My Cousin Rachel

Philip Ashley is orphaned at an early age and raised by his bachelor uncle Ambrose, who falls in love and marries while travelling in Italy and dies there in suspicious circumstances. When Ambrose's widow turns up in England, Philip is drawn to her, but might she have had a hand in Ambrose's death.

Born in London, the daughter of an actor, Gerald Du Maurier, and granddaughter of the novelist Goerge Du Maurier, Daphne Du Maurier was educated in Paris. Of her early life she wrote, "The Du Maurier family, like every other family in England, lived without fear of the future, happy in the security they believed to be enduring." In 1932 she married Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick Browning and moved to Cornwall, where she has lived most of her life. Du Maurier began writing short stories of mystery and suspense for magazines in 1925, a collection of which appeared as The Apple Tree in 1952. Her first novel, The Loving Tree, was published in 1931. She followed with two more novels that enjoyed moderate success. Then, in 1936, she published Jamaica Inn, the first of the mystery-suspense romances that were to make her famous. Her most successful novel, Rebecca, appeared in 1938. Du Maurier's 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, Rebecca, 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.