Ruth Rendell Books In Order

Inspector Wexford Books In Publication Order

  1. From Doon With Death (1964)
  2. Sins of the Fathers / A New Lease of Death (1967)
  3. Wolf to the Slaughter (1967)
  4. The Best Man to Die (1969)
  5. A Guilty Thing Surprised (1970)
  6. No More Dying Then (1971)
  7. Murder Being Once Done (1972)
  8. Some Lie and Some Die (1973)
  9. Shake Hands Forever (1975)
  10. A Sleeping Life (1978)
  11. Death Notes / Put On By Cunning (1981)
  12. Speaker of Mandarin (1983)
  13. An Unkindness of Ravens (1985)
  14. The Veiled One (1988)
  15. Kissing the Gunner’s Daughter (1992)
  16. Simisola (1994)
  17. Road Rage (1997)
  18. Harm Done (1999)
  19. The Babes in the Wood (2002)
  20. End in Tears (2005)
  21. Not in the Flesh (2007)
  22. The Monster in the Box (2009)
  23. The Vault (2011)
  24. No Man’s Nightingale (2013)

Inspector Wexford Collections Books In Publication Order

  1. Means of Evil (1979)

Standalone Novels In Publication Order

  1. To Fear a Painted Devil (1965)
  2. Vanity Dies Hard (1966)
  3. The Secret House Of Death (1968)
  4. One Across, Two Down (1971)
  5. The Face of Trespass (1974)
  6. A Demon in My View (1976)
  7. A Judgement in Stone (1977)
  8. Make Death Love Me (1979)
  9. The Lake of Darkness (1980)
  10. Master of the Moor (1982)
  11. The Killing Doll (1984)
  12. The Tree of Hands (1984)
  13. Live Flesh (1986)
  14. A Dark-Adapted Eye (As: Barbara Vine) (1986)
  15. Talking to Strange Men (1987)
  16. A Fatal Inversion (As: Barbara Vine) (1987)
  17. The House of Stairs (As: Barbara Vine) (1988)
  18. The Bridesmaid (1989)
  19. Going Wrong (1990)
  20. Gallowglass (As: Barbara Vine) (1990)
  21. King Solomon’s Carpet (As: Barbara Vine) (1991)
  22. The Crocodile Bird (1993)
  23. Asta’s Book (As: Barbara Vine) (1993)
  24. No Night Is Too Long (As: Barbara Vine) (1994)
  25. The Brimstone Wedding (As: Barbara Vine) (1995)
  26. The Keys to the Street (1996)
  27. A Sight for Sore Eyes (1998)
  28. The Chimney Sweeper’s Boy (As: Barbara Vine) (1998)
  29. Grasshopper (As: Barbara Vine) (2000)
  30. Adam and Eve and Pinch Me (2001)
  31. The Blood Doctor (As: Barbara Vine) (2002)
  32. The Rottweiler (2003)
  33. 13 Steps Down (2004)
  34. Minotaur (As: Barbara Vine) (2005)
  35. The Water’s Lovely (2006)
  36. Portobello (2008)
  37. Birthday Present (As: Barbara Vine) (2008)
  38. Tigerlily’s Orchids (2010)
  39. The Saint Zita Society (2012)
  40. The Child’s Child (As: Barbara Vine) (2012)
  41. The Girl Next Door (2014)
  42. Dark Corners (2015)

Short Stories/Novellas In Publication Order

  1. Heartstones (1987)
  2. Thornapple (2000)
  3. The Thief (2005)

Short Story Collections In Publication Order

  1. The Fallen Curtain (1976)
  2. The Fever Tree (1982)
  3. The New Girlfriend (1985)
  4. Collected Short Stories (1989)
  5. The Copper Peacock and Other Stories (1991)
  6. Blood Lines (1995)
  7. Piranha to Scurfy (2000)
  8. Ruth Rendell: Short Stories (2006)
  9. Collected Stories Vol 1 (2006)
  10. A Spot of Folly (2017)

Children’s Books In Publication Order

  1. Archie and Archie (2013)

Non-Fiction Books In Publication Order

  1. Ruth Rendell’s Suffolk (1992)
  2. The Reason Why (1995)

World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories Books In Publication Order

  1. The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories 1 (2000)
  2. The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories 2 (2000)
  3. The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories 3 (2002)
  4. The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories 4 (2003)
  5. The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories 5 (2004)

