Patricia Highsmith Books In Order

Ripley Books In Publication Order

  1. The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955)
  2. Ripley Under Ground (1970)
  3. Ripley’s Game (1974)
  4. The Boy Who Followed Ripley (1980)
  5. Ripley Under Water (1991)

Standalone Novels In Publication Order

  1. Under a Dark Angel’s Eye (0)
  2. Strangers on a Train (1950)
  3. The Price of Salt / Carol (1952)
  4. The Blunderer (1954)
  5. Deep Water (1957)
  6. A Game for the Living (1958)
  7. This Sweet Sickness (1960)
  8. The Cry of the Owl (1962)
  9. The Two Faces of January (1964)
  10. The Glass Cell (1964)
  11. A Suspension of Mercy / The Story-Teller (1965)
  12. Those Who Walk Away (1967)
  13. The Tremor of Forgery (1969)
  14. A Dog’s Ransom (1972)
  15. Edith’s Diary (1977)
  16. People Who Knock on the Door (1983)
  17. Found in the Street (1986)
  18. Small g (1994)

Short Story Collections In Publication Order

  1. Nothing That Meets the Eye (1968)
  2. Eleven / The Snail Watcher and Other Stories (1970)
  3. Little Tales of Misogyny (1974)
  4. The Animal-Lover’s Book of Beastly Murder (1975)
  5. Slowly, Slowly in the Wind (1979)
  6. The Black House (1981)
  7. Mermaids on the Golf Course (1984)
  8. Tales of Natural and Unnatural Catastrophes (1987)
  9. Chillers (1990)
  10. The Selected Stories of Patricia Highsmith (2001)
  11. Sour Tales for Sweethearts (2015)

Non-Fiction Books In Publication Order

  1. Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction (1966)
  2. Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks: 1941-1995 (With: ) (2021)

Pan Book of Horror Stories Books In Publication Order

  1. The Pan Book of Horror Stories (By:Jack Finney,Herbert van Thal) (1959)
  2. The First Pan Book Of Horror Stories (By:Bram Stoker,Herbert van Thal) (1959)
  3. The Third Pan Book of Horror Stories (By:Herbert van Thal) (1962)
  4. The Fourth Pan Book of Horror Stories (By:,Herbert van Thal) (1963)
  5. The Fifth Pan Book of Horror Stories (By:Herbert van Thal) (1964)
  6. 7THPAN BOOK OF HORROR STORIES (By:,Herbert van Thal) (1966)
  7. The Ninth Pan Book of Horror Stories (By:Tanith Lee,,,,Herbert van Thal) (1968)
  8. The Tenth Pan Book of Horror Stories (By:,,,,Herbert van Thal) (1969)
  9. The Twelfth Pan Book of Horror Stories (With: Herbert van Thal) (1971)
  10. The 13th Pan Book of Horror Stories (By:Herbert van Thal) (1972)
  11. The 14th Pan Book of Horror Stories (By:Herbert van Thal,,,,,Alex White) (1973)
  12. The 15th Pan Book of Horror Stories (By:,Herbert van Thal,,,Alex White) (1974)
  13. The 16th Pan Book of Horror Stories (By:Alan Lee,,Herbert van Thal,,,,Elleston Trevor) (1975)
  14. The 17th Pan Book of Horror Stories (By:Alan Lee,Herbert van Thal,,Alex White,Elleston Trevor) (1976)
  15. The 18th Pan Book of Horror Stories (With: Herbert van Thal) (1977)
  16. The 19th Pan Book of Horror Stories (By:Robert Holdstock,,Herbert van Thal) (1978)
  17. The 20th Pan Book of Horror Stories (By:,Herbert van Thal) (1979)
  18. The 22nd Pan Book of Horror Stories (By:Herbert van Thal,,,Ian McEwan) (1981)
  19. The 23rd Pan Book of Horror Stories (By:Ruth Rendell,,Herbert van Thal,,,,Alex White) (1982)
  20. The 24th Pan Book of Horror Stories (With: Roald Dahl,Herbert van Thal) (1983)
  21. The 25th Pan Book of Horror Stories (By:Stephen King,,Herbert van Thal) (1984)

Anthologies In Publication Order

  1. The Web She Weaves (1983)
  2. The 24th Pan Book of Horror Stories (1983)
  3. Mystery Cats (1991)
  4. Mystery Cats 3: More Feline Felonies (1995)
  5. A Century of British Mystery and Suspense (2000)
  6. Crime Story Collection (2000)
  7. A Century of Great Suspense Stories (2001)
  8. Crime Never Pays (2001)
  9. A New Omnibus of Crime (2005)
  10. Books to Die For (2012)

