Description:

A compelling emotional mystery in the timeless vein of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, about family secrets and the magic of books and storytelling. Margaret Lea works in her father's antiquarian bookshop where her fascination for the biographies of the long-dead has led her to write them herself. She gets a letter from one of the most famous authors of the day, the mysterious Vida Winter, whose popularity as a writer has been in no way diminished by her reclusiveness. Until now, Vida has toyed with journalists who interview her, creating outlandish life histories for herself - all of them invention. Now she is old and ailing, and at last she wants to tell the truth about her extraordinary life. Her letter to Margaret is a summons. Somewhat anxiously, the equally reclusive Margaret travels to Yorkshire to meet her subject - and Vida starts to recount her tale. It is one of gothic strangeness featuring the March family; the fascinating, devious and wilful Isabelle and the feral twins Adeline and Emmeline. Margaret is captivated by the power of Vida's storytelling. But as a biographer she deals in fact not fiction, and she doesn't entirely trust Vida's account. She goes to check up on the family, visiting their old home and piecing together their story in her own way. What she discovers on her journey to the truth is for Margaret a chilling and transforming experience. **About the Author** Born in Berkshire, England, Diane Setterfield was educated at Theale Green Comprehensive School and Bristol University. A former academic, she has taught at various universities in England and in France, specializing in 20th-century French literature, especially the works of André Gide. She has also run her own business teaching French to people intending to move across the Channel. *The Thirteenth Tale* is her first novel. *The Thirteenth Tale* was in part inspired by Setterfield’s wish to return to the storytelling richness of the books she treasured in her youth. "I read French literature almost exclusively for more than a decade," she explains, "so when I left academia, I really wanted to go back to the English classics which I loved so much as a teenager. It was very nostalgic for me to write in that sort of style." As she worked on *The Thirteenth Tale,* Setterfield's talent was spotted by the novelist Jim Crace during a writing course she had enrolled in to advance the prospects of publication. In her early forties, Diane Setterfield is married and lives in Harrogate, North Yorkshire.