Duncan - Stranger With My Face

Copyright 1981 by Lois Duncan
Author Q&A 2011 Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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First eBook Edition: April 2011

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

ISBN: 978-0-316-17561-6

There are a lot of smart authors, and a lot of authors who write reasonably well. Lois Duncan is smart, writes darn good books and is one of the most entertaining authors in America.

Walter Dean Myers, Printz awardwinning author of Monster
and Dope Sick

She knows what you did last summer. And she knows how to find that secret evil in her characters hearts, evil she turns into throat-clutching suspense in book after book. Does anyone write scarier books than Lois Duncan? I dont think so.

R. L. Stine, author of Goosebumps and Fear Street

I couldnt be more pleased that Lois Duncans books will now reach a new generation of readers.

Judy Blume, author of Forever and Tiger Eyes

Lois Duncan has always been one of my biggest inspirations. I gobbled up her novels in my teens, often reading them again and again and scaring myself over and over. Shes a master of suspense, so prepare to be dazzled and spooked!

Sara Shepard, author of the Pretty Little Liars series

Lois Duncans books kept me up many a late night reading under the covers with a flashlight!

Wendy Mass, author of A Mango-Shaped Space, Leap Day and Heaven Looks a Lot Like the Mall

Lois Duncan is the patron saint of all things awesome.

Jenny Han, author of The Summer I Turned Pretty series

Duncan is one of the smartest, funniest and most terrifying writers arounda writer that a generation of girls LOVED to tatters, while learning to never read her books without another friend to scream with handy.

Lizzie Skurnick, author of Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading

In middle school and high school, I loved Lois Duncans novels. I still do. I particularly remember Killing Mr. Griffin, which took my breath away. I couldnt quite believe a writer could DO that. I feel extremely grateful to Lois Duncan for taking unprecedented risks, challenging preconceptions and changing the young adult field forever.

Erica S. Perl, author of Vintage Veronica

Haunting and suspensefulDuncans writing captures everything fun about reading!

Suzanne Young, author of The Naughty List series and A Need So Beautiful

Killing Mr. Griffin taught me a lot about writing. Thrilling stuff. It was one of the most requested and enjoyed books I taught with my students. I think its influenced most of my writing since.

Gail Giles, author of Right Behind You and Shattering Glass

If ever a writers work should be brought before each new generation of young readers, it is that of Lois Duncan. The grace with which she has led her lifea life that included a tragedy that would have brought most of us to our kneesis reflected in her writing, particularly (from my point of view) in I Know What You Did Last Summer. Her stories, like Lois herself, are ageless.

Chris Crutcher, author of Angry Management, Deadline and Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes

Lois Duncans thrillers have a timeless quality about them. They are good stories, very well told, that also happen to illuminate both the heroic and dark parts of growing up.

Marc Talbert, author of Dead Birds Singing, A Sunburned Prayer and Heart of a Jaguar

DONT LOOK BEHIND YOU

DOWN A DARK HALL

I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER

KILLING MR. GRIFFIN

SUMMER OF FEAR

For David and Maria Martin

Mary Ann, Johanna and Elizabeth

My name is Laurie Stratton. Im seventeen years old, and I live at the Cliff House on the northern tip of Brighton Island.

My parents moved here with me when I was four. My father is a science fiction writer, and my mother is an artist, so this out-of-the-mainstream existence suits them. They bought this house from the descendants of the Brighton family, who at one time owned the island, and had it remodeled to fit their needs. Except for an occasional trip down to the village for groceries and mail, they seldom leave the house and almost never leave the island.

Why go back to the rat race on the mainland, asks Dad, when we have everything we need right here?

There was a time when I, too, loved Cliff House. Its perched on a ledge of rock that hangs out over the ocean, and from the balcony off my bedroom I can look out into forever. In the summer the skies are such a brilliant blue that they seem to have been painted on cardboard, and the water varies from light blue to dark blue, to aqua, to emerald green. The island is fun in the summer. The cottages at the south end fill up with vacationers, and the Yacht Club has sailing races, and the Tennis Club has tournaments, and students from Harvard and Yale and Princeton come swarming out from the mainland to compete for jobs as lifeguards. The Brighton Inn has live music on the weekends, so theres a place for dancing, and the roads are filled with cyclists, and the beaches with picnickers, and the warm, sweet air with the sound of laughter and the smell of sunscreen.

In the winter the scene changes. The gray moves in, and with it, the cold. We have the place to ourselves thenmy family and I, and the people in the village.

Its the villagers who gave our home its name. From the village you can look across the inlet and see it hanging out against the sky like an extension of the cliff on which it stands. The Brightons designed the house so that every room, no matter how small, has a window overlooking the sea. My mothers studio is at the top of the house, angled so that its flooded with north light, and my fathers office is downstairs off the kitchen. On the middle level is a huge, heavy-beamed living room with a stone fireplace at the far end, and the three bedrooms climb the side of the house like stair steps, fitting the curve of the cliff. The topmost room is minethen comes my parentsand the third, which was originally going to be a guest room for agents and editors who come out from New Yorkbelongs to my younger brother and sister.

If we had expected them, we would have made better arrangements, my mom always says with a laugh, because I was supposed to have been an only child.

So I live at the Cliff House with my parents, and with my brother, Neal, who is eleven, and my sister, Megan, who is eight.