alibrarymama

Today, this book is #60 on Amazon’s bestseller list. This may or may not mean anything. In some sense, it is decidedly ironic that a book devoted to old-fashioned tastes in literature should be doing so well among today’s thrillers. But I am getting ahead of myself.

The Thirteenth Taleby Diane Setterfield ”Do you believe in ghosts, Miss Lea?” Margaret Lea is a quiet and unfashionable woman. She works in her father’s antiquarian bookstore and lives in an apartment above it, living more in the pages of books by the likes of Bronte than in the modern day. Then she receives a letter from the most celebrated of modern authors, Vida Winter, requesting that she write her biography. The aged Miss Winter is accustomed to being a storyteller, not a fact teller, so it is up to Miss Lea to discover the truth behind the story that Miss Winter tells her. The tale is of wild girl twins whose mother and uncle, lost in their own dark secrets, abandoned them to the housekeeper and the gardener. Her quest leads her to a ruined Yorkshire manor, in search of a ghost and a missing governess, but finding instead a gentle giant. While searching, Margaret Lea must face her own ghost – the twin sister she never knew but cannot live without. The tale is unashamedly gothic, with an appreciation of language,well-developed characters, a darkly atmospheric setting, and a Plot Twist.