Both women will have to confront their pasts and the weight of family secrets… and the ghosts that haunt them still. Margaret carefully records Miss Winter’s account and finds herself more and more deeply immersed in the strange and troubling story. Where is the thirteenth tale? Intrigued, Margaret agrees to meet Miss Winter and act as her biographer.Īs Vida Winter unfolds her story, she shares with Margaret the dark family secrets that she has long kept hidden as she remembers her days at Angelfield, the now burnt-out estate that was her childhood home. She is spellbound by the stories and confused when she realizes the book only contains twelve stories. Late one night while pondering whether to accept the task of recording Miss Winter’s personal story, Margaret begins to read her father’s rare copy of Miss Winter’s Thirteen Tales of Change and Desperation. The request takes Margaret by surprise-she doesn’t know the author, nor has she read any of Miss Winter’s dozens of novels. Vida Winter, gravely ill, wants to recount her life story before it is too late, and she wants Margaret to be the one to capture her history. It is a hand-written request from one of Britain’s most prolific and well-loved novelists.

Here are a couple of book covers to get a flavorįor the story though we are taught not to judgeīiographer Margaret Lea returns one night to her apartment above her father’s antiquarian bookshop. Book Review: The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

The 13th tale book