The Thirteenth Tale

Diane Setterfield

Vida Winter, a bestselling yet reclusive novelist, has created many outlandish life histories for herself, all of them invention. Now old and ailing, at last she wants to tell the truth about her extraordinary life. Her letter to biographer Margaret Lea - a woman with secrets of her own - is a summons.

Vida's tale is one of gothic strangeness featuring the Angelfield family: the beautiful and wilful Isabelle and the feral twins Adeline and Emmeline. Margaret succumbs to the power of Vida's storytelling, but as a biographer she deals in fact not fiction and she doesn't trust Vida's account.

As she begins her researches, two parallel stories unfold. Join Margaret as she begins her journey to the truth - hers, as well as Vida's.

Watch our intrepid Thirteenth Tale team in action in this fantastic video

A day before publication a crack force of thirteen Orion
employees boarded London’s Number 13 Bus to distribute free
copies of The Thirteenth Tale. Were you one of the lucky ones
who received a free copy?

Selected reviews

This is an amazing book about books. I loved all the characters and the story drew me in from the very first page. It's about Margaret whose father owns a bookshop. She is writing a biography for Vida Winter, who is a reclusive author and has one final secret she needs to tell. As Margaret learns more about Vida's life she finds herself confronting the ghosts from her own past.

Dianne Setterfield's writing style was so masterful it was as if she was reading aloud to me. I kept feeling as if I knew where the story was heading but then it would take another turn and I would realise I wasn't quite right. I loved the twist towards the end of the book and the last few pages were unexpectedly moving. This is a captivating gothic tale that I just could not put down and I know I will re-read it time and again.

K Howe-Shepherd

I’m just an ordinary girl who reads a lot…
This book, The Thirteenth Tale, is the best book I’ve ever read. I was walking in the book store when my eye fell on this book and I knew I had to buy it. Never in my life have I read a book so quickly… and so many times. It’s really a fantastic book, and congrats to the amazing author.

Watching forward to your next book Diane!

Pierre Witthuhn

'It's great! You can't put it down! There are so many twists and turns that it's impossible to know what will happen next'

Anya Osen

'This surprise bestseller is an enjoyably windswept story of incest, unnatural love, and northern nastiness'

INDEPENDENT

'Start reading this on the bus and, I swear, you won't only miss your stop, you might even lose the whole day'

COSMOPOLITAN - Great Reads of 2006

'Guiltily enjoyable'

MAIL ON SUNDAY

'the writing is powerfully unafraid of the erotic or the sadistic and the intricate plot is satisfyingly - and unpredictably - unravelled. Juliet Stevenson reads it superbly. At the end she can be heard in conversation with the author, discussing the joys of such work, her sensitivity to rhythm and to character, her sense of loss when it's finished. If Setterfield's book is a rich Dundee cake, Stevenson's reading is the elaborate and beautiful icing on top.'

Sue Gaisford

THE INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY