Search results for ""Author Daphne du Maurier""

NOW A MAJOR NETFLIX FILM starring Lily James, Armie Hammer, Kristin Scott Thomas and Lily Collins. 'The moment I finished this story, I turned to page one and started it over again' MALORIE BLACKMAN'Excellent entertainment . . . du Maurier created a scale by which modern women can measure their feelings' STEPHEN KING'Rebecca is a masterpiece in which du Maurier pulls off several spectacular high-wire acts that many great writers wouldn't attempt' JIM CRACE, GUARDIAN On a trip to the South of France, the shy heroine of Rebecca falls in love with Maxim de Winter, a handsome widower. Although his proposal comes as a surprise, she happily agrees to marry him. But as they arrive at her husband's home, Manderley, a change comes over Maxim, and the young bride is filled with dread. Friendless in the isolated mansion, she realises that she barely knows him. In every corner of every room is the phantom of his beautiful first wife, Rebecca, and the new Mrs de Winter walks in her shadow.Not since Jane Eyre has a heroine faced such difficulty with the other woman. An international bestseller that has never gone out of print, Rebecca is the haunting story of a young girl consumed by love and the struggle to find her identity.'As a new generation of readers are introduced to the wicked housekeeper Mrs Danvers and learn Maxim de Winter's terrible secret, this chilling, suspenseful tale is as fresh and readable as it was when it was first written' DAILY TELEGRAPH

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FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF REBECCA'What a magnificent thriller this is' NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW'She wrote exciting plots . . . a writer of fearless originality' GUARDIAN 'A good original novel, well tinged with nightmare' TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT 'He turned and stared at me and I at him, and I realised, with a strange sense of shock and fear and nausea all combined, that his face and voice were known to me too well. I was looking at myself.'By chance, two men - one English, the other French - meet in a provincial railway station. Their resemblance is uncanny, and they spend the evening talking and drinking. It is not until John wakes the next morning that he realises his French companion has stolen his identity and disappeared. So John steps into the Frenchman's shoes, and faces a variety of perplexing roles - as owner of a chateau, director of a failing business, head of a fractious family, and master of nothing.

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A tale of love and adventure from the internationally bestselling author of Rebecca. 'She wrote exciting plots . . . a writer of fearless originality' GUARDIAN 'One of the last century's most original literary talents' DAILY TELEGRAPH 'A pure, exhilarating adventure story - a swashbuckling tale of exquisite danger and tangled love' JULIE MYERSON Lady Dona St Columb seems to revel in scandal: she is involved in every intrigue of the Restoration Court. But secretly, the shallowness of Court life disgusts her, and in her heart she longs for freedom and honest love. Retreating to Navron, her husband's Cornish estate, she seeks peace and solitude away from London. But Navron is being used as the base for a French pirate, an outlaw hunted all over Cornwall.Instead of feeling fear, Dona's thirst for adventure has never been more aroused; in Jean-Benoit Aubéry she finds a sensitive man who would, like her, gamble his life for a moment's joy. Together they embark upon a quest rife with danger and glory, one which will force Dona to make the ultimate choice: will she sacrifice her lover to certain death, or risk her own life to save him?

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FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF REBECCAWith an Introduction by 'Britain's most sophisticated film critic' David Thomson, THE TIMES'A remarkable imagination continually provokes both pity and terror' OBSERVER 'One of the last century's most original literary talents' DAILY TELEGRAPH'She wrote exciting plots . . . a writer of fearless originality' GUARDIAN 'How long he fought with them in the darkness he could not tell, but at last the beating of the wings about him lessened and then withdrew . . .'A classic of alienation and horror, The Birds was immortalised by Hitchcock in his celebrated film. The five other chilling stories in this collection echo a sense of dislocation and mock man's sense of dominance over the natural world.