Ripley Book Covers

Standalone Novels Book Covers

Short Story Collections Book Covers

Non-Fiction Book Covers

Pan Book of Horror Stories Book Covers

Anthologies Book Covers

Patricia Highsmith Books Overview

The Talented Mr. Ripley

The screenplay of Anthony Minghella’s new film based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith The complete screenplay of Anthony Minghella’s adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr Ripley starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Matt Damon, Jude Law and Cate Blanchett. Tom Ripley, a small time con man, arrives in Italy from New York in search of a wealthy young man named Dickie Greenleaf. He has been sent by the young man’s wealthy father to bring Dickie back to America. But once in Italy, Ripley becomes so attracted to Greenleaf and his exotic lifestyle in the seaport village of Mongibello that Tom yearns to inhabit Dickie’s life and falls tragically in love with him. Dickie’s wealth, style and good looks are qualities that Tom begins to covet. The frightening consequences of this attraction and the moral choices raised by the crime of murder lie at the heart of Minghella’s absorbing film. Set throughout Italy Ischia, Palermo, Rome, Tuscany and Venice, Minghella’s adaptation brings to life Highsmith’s amoral tale of a criminal who gets away with murder.’The craft with which Minghella has expanded Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 classic crime novel has made the film an even richer experience than the gleefully amoral original’ Scotsman

Ripley Under Ground

‘Ripley is an unmistakable descendant of Gatsby, that ‘penniless young man without a past’ who will stop at nothing.’ Frank Rich Now part of American film and literary lore, Tom Ripley, ‘a bisexual psychopath and art forger who murders without remorse when his comforts are threatened’ New York Times Book Review, was Patricia Highsmith’s favorite creation. In these volumes, we find Ripley ensconced on a French estate with a wealthy wife, a world class art collection, and a past to hide. In Ripley Under Ground 1970, an art forgery goes awry and Ripley is threatened with exposure; in The Boy Who Followed Ripley 1980, Highsmith explores Ripley’s bizarrely paternal relationship with a troubled young runaway, whose abduction draws them into Berlin’s seamy underworld; and in Ripley Under Water 1991, Ripley is confronted by a snooping American couple obsessed with the disappearance of an art collector who visited Ripley years before. More than any other American literary character, Ripley provides ‘a lens to peer into the sinister machinations of human behavior’ John Freeman, Pittsburgh Gazette.

Ripley’s Game

With its sinister humor and genius plotting, Ripley’s Game is an enduring portrait of a compulsive, sociopathic American antihero. Living on his posh French estate with his elegant heiress wife, Tom Ripley, on the cusp of middle age, is no longer the striving comer of The Talented Mr. Ripley. Having accrued considerable wealth through a long career of crime forgery, extortion, serial murder Ripley still finds his appetite unquenched and longs to get back in the game. In Ripley’s Game, first published in 1974, Patricia Highsmith’s classic chameleon relishes the opportunity to simultaneously repay an insult and help a friend commit a crime and escape the doldrums of his idyllic retirement. This third novel in Highsmith’s series is one of her most psychologically nuanced particularly memorable for its dark, absurd humor and was hailed by critics for its ability to manipulate the tropes of the genre. With the creation of Ripley, one of literature’s most seductive sociopaths, Highsmith anticipated the likes of Norman Bates and Hannibal Lecter years before their appearance.

The Boy Who Followed Ripley

‘Ripley is an unmistakable descendant of Gatsby, that ‘penniless young man without a past’ who will stop at nothing.’ Frank Rich Now part of American film and literary lore, Tom Ripley, ‘a bisexual psychopath and art forger who murders without remorse when his comforts are threatened’ New York Times Book Review, was Patricia Highsmith’s favorite creation. In The Boy Who Followed Ripley 1980, Highsmith explores Ripley’s bizarrely paternal relationship with a troubled young runaway, whose abduction draws them into Berlin’s seamy underworld. More than any other American literary character, Ripley provides ‘a lens to peer into the sinister machinations of human behavior’ John Freeman, Pittsburgh Gazette.

