Paperback: The Thirteenth Tale, by Diane Setterfield

Orion £6.99

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

When young biographer Margaret Lea is summoned to North Yorkshire to interview reclusive novelist, Vida Winter, she wonders, why her? As the enigmatic Winter starts to flesh out her lurid life, a connection between them emerges. Owing much to the moorland romances of the Brontës and du Maurier, Setterfield injects the proceedings with her own sadistic realism. Derivative delights, but, as Vida herself points out, nothing beats the "plump comforts" of a good fireside yarn.