Dame Daphne du Maurier was destined for an artistic life. Coming of age between the wars in Britain, her stories and novels are imbued with a heavy overtone of the uncanny. Her literary career took off quickly and she remained a popular author for decades. Her work also became the basis for a number of films.
Gladys Cooper enjoyed a brilliant career that spanned seven decades. From magazines to talkies to musicals to dramas, there was little she didn’t try her hand at. In the early 1900s, she began appearing in comedic and musical plays
David Grann, noted for his eye-opening exploration in the The Killers of The Flower Moon, has tackled the complex, mutinous Antarctic voyage to round Cape Horn. Captain Anson brought The Wager and five other armed ships down the coast of South America, around the point between Chile and Antarctica, to attack the Spanish interests on the Pacific side of the continent.
It’s a haunted house horror novel with Southern gothic tinges.
There was something about these women in their fight to survive, to claw their way out of an inhuman, unimaginable existence that makes them sympathetic — at least a bit. These were not monsters. These were people pushing back on a world that had offered only its worst.