"Last Night I Dreamt

I Went To Manderley Again." So the second Mrs. Maxim de Winter remembered the chilling events that led her down the turning drive past ther beeches, white and naked, to the isolated gray stone manse on the windswept Cornish coast. With a husband she barely knew, the young bride arrived at this immense estate, only to be inexorably drawn into the life of the first Mrs. de Winter, the beautiful Rebecca, dead but never forgotten...her suite of rooms never touched, her clothes ready to be worn, her servant -- the sinister Mrs. Danvers -- still loyal. And as an eerie presentiment of evil tightened around her heart, the second Mrs. de Winter began her search for the real fate of Rebecca...for the secrets of Manderley.

作者簡介

Daphne Du Maurier was born in London on May 13, 1907 and educated in Paris. In 1932, she married Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick Browning. She began writing short stories of mystery and suspense for magazines in 1928, a collection of which appeared as The Apple Tree in 1952. Her first novel, The Loving Spirit, was published in 1931. Her tightly woven, highly suspenseful plots and her strong characters make her stories perfect for adaptation to film or television. Among her many novels that were made into successful films are Jamaica Inn (1936), Rebecca (1938), Frenchman's Creek (1941), Hungry Hill (1943), My Cousin Rachel (1952), and The Scapegoat (1957). Her short story The Birds (1953) was brought to screen by director Alfred Hitchcock in a treatment that has become a classic horror-suspense film. She died on April 19, 1989 at the age of 81.

內頁插圖

精彩書評

"Surely no audiobook collection should be without some version of this timeless classic, arguably the most famous and well-loved gothic novel of the 20th century, and this production would be an excellent choice. Read in wonderfully British cadences by Anna Massey, all the mysterious and oppressive nuances are made immediate and chilling. We even feel some sympathy for the absurdly timid and cowering heroine; it is, after all, easy to imagine feeling woefully inferior to the predecessor and desperately eager to please. Of course the story requires great leaps of credulity... Forget the movie; it makes mincemeat of the actual tale. A wise seven-year-old once told me, "The book is always betterDit goes right into your head." This is a prime exampleDlisten again; it gets even better. Highly recommended."
--DHarriet Edwards, East Meadow P.L., NY

"Rebecca is a novel of mystery and passion, a dark psychological tale of secrets and betrayal, dead loves and an estate called Manderley that is as much a presence as the humans who inhabit it: "when the leaves rustle, they sound very much like the stealthy movement of a woman in evening dress, and when they shiver suddenly and fall, and scatter away along the ground, they might be the pitter, patter of a woman's hurrying footsteps, and the mark in the gravel the imprint of a high-heeled satin shoe." Manderley is filled with memories of the elegant and flamboyant Rebecca, the first Mrs. DeWinter; with the obsessive love of her housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, who observes the young, timid second Mrs. DeWinter with sullen hostility; and with the oppressive silences of a secretive husband, Maxim. Rebecca may be physically dead, but she is a force to contend with, and the housekeeper's evil matches that of her former mistress as a purveyor of the emotional horror thrust on the innocent Mrs. DeWinter. The tension builds as the new Mrs. DeWinter slowly grows and asserts herself, surviving the wicked deceptions of Mrs. Danvers and the silent deceits of her husband, to emerge triumphant in the midst of a surprise ending that leaves the reader with a sense of haunting justice."
--Vickie Sears