Ripley Under Water

‘Ripley is an unmistakable descendant of Gatsby, that ‘penniless young man without a past’ who will stop at nothing.’ Frank Rich Now part of American film and literary lore, Tom Ripley, ‘a bisexual psychopath and art forger who murders without remorse when his comforts are threatened’ New York Times Book Review, was Patricia Highsmith’s favorite creation. In these volumes, we find Ripley ensconced on a French estate with a wealthy wife, a world class art collection, and a past to hide. In Ripley Under Ground 1970, an art forgery goes awry and Ripley is threatened with exposure; in The Boy Who Followed Ripley 1980, Highsmith explores Ripley’s bizarrely paternal relationship with a troubled young runaway, whose abduction draws them into Berlin’s seamy underworld; and in Ripley Under Water 1991, Ripley is confronted by a snooping American couple obsessed with the disappearance of an art collector who visited Ripley years before. More than any other American literary character, Ripley provides ‘a lens to peer into the sinister machinations of human behavior’ John Freeman, Pittsburgh Gazette.

Under a Dark Angel’s Eye

The Selected Stories of Patricia Highsmith presents five of Highsmith’s classic short story collections in a single masterful volume. Compelling, twisted, and fiercely intelligent, this landmark collection showcases Highsmith’s mastery of the short story form. In a cruel twist of irony, Texas born Patricia Highsmith 1921 1995 is being recognized only after her death for her inestimable genius in her native land. With the savage humor of Waugh and the macabre sensibility of Poe, she brought a distinctly contemporary acuteness to her prolific body of noir fiction. Including over 60 short stories written throughout her career, collected together for the first time, The Selected Stories reveals the stunning versatility and terrifying power of Highsmith’s work. These stories highlight the remarkable range of Highsmith’s powers her unique ability to quickly, almost imperceptibly, draw out the mystery and strangeness of her subject, which appears achingly ordinary to our naked eye. Whether writing about jaded wives or household pets, Highsmith continually upsets our expectations and presents a world frighteningly familiar to our own, where danger lurks around every turn. Stories from The Animal Lovers Book of Beastly Murders portray, with incisive humor, the murderously competitive desires of our most trusted companions. In this viciously satirical reprise of Kafka, cats, dogs, and cockroaches are no longer necessary aspects of a happy home but actually have the power to destroy it. In the short sketches that make up the Little Tales of Misogyny, Highsmith rediscovers predictable female characters ‘The Dancer,’ ‘The Female Novelist,’ ‘The Prude’ and, through scathing humor, invests them with uniquely destructive powers. As a writer, Highsmith was all too well aware of the stolid patriarchal conventions that ruled her day her publisher rejected her second book out of hand because of its homosexual content. She is not a polemicist, but, as stories like ‘Oona the Jolly Cave Woman’ and ‘The Mobile Bed Object’ reveal, her bizarre, haunting fiction continually betrays the inadequacy of our conventional understanding of female character. Highsmith eventually moved away from these coolly satiric, darkly comic exercises, and in her later collections, The Black House, Slowly, Slowly in the Wind, and Mermaids on the Golf Course, she uses the warm familiarities of middle class life the manicured lawns, the cozy uptown apartments, the local pubs as the backbone for her chilling portrayals. ‘The Black House,’ for instance, explores the small town male camaraderie and the destructive secret it masks: in this world, the fact that everyone knows your name is more likely a curse than a blessing. In the title story of the final collection presented here, ‘Mermaids on a Golf Course,’ a man’s extraordinary brush with death endows his everyday desires with fantastically devastating consequences. In her later work, Highsmith adds a dimension of penetrating psychological insight, evoked most vividly in stories like ‘A Curious Suicide’ and ‘The Stuff of Madness,’ where the precarious line between fantasy and reality is blurred and we experience the terrifying possibility of slipping between them. Great writers view the world askew, and in their art they reflect our world back to us, slightly distorted. The Selected Stories reveals Highsmith’s deft and exacting style, her incisive satirical intelligence, and her faultless eye for depicting the inner tremblings of human character. Her world remains all the more frightening because we recognize it as our own.

Strangers on a Train

A major new reissue of the work of a classic noir novelist. With the acclaim for The Talented Mr. Ripley, more film projects in production, and two biographies forthcoming, expatriate legend Patricia Highsmith would be shocked to see that she has finally arrived in her homeland. Throughout her career, Highsmith brought a keen literary eye and a genius for plumbing the psychopathic mind to more than thirty works of fiction, unparalleled in their placid deviousness and sardonic humor. With deadpan accuracy, she delighted in creating true sociopaths in the guise of the everyday man or woman. Now, one of her finest works is again in print: Strangers on a Train, Highsmith’s first novel and the source for Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1953 film. With this novel, Highsmith revels in eliciting the unsettling psychological forces that lurk beneath the surface of everyday contemporary life.

