The Thirteenth Tale

Download or read book The Thirteenth Tale written by Diane Setterfield and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2007-10-09 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this rousingly good ghost story, Setterfield's debut novel rejuvenates the genre with a closely plotted, clever foray into a world of secrets, confused identities, lies, and half-truths.

Download or read book The Thirteenth Tale written by Diane Setterfield and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2007 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Thirteenth Tale written by Diane Setterfield and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2006-09-12 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Instant #1 New York Times bestseller “Readers will feel the magnetic pull of this paean to words, books and the magical power of story.”—People “Eerie and fascinating.”—USA TODAY Sometimes, when you open the door to the past, what you confront is your destiny. Reclusive author Vida Winter, famous for her collection of twelve enchanting stories, has spent the past six decades penning a series of alternate lives for herself. Now old and ailing, she is ready to reveal the truth about her extraordinary existence and the violent and tragic past she has kept secret for so long. Calling on Margaret Lea, a young biographer troubled by her own painful history, Vida disinters the life she meant to bury for good. Margaret is mesmerized by the author's tale of gothic strangeness—featuring the beautiful and willful Isabelle, the feral twins Adeline and Emmeline, a ghost, a governess, a topiary garden and a devastating fire. Together, Margaret and Vida confront the ghosts that have haunted them while becoming, finally, transformed by the truth themselves.

Download or read book Bellman & Black written by Diane Setterfield and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-11-05 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Killing a bird with his slingshot as a boy, William Bellman grows up a wealthy family man unaware of how his act of childhood cruelty will have terrible consequences until a wrenching tragedy compels him to enter into a macabre bargain with a stranger in black.

Download or read book Once Upon a River written by Diane Setterfield and published by Atria/Emily Bestler Books. This book was released on 2019-07-02 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the instant #1 New York Times bestselling author of the “eerie and fascinating” (USA TODAY) The Thirteenth Tale comes a “swift and entrancing, profound and beautiful” (Madeline Miller, internationally bestselling author of Circe) novel about how we explain the world to ourselves, ourselves to others, and the meaning of our lives in a universe that remains impenetrably mysterious. On a dark midwinter’s night in an ancient inn on the river Thames, an extraordinary event takes place. The regulars are telling stories to while away the dark hours, when the door bursts open on a grievously wounded stranger. In his arms is the lifeless body of a small child. Hours later, the girl stirs, takes a breath and returns to life. Is it a miracle? Is it magic? Or can science provide an explanation? These questions have many answers, some of them quite dark indeed. Those who dwell on the river bank apply all their ingenuity to solving the puzzle of the girl who died and lived again, yet as the days pass the mystery only deepens. The child herself is mute and unable to answer the essential questions: Who is she? Where did she come from? And to whom does she belong? But answers proliferate nonetheless. Three families are keen to claim her. A wealthy young mother knows the girl is her kidnapped daughter, missing for two years. A farming family reeling from the discovery of their son’s secret liaison stand ready to welcome their granddaughter. The parson’s housekeeper, humble and isolated, sees in the child the image of her younger sister. But the return of a lost child is not without complications and no matter how heartbreaking the past losses, no matter how precious the child herself, this girl cannot be everyone’s. Each family has mysteries of its own, and many secrets must be revealed before the girl’s identity can be known. Once Upon a River is a glorious tapestry of a book that combines folklore and science, magic and myth. Suspenseful, romantic, and richly atmospheric, this is “a beguiling tale, full of twists and turns like the river at its heart, and just as rich and intriguing” (M.L. Stedman, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Light Between Oceans).

Download or read book The Seduction of Water written by Carol Goodman and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2003-12-30 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Iris Greenfeder, ABD (All But Dissertation), feels the “buts” are taking over her life: all but published, all but a professor, all but married. Yet the sudden impulse to write a story about her mother, Katherine Morrissey, leads to a shot at literary success. The piece recounts an eerie Irish fairy tale her mother used to tell her at bedtime—and nestled inside it is the sad story of her death. It captures the attention of her mother’s former literary agent, who is convinced that Katherine wrote one final manuscript before her strange, untimely end in a fire thirty years ago. So Iris goes back to the remote Hotel Equinox in the Catskills, the place where she grew up, to write her mother’s biography and search for the missing manuscript—and there she unravels a haunting mystery, one that holds more secrets than she ever expected. . . .

Download or read book Curse of the Thirteenth Fey written by Jane Yolen and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-11-08 with total page 117 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: You think you know the story of Sleeping Beauty, but the real story is far more spellbinding… Gorse is the thirteenth and youngest in a family of fairies tied to the evil king’s land and made to do his bidding. When accident-prone Gorse falls ill just as the family is bid to bless the new princess, a fairytale starts to unfold. Sick as she is, Gorse races to the castle with the last piece of magic the family has left—a piece of the Thread of Life. But that is when accident, mayhem, and magic combine to drive Gorse’s story into the unthinkable, threatening the baby and the kingdom.