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- Nine Coaches Waiting is a then-contemporary romantic suspense novel by Mary Stewart who became known as "The Queen of Suspense". The novel was copyrighted by the author in 1958 and published on January 1, 1959. The setting is the late 1950s—contemporary to the time of its authorship and first publication, a time of propeller airplanes, six-cylinder motorcars, and telephones. Nine Coaches Waiting is the tale of a young English governess, Linda Martin, who travels from North London via Paris then Geneva to the remote Château Valmy, beyond Thonon, France, in the French Alps, to take care of nine-year-old Philippe de Valmy. There she finds herself entangled in a murder plot which eventually results in the revelation of a dark secret. Linda's full given name is Belinda but she uses "Linda for short—or for pretty, [her] mother used to say." Linda is the Spanish word for beautiful or pretty. In keeping with Linda's background in poetry and other literature, Stewart employs chapter epigraphs with quotes from the works of numerous poets, playwrights, and authors, that fit the themes or actions of each scene. Among these are lines from Macbeth, King John, and Hamlet, by William Shakespeare, as well as from his Sonnets 88 and 90. Others are from John Milton; Charles Dickens; John Keats; Alfred, Lord Tennyson; Elizabeth Barrett Browning; Robert Browning; John Donne; George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham; William Blake; George Meredith; and John Webster. Although there are sometimes two, all epigraphs are much briefer than Thomas Middleton's lines that head the first chapter and from whence Stewart derived the book's title. (See Title under below.) A good example is the epigraph from King John that introduces Chapter VIII: Thou art more deep damn'd than Prince Lucifer.There is none yet so ugly a fiend in hellAs thou shalt be, if thou didst kill this child. And the final epigraph (at Chapter XXI): Look you, the stars shine still. — John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi Cinderella is referred to by Linda, as is Jane Eyre, for obvious reasons. Mary Stewart's vast literary knowledge and background are particularly, yet seamlessly, manifest in this book. (en)
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