The Price of Salt / Carol

Now recognized as a masterwork, the scandalous novel that anticipated Nabokov’s Lolita. ‘I have long had a theory that Nabokov knew The Price of Salt and modeled the climactic cross country car chase in Lolita on Therese and Carol’s frenzied bid for freedom,’ writes Terry Castle in The New Republic about this novel, arguably Patricia Highsmith’s finest, first published in 1952 under the pseudonym Clare Morgan. Soon to be a new film, The Price of Salt tells the riveting story of Therese Belivet, a stage designer trapped in a department store day job, whose salvation arrives one day in the form of Carol Aird, an alluring suburban housewife in the throes of a divorce. They fall in love and set out across the United States, pursued by a private investigator who eventually blackmails Carol into a choice between her daughter and her lover. With this reissue, The Price of Salt may finally be recognized as a major twentieth century American novel.

The Blunderer

‘Ripley is an unmistakable descendant of Gatsby, that ‘penniless young man without a past’ who will stop at nothing.’ Frank Rich Now part of American film and literary lore, Tom Ripley, ‘a bisexual psychopath and art forger who murders without remorse when his comforts are threatened’ New York Times Book Review, was Patricia Highsmith’s favorite creation. In these volumes, we find Ripley ensconced on a French estate with a wealthy wife, a world class art collection, and a past to hide. In Ripley Under Ground 1970, an art forgery goes awry and Ripley is threatened with exposure; in The Boy Who Followed Ripley 1980, Highsmith explores Ripley’s bizarrely paternal relationship with a troubled young runaway, whose abduction draws them into Berlin’s seamy underworld; and in Ripley Under Water 1991, Ripley is confronted by a snooping American couple obsessed with the disappearance of an art collector who visited Ripley years before. More than any other American literary character, Ripley provides ‘a lens to peer into the sinister machinations of human behavior’ John Freeman, Pittsburgh Gazette.

Deep Water

‘Ripley is an unmistakable descendant of Gatsby, that ‘penniless young man without a past’ who will stop at nothing.’ Frank Rich Now part of American film and literary lore, Tom Ripley, ‘a bisexual psychopath and art forger who murders without remorse when his comforts are threatened’ New York Times Book Review, was Patricia Highsmith’s favorite creation. In these volumes, we find Ripley ensconced on a French estate with a wealthy wife, a world class art collection, and a past to hide. In Ripley Under Ground 1970, an art forgery goes awry and Ripley is threatened with exposure; in The Boy Who Followed Ripley 1980, Highsmith explores Ripley’s bizarrely paternal relationship with a troubled young runaway, whose abduction draws them into Berlin’s seamy underworld; and in Ripley Under Water 1991, Ripley is confronted by a snooping American couple obsessed with the disappearance of an art collector who visited Ripley years before. More than any other American literary character, Ripley provides ‘a lens to peer into the sinister machinations of human behavior’ John Freeman, Pittsburgh Gazette.

A Game for the Living

Ram n mends furniture. Theodore paints. A devout Catholic, Ram n lives in Mexico City, not far from where he was born into poverty. Theodore, a rich German transplanted to a country where money buys some comfort but no peace, believes in nothing at all. You d think the two had nothing in common. Except, of course, that both had slept with Lelia. The two were good friends, so neither minded sharing her affections. They did mind, however, when Lelia was found raped, murdered, and horribly mutilated. The two friends, suspects both, twist in a limbo of tension and doubt, each seeking his own form of solace and truth.

This Sweet Sickness

Ram n mends furniture. Theodore paints. A devout Catholic, Ram n lives in Mexico City, not far from where he was born into poverty. Theodore, a rich German transplanted to a country where money buys some comfort but no peace, believes in nothing at all. You d think the two had nothing in common. Except, of course, that both had slept with Lelia. The two were good friends, so neither minded sharing her affections. They did mind, however, when Lelia was found raped, murdered, and horribly mutilated. The two friends, suspects both, twist in a limbo of tension and doubt, each seeking his own form of solace and truth.

The Cry of the Owl

This extraordinary story Julian Symons begins with an act of naive voy eurism. Robert Forester, a depressed but fundamentally decent man, liked to watch Jenny through her kitchen window a harmless palliative, as he saw it, to his lonely life and failed marriage. As he is drawn into her life, however, the recriminations of his simple pleasure shatter the deceptive calm of this small Pennsylvania town. With striking clarity and horrible inevitability, Forester is caught up in a series of deaths in which he is the innocent bystander, presumed guilty. Highsmith has once again, as Graham Greene wrote, created a world of her own a world claustrophobic and irrational which we enter each time with a sense of personal danger. And that sense of danger grows from the first page to the sinister and chilling conclusion.