Anthologies In Publication Order

  1. The Web She Weaves (1983)
  2. Mystery Cats (1991)
  3. 1st Culprit (1992)
  4. Women of Mystery (1992)
  5. The Year’s 25 Finest Crime and Mystery Stories (1992)
  6. 3rd Culprit (1994)
  7. Tales of Obsession (1994)
  8. Murder by the Book (1996)
  9. Win, Lose or Die (1996)
  10. Crime After Crime (1999)
  11. Crime Never Pays (2001)
  12. The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories 3 (2002)
  13. Unforgettable Ghost Stories by Women Writers (2008)

Inspector Wexford Book Covers

Inspector Wexford Collections Book Covers

Standalone Novels Book Covers

Short Stories/Novellas Book Covers

Short Story Collections Book Covers

Children’s Book Covers

Non-Fiction Book Covers

World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories Book Covers

Anthologies Book Covers

Ruth Rendell Books Overview

From Doon With Death

Dazzling psychological suspense. Razor sharp dialogue. Plots that catch and hold like a noose. These are the hallmarks of crime legend Ruth Rendell, the best mystery writer in the English speaking world Time magazine. From Doon With Death, now in a striking new paperback edition, is her classic debut novel and the book that introduced one of the most popular sleuths of the twentieth century. There is nothing extraordinary about Margaret Parsons, a timid housewife in the quiet town of Kingsmarkham, a woman devoted to her garden, her kitchen, her husband. Except that Margaret Parsons is dead, brutally strangled, her body abandoned in the nearby woods. Who would kill someone with nothing to hide? Inspector Wexford, the formidable chief of police, feels baffled until he discovers Margaret’s dark secret: a trove of rare books, each volume breathlessly inscribed by a passionate lover identified only as Doon. As Wexford delves deeper into both Mrs. Parsons past and the wary community circling round her memory like wolves, the case builds with relentless momentum to a surprise finale as clever as it is blindsiding. In From Doon With Death, Ruth Rendell instantly mastered the form that would become synonymous with her name. Chilling, richly characterized, and ingeniously constructed, this is psychological suspense at its very finest. One of the most remarkable novelists of her generation. People She has transcended her genre by her remarkable imaginative power to explore and illuminate the dark corners of the human psyche. P.D. James

Sins of the Fathers / A New Lease of Death

It was a brutal, vicious crime sixteen years old. A helpless old woman battered to death with an axe. Harry Painter hung for it, and Chief Inspector Wexford is certain they executed the right man. But Reverend Archery has doubts…
because his son wants to marry the murderer’s beautiful, brilliant daughter. He begins unravelling the past, only to discover that murder breeds murder and often conceals even deeper secrets…

Wolf to the Slaughter

It was better than a hotel, this anonymous room on a secluded side street of a small country town. No register to sign, no questions asked, and for five bucks a man could have three hours of undisturbed, illicit lovemaking. Then one evening a man with a knife turned the love nest into a death chamber. The carpet was soaked with blood but where was the corpse?Meanwhile, a beautiful, promiscuous woman is missing along with the bundle of cash she’d had in her pocket. The truth behind it all will keep even veteran mystery fans guessing through the very last page. From the Paperback edition.

The Best Man to Die

Chief Inspector Wexford wondered why the fatal Fanshawe car accident kept upsetting his concentration on the Hatton Murder. There couldn t be a connection. Fanshawe had been a wealthy stockbroker; Charlie Hatton had been a cocky little lorry driver with some illegal dealing. He had driven his lorry down from Leeds to be best man at his friend’s wedding. But was it just coincidence that Hatton had been killed on the day following that of Mrs. Fanshawe s regaining consciousness?

A Guilty Thing Surprised

Elizabeth Nightingale found peace and tranquility on her nightly walks through the rich, dense forests surrounding Myfleet Manor. But the peace she treasured was shattered one night when she found death waiting in the woods. Chief Inspector Wexford and his colleague Inspector Burden find a most unsavory case on their hands and must use all their wit and wisdom to solve it…

No More Dying Then

What kind of a person would kidnap two children?That is the question that haunts Wexford when a five year old boy and a twelve year old girl disappear from the village of Kingsmarkham. When a child’s body turns up at an abandoned country home one search turns into a murder investigation and the other turns into a race against time. Filled with pathos and terror, passion, bitterness, and loss, No More Dying Then is Rendell at her most chillingly astute. With her Inspector Wexford novels, Ruth Rendell, winner of the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award, has added layers of depth, realism and unease to the classic English mystery. For the canny, tireless, and unflappable policeman is an unblinking observer of human nature, whose study has taught him that under certain circumstances the most unlikely people are capable of the most appalling crimes. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Murder Being Once Done

