“It was three months after she died that he first noticed the apple tree.” This is how Daphne du Maurier’s 1952 story “The Apple Tree” begins. Readers familiar with her most read work, Rebecca, are attuned to du Maurier’s classic first sentences. There are a few writers who have been able to set the tone of their stories from the get-go. Born in 1907, Daphne du Maurier was dismissed by critics when she published her early works. It was only in the 1940s that du Maurier rose to fame and her narrative style was taken seriously. Master filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock even adapted Rebecca for the screen.

Virago Modern Classics has put together Daphne du Maurier’s major short stories and novellas into a massive book that runs for 600 pages in a brand new collection titled After Midnight . I

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