The Two Faces of January

Rydal Keener is waiting. Chester McFarland is waiting. Chester’s wife is waiting. Two murders later, they’re all running chasing each other across the continent, driven by a bond of hate and fear.

The Glass Cell

At last back in print, one of Patricia Highsmith’s most disturbing works. Rife with overtones of Dostoyevsky, The Glass Cell, first published forty years ago, combines a quintessential Highsmith mystery with a penetrating critique of the psychological devastation wrought by the prison system. Falsely convicted of fraud, the easygoing but na ve Philip Carter is sentenced to six lonely, drug ravaged years in prison. Upon his release, Carter is a more suspicious and violent man. For those around him, earning back his trust can mean the difference between life and death. The Glass Cell‘s bleak and compelling portrait of daily prison life and the consequences for those who live it is, sadly, as relevant today as it was when the book was first published in 1964.

A Suspension of Mercy / The Story-Teller

A major new reissue of the work of a classic noir novelist. With the acclaim for The Talented Mr. Ripley, more film projects in production, and two biographies forthcoming, expatriate legend Patricia Highsmith would be shocked to see that she has finally arrived in her homeland. Throughout her career, Highsmith brought a keen literary eye and a genius for plumbing the psychopathic mind to more than thirty works of fiction, unparalleled in their placid deviousness and sardonic humor. With deadpan accuracy, she delighted in creating true sociopaths in the guise of the everyday man or woman. Now, one of her finest works is again in print: A Suspension of Mercy, a masterpiece of noir fantasy. With this novel, Highsmith revels in eliciting the unsettling psychological forces that lurk beneath the surface of everyday contemporary life.

Those Who Walk Away

A major new reissue of the work of a classic noir novelist. With the acclaim for The Talented Mr. Ripley, more film projects in production, and two biographies forthcoming, expatriate legend Patricia Highsmith would be shocked to see that she has finally arrived in her homeland. Throughout her career, Highsmith brought a keen literary eye and a genius for plumbing the psychopathic mind to more than thirty works of fiction, unparalleled in their placid deviousness and sardonic humor. With deadpan accuracy, she delighted in creating true sociopaths in the guise of the everyday man or woman. Now, one of her finest works is again in print: A Suspension of Mercy, a masterpiece of noir fantasy. With this novel, Highsmith revels in eliciting the unsettling psychological forces that lurk beneath the surface of everyday contemporary life.

The Tremor of Forgery

Under the hot desert sun nothing is quite as it seems. Howard Ingham, an American writer, is sent to Tunisia to gather material for a movie, a love story too sordid to be set in America. But his director fails to arrive as scheduled and the erratic mails bring news of infidelities and suicide. Ingham for reasons obscure even to himself decides to stay on and work instead on a novel. Gradually, however, a series of peculiar events a hushed up murder, a vanished corpse, and secret broadcasts to the Soviet Union lures him inexorably into the deep, ambivalent shadows of this Arab town; into deceit and away from conventional morality. And when Ingham finds an accomplice to murder, or perhaps something more, what is in question is not justice or truth, but the state of his oddly quiet conscience.

A Dog’s Ransom

Long out of print, this Highsmith classic resurfaces with a vengeance. The great revival of interest in Patricia Highsmith continues with the publication of this novel that will give dog owners nightmares for years to come. With an eerie simplicity of style, Highsmith turns our next door neighbors into sad*istic psychopaths, lying in wait among white picket fences and manicured lawns. In A Dog’s Ransom, Highsmith blends a savage humor with brilliant social satire in this dark tale of a highminded criminal who hits a wealthy Manhattan couple where it hurts the most when he kidnaps their beloved poodle. This work attesets to Highsmith’s reputation as ‘the poet of apprehension’ Graham Greene.

Edith’s Diary

As Edith Howland’s life becomes harsh, her diary entries only become brighter and brighter. She invents a happy life. As she knits for imaginary grandchildren, the real world recedes. Her descent into madness is subtle, appalling, and entirely believable.

