A Fire of Driftwood

Dorothy Kathleen Broster (2 September 1877 – 7 February 1950), usually known as D.K. Broster, was a British novelist and short-story writer, born in Garston, Liverpool at Devon Lodge (now known as Monksferry House), which lies in Grassendale Park on the banks of the River Mersey. Educated at Cheltenham Ladies' College and St Hilda's College, Oxford (where she was one of the first students), she served as a Red Cross nurse during World War I with a voluntary Franco-American hospital. Broster's first two novels were co-written with Gertrude Winifred Taylor; Chantemerle: A Romance of the Vendean War and The Vision Splendid (about the Tractarian Movement).

Following the war she returned to Oxford where she worked as a secretary to the Regius Professor of History and senior civil servants. The Yellow Poppy (1920) about the adventures of an aristocratic couple during the French Revolution, was later adapted by Broster and W. Edward Stirling for the London stage in 1922. She produced her best-seller about Scottish history, The Flight of the Heron, in 1925. Broster stated she had consulted eighty reference books before beginning the novel. Broster followed it up with two successful sequels, The Gleam in the North and The Dark Mile. She wrote several other historical novels, successful and much reprinted in their day, although this Jacobite Trilogy, featuring the dashing hero Ewen Cameron, remain the best known.

Broster also wrote several short horror stories, collected in "A Fire of Driftwood" and Couching at the Door. The title story of "Couching at the Door" involves an artist haunted by a mysterious entity. Other supernatural tales include "Clairvoyance", (1932) about a psychic girl, "Juggernaut" (1935) about a haunted chair, and "The Pestering", (1932) focusing on a couple tormented by supernatural entity.