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'A marvellous celebration of du Maurier's life, work and cultural legacy' SARAH WATERS 'She wrote exciting plots, she was highly skilled at arousing suspense' GUARDIAN 'One of the last century's most original literary talents ' DAILY TELEGRAPH Daphne du Maurier is one of Britain's best-loved bestselling authors. Her writing captured the imagination in a way that few have been able to equal. Rebecca, her most famous novel was a huge success on first publication and brought du Maurier international fame. This enduring classic remains one of the nation's favourite books. In this celebration of Daphne du Maurier's life and achievements, today's leading writers, critics and academics discuss the novels, short stories and biographies that made her one of the most spellbinding and genre-defying authors of her generation. The film versions of her books are also explored, including Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca and The Birds and Nicholas Roeg's Don't Look Now. Featuring interviews with du Maurier's family and a long-lost short story by the author herself, this is the indispensable companion to her work.Contributors include Sarah Dunant, Sally Beauman, Margaret Forster, Antonia Fraser, Michael Holroyd, Lisa Jardine, Julie Myerson, Justine Picardie and Minette Walters.

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FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF REBECCA'She wrote exciting plots . . . a writer of fearless originality' GUARDIAN'This French Revolution epic is an overlooked classic' MELISSA KATSOULIS, THE TIMES 'No other popular writer has so triumphantly defied classification . . . ' MARGARET FORSTER'Perhaps we shall not see each other again. I will write to you, though, and tell you, as best I can, the story of your family. A glass-blower, remember, breathes life into a vessel, giving it shape and form and sometimes beauty; but he can with that same breath, shatter and destroy it.'Faithful to her word, Sophie Duval reveals to her long-lost nephew the tragic story of a family of master craftsmen in eighteenth-century France. The world of the glass-blowers has its own traditions, it's own language and its own rules. 'If you marry into glass' Pierre Labbe warns his daughter, 'you will say goodbye to everything familiar, and enter a closed world'. But crashing into this world comes the violence and terror of the French Revolution against which, the family struggles to survive. The Glass-Blowers is a remarkable achievement - an imaginative and exciting reworking of du Maurier's own family history.

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AN UNFORGETTABLE STORY OF MURDER, MYSTERY AND PASSION, FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF REBECCA.'Jamaica Inn is a first-rate page-turner' THE TIMES'Daphne du Maurier has no equal' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 'Jamaica Inn is a novel about nothing less than pure evil ... with an eerie and shocking kind of power, in the novel's astonishing final act' JULIE MYERSON, GUARDIAN In the bitter November wind, Mary Yellan crosses Bodmin Moor to Jamaica Inn. Her mother's dying wish was that she take refuge there with her Aunt Patience. But when Mary arrives, the warning of the coachman echoes in her mind. Jamaica Inn has a desolate power and behind its crumbling walls, Patience is a changed woman, cowering before her brooding, violent husband. When Mary discovers the inn's dark secrets, the truth is more terrifying than anything she could possibly imagine and she is forced to collude in her uncle's murderous schemes. Against her will, she finds herself powerfully attracted to her uncle's brother, a man she dares not trust.Jamaica Inn is a dark and gripping gothic tale that will remind readers of two other great classics, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. This was also made into a film, also called Jamaica Inn, directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

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Mary Farren went into the gun room one morning about half-past eleven, took her husband's revolver and loaded it, then shot herself. The butler heard the sound of the gun from the pantry...The fourteen haunting stories in this collection span the whole of Daphne du Maurier's writing career and explore every human emotion: an apparently happily married woman commits suicide; a steamer in wartime is rescued by a mysterious sailing-ship; a dull husband breaks loose in a surprising fashion; a con woman plays her game once too often; and a famous novelist looks for romance, only to meet with bitter disappointent. Each meticulously observed tale shows du Maurier's mastery of the genre.