People Who Knock on the Door

With the savage humor of Evelyn Waugh and the macabre sensibility of Edgar Allan Poe, Patricia Highsmith brought a distinct twentieth century acuteness to her prolific body of fiction. In her more than twenty novels, psychopaths lie in wait amid the milieu of the mundane, in the neighbor clipping the hedges or the spouse asleep next to you at night.

Now, Norton continues the revival of this noir genius with another of her lost masterpieces: a later work from 1983, People Who Knock on the Door, is a tale about blind faith and the slippery notion of justice that lies beneath the peculiarly American veneer of righteousness. This novel, out of print for years, again attests to Highsmith’s reputation as ‘the poet of apprehension’ Graham Greene.

Found in the Street

When Ralph Linderman returns a stranger’s wallet he found during a morning stroll through Greenwich Village, he is entirely unprepared for the complex maze of sexual obsession and disturbing psychological intrigue he is about to be drawn into. Patricia Highsmith, author of The Tremor of Forgery, Strangers on a Train, and The Cry of the Owl has once again created an unsettling thriller that explores the bleakest alleyways of human desire. Highsmith has been called one of the finest crime novelists by the New York Times and is now considered one of the most original voices in twentieth century American fiction.

Small g

Published for the first time in America a kinky, charming tale of love misdirected. Completed just months before Patricia Highsmith’s death in 1995, Small g explores the labyrinthine intricacies of love, sexuality, and jealousy in a style and form few knew were part of her range. The story opens in Zurich with the brutal murder of Petey Ritter. We then jump six months ahead to Jakob’s, a louche bar known for its mixture of gay, straight, and bisexual clientele, where Petey’s lover Rickie is recovering slowly, spending time at the bar with his dancing dog, Lulu. They share Jakob’s with the club footed Renate, a possessive seamstress, and her beautiful apprentice Luisa. Then the impressionable and beautiful Teddie Stevenson arrives. Luisa and Rickie both fall in love with him but Renate and her henchman Willi conspire to break Teddie’s spell by force. Renate in turn becomes the subject of a counterconspiracy hatched by Rickie and Luisa, with hilarious and unexpected results.

Nothing That Meets the Eye

‘Highsmith is no more a practitioner of the murder mystery genre…
than are Doestoevsky, Faulkner and Camus.’ Joan Smith, Los Angeles TimesThe Patricia Highsmith renaissance continues with Nothing That Meets the Eye, a brilliant collection of twenty eight psychologically penetrating stories, a great majority of which are published for the first time in this collection. This volume spans almost fifty years of Highsmith’s career and establishes her as a permanent member of our American literary canon, as attested by recent publication of two of these stories in The New Yorker and Harper’s. The stories assembled in Nothing That Meets the Eye, written between 1938 and 1982, are vintage Highsmith: a gigolo like psychopath preys on unfulfilled career women; a lonely spinster’s fragile hold on reality is tethered to the bottle; an estranged postal worker invents homicidal fantasies about his coworkers. While some stories anticipate the diabolical narratives of the Ripley novels, others possess a Capra like sweetness that forces us to see the author in a new light. From this new collection, a remarkable portrait of the American psyche at mid century emerges, unforgettably distilled by the inimitable eye of Patricia Highsmith. A New York Times Notable Book and a Washington Post Rave of 2002.

Eleven / The Snail Watcher and Other Stories

From the eerily outlandish to the dark and brutal, Eleven presents a gallery of bizarre characters, each driven by strange unspoken urges, whose cumulative effect is at least as unsettling as any of Highsmith’s previous novels.

Little Tales of Misogyny

Long out of print, this Highsmith classic resurfaces with a vengeance. The great revival of interest in Patricia Highsmith continues with the publication of this legendary, cultish short story collection. With an eerie simplicity of style, Highsmith turns our next door neighbors into sad*istic psychopaths, lying in wait among white picket fences and manicured lawns. In the darkly satiric, often mordantly hilarious sketches that make up Little Tales of Misogyny, Highsmith upsets our conventional notions of female character, revealing the devastating power of these once familiar creatures ‘The Dancer,’ ‘The Female Novelist,’ ‘The Prude’ who destroy both themselves and the men around them. This work attesets to Highsmith’s reputation as ‘the poet of apprehension’ Graham Greene.

The Animal-Lover’s Book of Beastly Murder

Following the national bestseller Selected Stories, this fall brings the republication of a gripping Highsmith classic.

Stories from The Animal Lover’s Book of Beastly Murder portray, with incisive humor, the murderously competitive desires of our most trusted companions. In this satirical reprise of Kafka, cats, dogs, and the occasional cockroach are no longer benign elements of a happy home but actually have the power to destroy it.

