The Thirteenth Tale (Trinadtsataya Skazka)

'The Thirteenth Tale' by Diana Setterfield is a recognized masterpiece of modern English prose, a book that introduced the neo-Gothic genre to a wider audience and caused Anglo-American critics to talk about the return of the golden age of the British novel, shrouded in the names of Charlotte and Emily Brontë and Daphne du Maurier. The debut novel of a modest teacher, the rights to which were purchased for an unprecedented sum for a novice author (800 thousand pounds for the British edition, a million dollars for the American one), outsold the bestsellers of recent years, was immediately translated into several dozen languages ​​and awarded the honorary title of 'the new Jane Eyre' by reviewers. Margaret Lee works in her father's second-hand bookshop. She prefers Dickens and the Brontë sisters to modernity. Margaret is therefore even more surprised when she receives an offer from the most famous writer of our time, Vida Winter, to become her biographer. After all, Miss Winter is no less famous for her books than for the fact that she has never told a single interviewer a word of truth. And so, within the walls of a gloomy, haunted mansion, Margaret finds herself confronted with a literal Gothic story of twin sisters, strangely resonating with her own personal story and gradually leading to the solution to a mystery that has driven generations of readers mad—the mystery of 'The Thirteenth Tale.'