A young girl is murdered in a cemetery. And Wexford’s doctor has prescribed no alcohol, no rich food and, above all, no police work. When a young girl’s body is found in a London cemetery and the local police, under the command of Wexford’s nephew, are baffled, Wexford decides to brave his doctor’s wrath and the condescension of the London police by doing a little investigating of his own. A compelling story of mysterious identity and untimely death, Murder Being Once Done is Rendell at her most sublime. With her Inspector Wexford novels, Ruth Rendell, winner of the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award, has added layers of depth, realism and unease to the classic English mystery. For the canny, tireless, and unflappable policeman is an unblinking observer of human nature, whose study has taught him that under certain circumstances the most unlikely people are capable of the most appalling crimes.

Some Lie and Some Die

A mutilated body found at a rock festival. In spite of dire predictions, the rock festival in Kingsmarkham seemed to be going off without a hitch, until the hideously disfigured body is discovered in a nearby quarry. And soon Wexford is investigating the links between a local girl gone bad and a charismatic singer who inspires an unwholesome devotion in his followers. Some Lie and Some Die is a devilishly absorbing novel, in which Wexford’s deductive powers come up against the aloof arrogance of pop stardom. With her Inspector Wexford novels, Ruth Rendell, winner of the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award, has added layers of depth, realism and unease to the classic English mystery. For the canny, tireless, and unflappable policeman is an unblinking observer of human nature, whose study has taught him that under certain circumstances the most unlikely people are capable of the most appalling crimes.

Shake Hands Forever

The bed was neatly made, and the woman on top neatly strangled. According to all accounts, Angela Hathall was deeply in love with her husband and far too paranoid to invite an unknown person into their home. So who managed to gain entry and strangle her without a struggle? That is the problem facing Inspector Wexford in Shake Hands Forever. Perhaps it was the mystery woman who left her fingerprints on the Hathall’s bathtub? Perhaps it was Angela’s husband who lied about a stolen library book? And why was the Hathall home, usually so unkempt, exqisitely clean the day of Angela’s death? Then a neighbor friendly, knowing, disarmingly beautiful offers Wexford her assistance. And what begins as a rather tricky case turns into an obsession that threatens to destroy the Inspector’s career as well as his marriage. Maddeningly addictive, smart and surprising, Shake Hands Forever showcases Ruth Rendell at the height of her storytelling powers.

A Sleeping Life

Rhoda Comfrey’s death seemed unremarkable; the real mystery was her life. In A Sleeping Life, master mystery writer Ruth Rendell unveils an elaborate web of lies and deception painstakingly maintained by a troubled soul. A wallet found in Comfrey’s handbag leads Inspector Wexford to Mr. Grenville West, a writer whose plots revel in the blood, thunder, and passion of dramas of old; whose current whereabouts are unclear; and whose curious secretary the plain Polly Flinders provides the Inspector with more questions than answers. And when a second Grenville West comes to light, Wexford faces a dizzying array of possible scenarios and suspects behind the Comfrey murder. Brilliantly entertaining, exceptionally crafted, A Sleeping Life evokes the dark realities, half truths, and flights of fancy that constitute a life.

Death Notes / Put On By Cunning

Sir Manuel Camargue’s death was ruled Misadventure, yet in spite of himself, Chief Inspector Wexford has niggling doubts. Sir Manuel Camargue, one of the greatest flautists of his time, was dead. An old man, ankle deep in snow, he lost his foothold in the dark, slipping into water to be trapped under a lid of ice. Only a glove remained to point where he lay, one of its fingers pointing up out of the drifts. There’s nothing Chief Inspector Wexford likes better than an open and shut case. They’re so restful. And yet there are one or two niggling doubts and the disturbing return of Camargue’s daughter, now a considerable heiress, after an absence of nineteen years. Is Wexford going to listen to that nagging inner voice of his? And if he does, what exactly does he plan to do?

Speaker of Mandarin

There were some things about Chief Inspector Wexford’s trip to China that he could never have dreamt of. That an old woman would haunt him from one city to the next. That a man would be tragically drowned. Or that, back in England, he would be investigating the murder of one of his fellow tourists.

