The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield (2006, Unabridged, Audio Download)

NARRATED BY BIANCO AMATO & JILL TANNER Unabridged

Ms. Setterfield literally draws you into her world so completely you are fearful of leaving because you have become part of the story. This is one of the best Gothic mysteries to come out in a long time. The story centers on Vida Winter, an extraordinary writer who nobody can seem to find much about. She contacts young Margaret Lea who is asked to come to her vast Yorkshire estate, Angelfield. Margaret's task is to figure out fact from fiction in Vida's life. Vida's dark secrets and past are soon revealed in the story and it becomes clear that it shares similarities to Margaret's own life. She and Vida have pasts that come back to haunt them and only writing it out on paper is Margaret able to finally tell the true story and set herself free as well.

Vida Winter, England's most famous and reclusive writer, is nearing the end, and before she goes she wants her amazing life story to be recorded for posterity. For this, she engages a lonely young biographer, Margaret Lea, who has a few secrets of her own. When these two forceful women meet, the stage is set for an ever-mounting series of shocking surprises.

I've always been a fan of the Gothic style of romantic mystery, and some of my favorite authors are the Brontës, Daphne du Maurier, Mary Stewart, and Robert Goddard. If you share my love of windswept moors, bleak houses and strange families, you're in for a real treat. THE THIRTEENTH TALE is a masterful, deliberately old-fashioned story of secrets, ghosts, sexual obsession, murder, madness--you name it, and it's here.

This is a beautiful book. I'm going to give copies to a few friends, and I plan to read it again. The only other books I've actually read twice are GREAT EXPECTATIONS, WUTHERING HEIGHTS, and REBECCA. What else can I say? Enjoy.