Slowly, Slowly in the Wind

‘Highsmith’s writing is wicked…
it puts a spell on you, after which you feel altered, even tainted.’ Entertainment Weekly With Norton’s publication of Slowly, Slowly in the Wind, Patricia Highsmith’s entire body of work is now back in print. First published in 1979, this volume is one of Highsmith’s most nuanced and psychologically suspenseful works. Slowly, Slowly in the Wind gathers stories that explore the hypocrisies of the Catholic Church, the writing life, Poe like horror fantasies, and more. This collection is a perfect example of Highsmith’s view of human nature and a fitting capstone to the reintroduction of one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers.

The Black House

‘Highsmith’s writing is wicked…
it puts a spell on you, after which you feel altered, even tainted.’ Entertainment Weekly With Norton’s publication of The Black House, Patricia Highsmith’s entire body of work is now back in print. First published in 1981, this volume is one of Highsmith’s most nuanced and psychologically suspenseful works. The stories in and The Black House mine classic Highsmith terrain as they sketch the lives of suburban dwellers that appear quite normal at first but unravel to reveal their proximity to the macabre. This collection is a perfect example of Highsmith’s view of human nature and a fitting capstone to the reintroduction of one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers.

Mermaids on the Golf Course

The great revival of interest in Patricia Highsmith continues with this work that reveals the chilling reality behind the idyllic facade of American suburban life. The stories collected in Mermaids on the Golf Course are among Highsmith’s most mature, psychologically penetrating works. As in the title story, in which a man’s brush with death endows his everyday desires with tragic consequences, the warm familiarities of middle class life become the eerie setting for Highsmith’s chilling portrayals of violence, secrecy, and madness.

Tales of Natural and Unnatural Catastrophes

A brilliant collection of stories, based on natural and unnatural catastrophes and exploring the macabre and its meaning. The stories range from midnight revelling in an East Austrian cemetery to a picnic for ‘crackpots’ on the White House lawn. They also include the source of the tell tale smells of Nabuti, the unsporting hiding place chosen by the Nuclear Control Committee for radio active waste, and the crumbling defence tactics of a luxury high rise against a crawling army that fumigation cannot kill. Other tales tell of how magic and horror stories followed in the wake of a furious whale, how miracle and revolution were launched when a Pope stubbed his toe, and how happiness came to a woman who thought she was Cleopatra.

The Selected Stories of Patricia Highsmith

The Selected Stories of Patricia Highsmith presents five of Highsmith’s classic short story collections in a single masterful volume. Compelling, twisted, and fiercely intelligent, this landmark collection showcases Highsmith’s mastery of the short story form. In a cruel twist of irony, Texas born Patricia Highsmith 1921 1995 is being recognized only after her death for her inestimable genius in her native land. With the savage humor of Waugh and the macabre sensibility of Poe, she brought a distinctly contemporary acuteness to her prolific body of noir fiction. Including over 60 short stories written throughout her career, collected together for the first time, The Selected Stories reveals the stunning versatility and terrifying power of Highsmith’s work. These stories highlight the remarkable range of Highsmith’s powers her unique ability to quickly, almost imperceptibly, draw out the mystery and strangeness of her subject, which appears achingly ordinary to our naked eye. Whether writing about jaded wives or household pets, Highsmith continually upsets our expectations and presents a world frighteningly familiar to our own, where danger lurks around every turn. Stories from The Animal Lovers Book of Beastly Murders portray, with incisive humor, the murderously competitive desires of our most trusted companions. In this viciously satirical reprise of Kafka, cats, dogs, and cockroaches are no longer necessary aspects of a happy home but actually have the power to destroy it. In the short sketches that make up the Little Tales of Misogyny, Highsmith rediscovers predictable female characters ‘The Dancer,’ ‘The Female Novelist,’ ‘The Prude’ and, through scathing humor, invests them with uniquely destructive powers. As a writer, Highsmith was all too well aware of the stolid patriarchal conventions that ruled her day her publisher rejected her second book out of hand because of its homosexual content. She is not a polemicist, but, as stories like ‘Oona the Jolly Cave Woman’ and ‘The Mobile Bed Object’ reveal, her bizarre, haunting fiction continually betrays the inadequacy of our conventional understanding of female character. Highsmith eventually moved away from these coolly satiric, darkly comic exercises, and in her later collections, The Black House, Slowly, Slowly in the Wind, and Mermaids on the Golf Course, she uses the warm familiarities of middle class life the manicured lawns, the cozy uptown apartments, the local pubs as the backbone for her chilling portrayals. ‘The Black House,’ for instance, explores the small town male camaraderie and the destructive secret it masks: in this world, the fact that everyone knows your name is more likely a curse than a blessing. In the title story of the final collection presented here, ‘Mermaids on a Golf Course,’ a man’s extraordinary brush with death endows his everyday desires with fantastically devastating consequences. In her later work, Highsmith adds a dimension of penetrating psychological insight, evoked most vividly in stories like ‘A Curious Suicide’ and ‘The Stuff of Madness,’ where the precarious line between fantasy and reality is blurred and we experience the terrifying possibility of slipping between them. Great writers view the world askew, and in their art they reflect our world back to us, slightly distorted. The Selected Stories reveals Highsmith’s deft and exacting style, her incisive satirical intelligence, and her faultless eye for depicting the inner tremblings of human character. Her world remains all the more frightening because we recognize it as our own.

Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction

Patricia Highsmith, author of Strangers On a Train, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Found In The Street, and many other books, is known as one of the finest suspense novelists. In this book, she analyzes the key elements of suspense fiction, drawing upon her own experience in four decades as a working writer. She talks about, among other topics; how to develop a complete story from an idea; what makes a plot gripping; the use and abuse of coincidence; characterization and the ‘likeable criminal’; going from first draft to final draft; and writing the suspense short story. Throughout the book, Highsmith illustrates her points with plentiful examples from her own work, and by discussing her own inspirations, false starts, dead ends, successes, and failures, she presents a lively and highly readable picture of the novelist at work. Anyone who wishes to write crime and suspense fiction, or who enjoys reading it, will find this book an insightful guide to the craft and art of a modern master.

Mystery Cats 3: More Feline Felonies

A collection of feline mystery fables features Lilian Jackson Braun’s clever Siamese, Phut Phat; Edward D. Hoch’s sacred cat with cold ruby eyes; and Patricia Highsmith’s mysterious feline creature that serves as one couple’s conscience.

A Century of Great Suspense Stories

New York Times bestselling author Jeffery Deaver’s enviable task? Choose the best mystery/horror detective stories from a century of work by the world’s most celebrated writers. The result is a triumph, featuring masterpieces of suspense by: Robert Bernard Robert Bloch Lawrence Block Anthony Boucher Frederic Brown James M. Cain Max Allan Collins Jeffery Deaver Stanley Ellin Harlan Ellison Erle Stanley Gardner Ed Gorman Anna Katharine Green Jeremiah Healy Patricia Highsmith Reginald Hill Tony Hillerman Evan Hunter Stephen King John Lutz John D. MacDonald Ross MacDonald Michael Malone Steve Martini Sharyn McCrumb Margaret Millar Marcia Muller Sara Paretsky Bill Pronzini Ellery Queen Ruth Rendell Lisa Scottoline Georges Simenon Mickey Spillane Rex Stout Janwillem van de Wetering Donald E. Westlake

Crime Never Pays

A selection of short stories in the Bookworm Collection series. The texts are neither graded nor adapted, and each book contains biographical information about the authors, notes on the texts, and language activities.

A New Omnibus of Crime

This fantastic new collection picks up where Dorothy L. Sayers’ landmark 1929 anthology The Omnibus of Crime left off, bringing together monumental, important, and entertaining works of short crime fiction published over eight decades from the era of the Great Depression to the first years of the twenty first century.
In lively introductory essays, celebrated crime writer Tony Hillerman and critic Rosemary Herbert place each story in the context of the author’s work and the genre’s literary history. Their extraordinary collection is international in scope and emphasizes the most exciting styles and voices, rather than taking a typical decade by decade approach. As a result A New Omnibus of Crime is packed with page turning, engaging, and spine tingling selections. Stories in this collection include Patricia Highsmith’s ‘Woodrow Wilson’s Necktie,’ Sue Grafton’s ‘A Poison That Leaves No Trace,’ and many more, including never before published works from Jefferey Deaver, Catherine Aird, and Alexander McCall Smith.
A New Omnibus of Crime is a marvelous achievement that brings together some of the greatest crime and mystery short fiction ever collected. Showcasing the work of such revered authors as Dashiell Hammett, P.D James, Ross Macdonald, Sara Paretsky, Ruth Rendell, and Elmore Leonard, it is a definitive volume that will be treasured by all fans of the genre.

Related Authors

Leave a Comment