An Unkindness of Ravens

Detective Chief Inspector Wexford thought he was merely doing a neighbourly good deed when he agreed to talk to Joy Williams about her missing husband. And he certainly didn’t expect to be investigating a most unusual homicide. The author also wrote ‘A Demon in My View’ and ‘The New Girlfriend’.

The Veiled One

Who would garrote a middle aged housewife and leave her body in the parking garage of a suburban shopping mall? Chief Inspector Wexford is no sooner on the case than a car bomb’s explosion lands him in the hospital. It’s now up to Mike Burden to step in and solve the case. He’s got a suspect…
but will he be able to make him talk?

Kissing the Gunner’s Daughter

A bank job goes wrong and a Kingsmarkham detective sergeant is killed. Months later, the Flory family are slaughtered at home by an unknown assassin. The cases seem unrelated. But Chief Inspector Wexford is not so sure. By the author of ‘The Copper Peacock’ and ‘The Bridesmaid’.

Simisola

‘It’s probably nothing,’ says Dr. Akande to Chief Inspector Wexford, who gets his usual chill upon hearing these words. ‘I’m trying in vain to locate my daughter Melanie.’ As Wexford’s investigation of this missing person continues over days and weeks, his professional opinion is that Melanie, in all likelihood, is dead.A murdered woman is found: not Melanie, but the last person known to have seen and spoken to her. A second woman’s body is discovered, again not Melanie’s but, like her, young and black. A third woman turns up beaten and unconscious; like the previous victim, she is of Nigerian origin. That there is a connection is obvious. Exactly what it is that links these women and their misfortunes is the vexing mystery. In one of Ruth Rendell’s most involving, socially perceptive, and ingeniously plotted novels, Chief Inspector Wexford must rid himself of his own outmoded assumptions about relations between races and sexes if he is to uproot the evil growing in the no longer sleepy town of Kingsmarkham.

Road Rage

2 cassettes / 3 hoursRead by Christopher RavenscroftWinner of multiple Edgar and Gold Dagger awards including the most prestigious Edgar of them all, the Grand Master, Ruth Rendell returns with a novel that pits Chief Inspector Wexford against a quite personal foe: the environmental terrorists who kidnap and threaten the lives of five hostages including Wexford’s own wife. As Road Rage begins, Chief Inspector Wexford is walking through Framhurst Great Wood, just outside his beloved town of Kingsmarkham, for what he tells himself will be the last time. He can no longer bear to look at the natural beauty that will soon be despoiled by the construction of a new highway. Wexford rather despairs of the project; his more sanguine wife, Dora, is active on a committee to save the threatened land. Others are more desperate to achieve their end, and their means include the taking of hostages, including Dora, and the threat to begin murdering them. How Wexford and his dedicated team of police officers race against time to learn the identity of the kidnappers and discover the whereabouts of the hostages will rivet readers who delight in following the intricate details of an intensive police investigation. But, as in every Ruth Rendell novel, the mortal drama raises political and moral questions that are not resolved with the closing of the case, and that apply far beyond the limits of Kingsmarkham.

Harm Done

The search for the body commenced. Then the victim walked into town. Behind the picture postcard fa ade of Kingsmarkham lies a community rife with violence, betrayal, and a taste for vengeance. When sixteen year old Lizzie Cromwell reappears no one knows where she has been, including Lizzie herself. Inspector Wexford thinks she was with a boyfriend. But the disappearance of a three year old girl casts a more ominous light on events. And when the public’s outrage turns toward a recently released pederast and another suspect turns up stabbed to death, Wexford must try to unravel the mystery before any more bodies appear, and before a mob of local vigilantes metes out a rough justice to their least favorite suspect. In Harm Done, the violence is near at hand, and evil lies just a few doors down the block.

