Nat and his family live near the sea. Nat watches the birds over the sea. Suddenly the weather is colder, and there is something strange about the birds. They are angry. They start to attack. They want to get into the house. They want to kill.

When her mother dies, Mary Yellan goes to live with her aunt and uncle at Jamaica Inn. Strange things happen there at night, and Mary slowly discovers that she and her aunt are in terrible danger. Can she save herself and her aunt before it is too late?

«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». In «The Doll», a waterlogged notebook is washed ashore. Its pages tell a dark story of obsession and jealousy. But the fate of its narrator is a mystery. Many of the stories in this haunting collection have only recently been discovered. Most were written early in Daphne du Maurier's career, yet they display her mastery of atmosphere, tension and intrigue and reveal a cynicism far beyond her years.»

As civil war rages across England, the weak prove their courage and the privileged become traitors In this sweeping, bittersweet saga, spellbinding author Daphne du Maurier recreates a most memorable and true love story. Honor Harris was glorious and vivacious. Sir Richard Grenville was a dashing colonel and a knight. They meet on the evening of her eighteenth birthday at the Duke of Buckingham's great ball and fall deeply in love. Soon afterward tragedy strikes and they are separated by betrayal and war. Decades later, an undaunted Sir Richard, now a general serving King Charles I, finds her. Finally they can share their passion in the ruins of a great estate on the storm-tossed Cornish coastone last time before being torn apart, never to embrace again.

D ès les premières heures à Manderley, somptueuse demeure de l'ouest de l'Angleterre, le souvenir de celle qu'elle a remplacée s'impose à la jeune femme que vient d'épouser Maxim De Winter. Rebecca, morte noyée, continue d'exercer sur tous une influence à la limite du morbide. La nouvelle Mme De Winter, timide, effacée, inexpérimentée, se débat de son mieux contre l'angoisse qui l'envahit, mais la lutte contre le fantôme de Rebecca est par trop inégale. Daphné Du Maurier, dans Rebecca, qui est sans doute le roman le plus caractéristique de son talent, fascine le lecteur et l'entraîne à la découverte d'inquiétantes réalités sans quitter le domaine familier de la vie quotidienne.

Maxim de Winter never talked about Rebecca, but others talked. Rebecca's death had been in all the newspapers. Everyone thought that she had drowned in the sea near Manderley... • Extra grammar and vocabulary exercises. • Points for Understanding comprehension questions. • Glossary of difficult vocabulary. • Free resources including worksheets, tests and author data sheets at www.macmillanenglish.com/readers. • AudioCD/download available for this title.

The stories in this collection, some written before du Maurier published her first novel, reflect many human emotions: romance, disenchantment, fantasy, nostalgia, ambition, irony, the longing for adventure. Each of them is based on something observed, something overheard, and all will provide pleasure for every mood.

'The iron of the bridge felt hot under my hand. The sun had been upon it all day. Gripping hard with my hands I lifted myself on to the bar and gazed down steadily on the water passing under... I thought of places I would never see, and women I should never love. A white sea breaking on a beach, the slow rustle of a shivering tree, the hot scent of grass... I breathed deeply and I felt as though the waiting water rose up in front of me and would not let me go' As far as his father, an accomplished poet, is concerned, Richard will never amount to anything, and so he decides to take his fate into his own hands. But at the last moment, he is saved by Jake, who appeals to Richard not to waste his life. Together they set out for adventure, jumping aboard the first ship they see and working their passage to Norway and around Europe, eventually to bohemian Paris, where Richard meets Hesta, a captivating music student...

Inspired by a grisly discovery in the nineteenth century, The King's General was the first of du Maurier's novels to be written at Menabilly, the model for Manderley in Rebecca. Set in the seventeenth century, it tells the story of a country and a family riven by war, and features one of fiction's most original heroines. Honor Harris is only eighteen when she first meets Richard Grenvile, proud, reckless — and utterly captivating. But following a riding accident, Honor must reconcile herself to a life alone. As Richard rises through the ranks of the army, marries and makes enemies, Honor remains true to him, and finally discovers the secret of Menabilly.

'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.

In Regency London, the only way for a woman to succeed is to beat men at their own game. So when Mary Anne Clarke seeks an escape from her squalid surroundings in Bowling Inn Alley, she ventures first into the scurrilous world of the pamphleteers. Her personal charms are such, however, that before long she comes to the notice of the Duke of York. With her taste for luxury and power, Mary Anne, now a royal mistress, must aim higher. Her lofty connections allow her to establish a thriving trade in military commissions, provoking a scandal that rocks the government — and brings personal disgrace. A vivid portrait of overweening ambition, MARY ANNE is set during the Napoleonic Wars and based on du Maurier's own great-great- grandmother.

'It is rather awful, Emma thought as she walked across the fields down to the farm, how this business is leading us all into subterfuge and deception, and we can't really tell who is friend and who is enemy'... Emma wakes up one morning to an apocalyptic world. The cosy existence she shares with her grandmother, a famous retired actress, has been shattered: there's no post, no telephone, no radio — and an American warship sits in the harbour. As the two women piece together clues about the 'friendly' military occupation on their doorstep, family, friends and neighbours gather round to protect their heritage. In this chilling novel of the future, Daphne du Maurier explores the implications of a political, economic and military alliance between Britain and the United States.