AN unknown British author has topped America’s fiction bestseller lists after news of her debut novel spread over the internet.

Diane Setterfield, 42, a former university lecturer, took six years to write The Thirteenth Tale after she gave up her career teaching French.

The mystery, published just three weeks ago in America, has beaten established US authors such as James Patterson and Anna Quindlen as well as the latest Frederick Forsyth to top the bestseller lists of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Publishers Weekly.

Setterfield, who lives in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, is the first debut British novelist to reach number one in America since Nicholas Evans in January 1996 with The Horse Whisperer. That book had already been bought in a film deal by Robert Redford before publication, giving it a significant headstart.

The Thirteenth Tale had few reviews in conventional media and seems to have taken off because bloggers recommended it. “I suppose it’s a new form of word of mouth,” said Setterfield, who tomorrow leaves for a book tour of America.

Despite the book’s success in America, where it has sold about 70,000 copies, it has had a less enthusiastic reception in Britain, selling 600 last week.

The development of Setterfield’s fan base on the internet is similar to that which gave a kick-start to musicians such as the Arctic Monkeys, Lily Allen and Sandi Thom. Setterfield has gone from a tiny income to deals worth nearly £1.5m.

She became a lecturer in the 1990s at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston. “In the end I hated it,” she said. “Not the students but the whole admin thing. So I moved with my husband to Yorkshire. I knew I had a book in me.”

After giving up teaching in 1999, she began The Thirteenth Tale, which tells the story of a novelist who employs a biographer to write her life story, resulting in the unearthing of family secrets.

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