The Babes in the Wood

‘I’ve just heard a crazy thing, thought it might amuse you. You look as though you need cheering up.’ Burden seated himself on the corner of the desk, a favourite perch. Wexford thought he was thinner than ever. ‘Woman phoned to say she and her husband went to Paris for the weekend, leaving their children with a well, teen sitter, I suppose, got back last night to find the lot gone and naturally she assumes they’ve all drowned.’ ‘That’s amusing?’ ‘It’s pretty bizarre, isn’t it? The teenagers are fifteen and thirteen, the sitter’s in her thirties, they can all swim and the house is miles above the floods.’ There hadn’t been anything like this kind of rain in living memory. The River Brede had burst its banks, and not a single house in the valley had escaped flooding. Even where Wexford lived, higher up in Kingsmarkham, the waters had nearly reached the mulberry tree in his once immaculate garden. The Subaqua Task Force could find no trace of Giles and Sophie Dade, let alone the woman who was keeping them company, Joanna Troy. But Mrs Dade was still convinced her children were dead. This was an investigation which would call into question many of Wexford’s assumptions about the way people behaved, including his own family…

End in Tears

At first there was no reason to link the killings. The first one, months earlier, seemed totally random: a lump of concrete pushed off an overpass onto a passing car. By contrast, the gruesome bludgeoning death of Amber Marshalson, returning home late from a night out clubbing with friends, was obviously calculated. The killer had been seen waiting for the girl in a nearby wood. But when Chief Inspector Wexford discovers that Amber had been the driver right behind the crushed car and that she d been driving a silver Honda, while the car in front of her was a gray Honda he knows that someone wanted the teenager dead badly enough to kill twice to get the job done. And as it turns out, this murderer’s plans are only just getting underway. Can Wexford unravel the complex knots that connect these murders in time to save future victims? Or is he, as he begins to fear, losing his touch and fast becoming a relic of another time?Long beloved by readers for her deft weaving of wonderfully meticulous characterization, dark humor, and trenchant social commentary into gripping and fast paced plots, Ruth Rendell is in top form with End in Tears. Taking off from the first page with back to back murders and ending with one of Wexford s own officers in mortal danger, End in Tears touches on issues of class, race, parenthood, aging, and gender roles as it brings the traditional British whodunit into the twenty first century. Also available as a Random House AudioBook, Large Print edition, and eBook

Not in the Flesh

A new Chief Inspector Wexford mystery from the author who Time magazine has called the best mystery writer in the English speaking world.

When the truffle hunting dog starts to dig furiously, his master’s first reaction is delight at the size of the clump the dog has unearthed: at the going rate, this one truffle might be worth several hundred pounds. Then the dirt falls away to reveal not a precious mushroom but the bones and tendons of what is clearly a human hand.

In Not in the Flesh, Chief Inspector Wexford tries to piece together events that took place eleven years earlier, a time when someone was secretly interred in a secluded patch of English countryside. Now Wexford and his team will need to interrogate everyone who lives nearby to see if they can turn up a match for the dead man among the eighty five people in this part of England who have disappeared over the past decade. Then, when a second body is discovered nearby, Wexford experiences a feeling that s become a rarity for the veteran policeman: surprise.

As Wexford painstakingly moves to resolve these multiple mysteries, long buried secrets are brought to daylight, and Ruth Rendell once again proves why she has been hailed as our greatest living mystery writer.

From the Hardcover edition.

The Monster in the Box

Inspector Wexford returns in his most surprising case yet’He had never told anyone. The strange relationship, if it could be called that, had gone on for years, decades, and he had never breathed a word about it. He had kept silent because he knew no one would believe him. None of it could be proved, not the stalking, not the stares or the conspiratorial smiles, not the killings, not any of the signs Targo had made because he knew Wexford knew and could do nothing about it.’Wexford had almost made up his mind that he would never again set eyes on Eric Targo’s short, muscular figure. And yet there he was, back in Kingsmarkham, still with that cocky, strutting walk. Years earlier, when Wexford was a young police officer, a woman called Elsie Carroll had been found strangled in her bedroom. Although many still had their suspicions that her husband was guilty, no one was convicted. Another woman was strangled shortly afterwards, and every personal and professional instinct told Wexford that the killer was still at large. And it was Eric Targo. A psychopath who would kill again…
As the Chief Inspector investigates a new case, Ruth Rendell looks back to the beginning of Wexford’s career, even to his courtship of the woman who would become his wife. The past is a haunted place, with clues and passions that leave an indelible imprint on the here and now.

The Vault

Wessex is retired or would be, if murder and danger would only leave him alone. The impossible has happened. Chief Inspector Reg Wexford has retired. He and his wife now divide their time between Kingsmarkham and a coachhouse in Hampstead belonging to their actress daughter, Sheila. For all the benefits of a more relaxed way of life, Wexford misses being the law. But a chance meeting in a London street, with someone he had known briefly as a very young police constable, changes everything. Tom Ede is now a Detective Superintendent, and is very keen to recruit Wexford as an adviser on a difficult case. The bodies of two women and a man have been discovered in the old coal hole of an attractive house in St John’s Wood. None carries identification. But the man’s jacket pockets contain a string of pearls, a diamond and a sapphire necklace as well as other jewellery valued in the region of 40,000. Wexford is intrigued and excited by the challenge until this new investigative role brings him into serious physical danger.