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'A delightful book, full of amusing and charming stories' THE TIMES'Daphne du Maurier has no equal' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH'An intimate view of a creative personality . . . as richly evocative as any of her novels' LOS ANGELES TIMESIn Myself When Young, based on diaries that she kept from 1920-1932, the most famous du Maurier probes her own past, beginning with her earliest memories and encompassing the publication of her first book and her subsequent marriage.Here, the writer is open and sometimes painfully honest about the difficult relationship with her father; her education in Paris; early love affairs; her antipathy towards London life and the theatre; her intense love for Cornwall and her desperate ambition to succeed as a writer. The resulting portrait is of a captivating and complex character. Both her novels and her non-fiction reveal Daphne du Maurier's overwhelming desire to explore her family's history.

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FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF REBECCA. 'In this collection, Daphne du Maurier's peerless craftmanship, her eerie sense of the macabre, her gift for sheer story telling come to full fruition' KIRKUS REVIEWS'She wrote exciting plots ... a writer of fearless originality' PATRICK MCGRATH, GUARDIAN 'The appeal of romance and the clash of highly-charged emotions' NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE 'The apathy of Sunday lay upon the streets. Houses were closed, withdrawn."They don't know," he thought, "those people inside, how one gesture of mine, now, at this minute, might alter their world. A knock on the door, and someone answers - a woman yawning, an old man in carpet slippers, a child sent by its parents in irritation; and according to what I will, what I decide, their whole future will be decided . . . Sudden murder. Theft. Fire." It was as simple as that.'In this collection of suspenseful tales in which fantasies, murderous dreams and half-forgotten worlds are exposed, Daphne du Maurier explores the boundaries of reality and imagination. Her characters are caught at those moments when the delicate link between reason and emotion has been stretched to the breaking point. Often chilling, sometimes poignant, these stories display the full range of Daphne du Maurier's considerable talent.

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FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF REBECCA. 'She wrote exciting plots, she was highly skilled at arousing suspense' GUARDIAN 'One of the last century's most original literary talents' DAILY TELEGRAPH 'Du Maurier employs well the assured balancing of uncanny possibilities ... and the bitterly wry sense of absurdity that were to characterise her finest fiction' HELEN TAYLOR, INDEPENDENT 'I want to know if men realise when they are insane. Sometimes I think that my brain cannot hold together, it is filled with too much horror - too much despair . . . I cannot sleep, I cannot close my eyes without seeing his damned face. If only it had been a dream.'This collection showcases the budding talent and fierce imagination of Daphne du Maurier, before she went on to write one of the most beloved novels of all time. In these tales of human frailty and obsession, a waterlogged notebook washes ashore, revealing a dark story of jealousy and passion; a vicar coaches a young couple divided by class issues and an older man falls perilously in love with a much younger woman. Each tale demonstrates du Maurier's extraordinary storytelling gifts and her deep understanding of human nature.

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Collecting five stories of suspense, mystery and slow, creeping horror, Daphne Du Maurier's Don't Look Now and Other Stories includes an introduction by Susan Hill, author of The Woman in Black, in Penguin Modern Classics.John and Laura have come to Venice to try and escape the pain of their young daughter's death. But when they encounter two old women who claim to have second sight, they find that instead of laying their ghosts to rest they become caught up in a train of increasingly strange and violent events. The four other haunting, evocative stories in this volume also explore deep fears and longings, secrets and desires: 'Not After Midnight', in which a lonely teacher investigates a mysterious American couple; 'A Border Line Case', in which a young woman confronts her father's past and his associations with the IRA; 'The Way of the Cross', in which a party of pilgrims to Jerusalem encounter strange phenomena in the Garden of Gethsemane; and 'The Breakthrough', in which a scientist claims to be able to trap the soul at the point of death ...Daphne du Maurier (1907-89) - English novelist, biographer, and playwright, who published romantic suspense novels, mostly set on the coast of Cornwall. Du Maurier is best known for and Jamaica Inn (1936), filmed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1939, Rebecca (1938), filmed by Hitchcock in 1940, and The Birds (1952), filmed by Hitchcock in 1963. If you enjoyed Don't Look Now and Other Stories, you might like Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.'Daphne du Maurier has no equal' Sunday Telegraph'Du Maurier created a scale by which modern women can measure their feelings'Stephen King

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