a country physician, tending to all manner of ailments among the local, mostly working-class or poor residents.
There had always been estates in Warwickshire, although many have fallen on hard times by this point, their owners unable to keep them up. Hundreds Hall is one such house on the edge of financial ruin. Dr. Faraday visited once as a boy, when his mother worked as a nanny at the grand home of the Colonel and Mrs. Ayres.
Thirty years later, the Colonel is long dead. His son Roderick, who was horribly injured during the war, is trying to manage the remaining farm and house with his scars and limp. His sister Caroline had come back to the Hundreds to nurse Roderick and stayed on to help him and their mother. Together they are holding on, with just enough to live on and afford one daytime housekeeper and one live-in maid.
Dr. Faraday is called to the Hundreds one day to tend to the maid, Betty, a girl of just 14. He finds Betty only pretending to be ill. New to the post, she is unhappy in no small part because she feels there is "something bad" in the house. Dr.Faraday chides her for such nonsense.
Dr. Faraday offers to treat Roderick's injuries and begins to make regular trips to the Hundreds, and becomes a friend of the Ayres'. When a new family moves into a nearby estate, Mrs. Ayres decides to have a party to welcome them. The house is readied with great anticipation, but the night ends in tragedy.
From this point on, strange things happen at the hall, affecting one family member after another, becoming spookier as time goes on. Betty is convinced the house is haunted, perhaps by the spirit of the first Ayres child, a daughter who died in childhood of diphtheria; Roderick feels there is something in the house that he must keep at bay; and Caroline feels the house itself is capable of mischief.
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