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Editor's choice:
"Fiction debut of the season! Share the experience of Diane Setterfield's tale of ghostly legacies—you won’t be able to put it down."

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When Margaret Lea opened the door to the past, what she confronted was her destiny.

All children mythologize their birth...So begins the prologue of reclusive author Vida Winter's collection of stories, which are as famous for the mystery of the missing thirteenth tale as they are for the delight and enchantment of the twelve that do exist.

The enigmatic Winter has spent six decades creating various outlandish life histories for herself -- all of them inventions that have brought her fame and fortune but have kept her violent and tragic past a secret. Now old and ailing, she at last wants to tell the truth about her extraordinary life. She summons biographer Margaret Lea, a young woman for whom the secret of her own birth, hidden by those who loved her most, remains an ever-present pain. Struck by a curious parallel between Miss Winter's story and her own, Margaret takes on the commission.

As Vida disinters the life she meant to bury for good, Margaret is mesmerized. It is a tale of gothic strangeness featuring the Angelfield family, including the beautiful and willful Isabelle, the feral twins Adeline and Emmeline, a ghost, a governess, a topiary garden and a devastating fire.

Margaret succumbs to the power of Vida's storytelling but remains suspicious of the author's sincerity. She demands the truth from Vida, and together they confront the ghosts that have haunted them while becoming, finally, transformed by the truth themselves.

The Thirteenth Tale is a love letter to reading, a book for the feral reader in all of us, a return to that rich vein of storytelling that our parents loved and that we loved as children. Diane Setterfield will keep you guessing, make you wonder, move you to tears and laughter and, in the end, deposit you breathless yet satisfied back upon the shore of your everyday life.

Related Categories:
Books > Fiction > Literary

Lost in a good book

We book lovers have things in common, and Margaret Lea, the heroine of Diane Setterfield's heralded debut novel, is one of us. So besotted is she by books that she makes sure she is sitting down whenever she reads, so as not to fall over and hurt herself while engrossed in a story. Margaret works in her father's bookshop, reading 19th-century novels and writing the occasional biography of obscure literary figures. The most exciting thing in Margaret's life is a family secret she discovered as a child that has branded her like a scar.

Then one day she receives a letter requesting her services as a biographer from Vida Winter, an author of such magnitude that 22 biographers have already attempted (and failed) to write her life story. Vida has told any number of tales about her life, but only now, says Vida, is she prepared to tell the truth. During their collaboration, which takes place mostly in a library of any book lover's dream, they manage to work through both of their stories, alongside a small cast of dutiful servants and one canny feline in the present, and a large cast of twins, ghosts and one wily governess in the past.

Setterfield gives us a fairy tale complete with a giant and abandoned babies, a gothic suspense novel with a creepy family estate and crazy relatives, and a ghost story with disappearing books and a girl in the mist. But more than that, Setterfield has provided a rarity: a beautifully written novel with a swift plot, atmospheric setting and witty dialogue that combine to provide a read that will leave any book lover well satisfied.

Publishing simultaneously in 28 countries, The Thirteenth Tale is going to make Setterfield, a former academic living in England, a very busy woman. Not only is she scheduled for a 14-city tour in the States, she'll need to write her next novel quickly, because there is no doubt that we book lovers will be clamoring for more.

Kristy Kiernan's first novel will be published in 2007 by Berkley.