Means of Evil

Here are five classic Wexford cases that display his remarkable ingenuity and that of his creator. Ranging from the more everyday crimes of passion and violence in quiet Kingsmarkham, to a bizarre murder in Yugoslavia, each is a case which challenges Detective Chief Inspector Wexford’s considerable imagination and resourcefulness, and the patient reasoning of the long suffering Burden.

To Fear a Painted Devil

Gossip in tiny Linchester is raised to new heights when young Patrick Selby dies on the night of his beautiful wife’s birthday party. The whole neighborhood was there, witness to the horrible attack of wasps Peter suffered at the end of the evening. But did Peter die of the stings? Dr. Greenleaf thinks not. After all, wasps aren’t the only creatures that kill with poison…

Vanity Dies Hard

Wealthy Alice Whittaker now Alice Fielding is known for her generosity, and when her friend Nesta vanishes Alice is determined to find her and help her. If that means money, well, Alice has plenty of it. Then Alice starts to feel sick a virus perhaps, something she just can’t shake. Her handsome husband, who is ten years younger than she is, seems determined to keep her at home. Does he just want her to feel better? Or is he trying to keep her from finding Nesta?Ill though she is, Alice can’t help asking questions. And the more she learns about Nesta’s disappearance, the more certain she becomes that her own life is in peril…
.

The Secret House Of Death

Louise North doesn’t care what the neighbors think. She lets her lover leave his car just outside her house in broad daylight, telling everyone a cockamamie story about him being a central heating salesman. Still, it’s a shock when she’s found shot dead, covered by the equally dead body of the ‘salesman.’ Now Susan Townsend — the Norths’ next-door neighbor, who discovers the bodies — must help Louise’s husband, Bob, get back on his feet. But is she helping a neighbor…
or a murderer?

One Across, Two Down

Two things interest Stanley Manning: crossword puzzles, and the substantial sum his wife Vera stands to inherit when his mother in law dies. Otherwise, life at 61 Lanchester Road is a living hell. For Mrs. Kinaway lives with them now and she will stop at nothing to tear their marriage apart. One afternoon, Stanley sets aside his crossword puzzles and changes all their lives forever…
In One Across, Two Down, master crime writer Ruth Rendell describes a man whose strained sanity and stained reputation transform him from a witless loser into a killer afraid of his own shadow. Mischievously plotted, smart, maddeningly entertaining, One Across, Two Down is a dark delight classic Rendell.

The Face of Trespass

He had been a promising young novelist when he met Drusilla. Their affair was now over, but the slide into violence had just begun.

A Demon in My View

She waits for him in the dark, her mind and body perfect, passive, until one day, when he goes to the cellar, and she is gone…
In A Demon in My View, Ruth Rendell creates a character as frightening as he is fascinating. Mild mannered Arthur Johnson has never known how to talk to women. And his loneliness has perverted his desire for love and respect into a carefully controlled penchant for violence. One floor below him, a scholar finishing his thesis on psychopathic personalities is about to stumble quite literally upon one of Arthur’s many secrets. Haunting and intelligent, A Demon in My View shows the startling results of this chilling alchemy of two very disparate minds one pathological and the other obsessed with pathology.

A Judgement in Stone

What on earth could have provoked a modern day St. Valentine’s Day massacre?On Valentine’s Day, four members of the Coverdale family George, Jacqueline, Melinda and Giles were murdered in the space of 15 minutes. Their housekeeper, Eunice Parchman, shot them, one by one, in the blue light of a televised performance of Don Giovanni. When Detective Chief Superintendent William Vetch arrests Miss Parchman two weeks later, he discovers a second tragedy: the key to the Valentine’s Day massacre hidden within a private humiliation Eunice Parchman has guarded all her life. A brilliant rendering of character, motive, and the heady discovery of truth, A Judgement in Stone is among Ruth Rendell’s finest psychological thrillers.

Make Death Love Me

Alan Groombridge had a fantasy. Bored with his life, he dreamed of stealing enough money from the bank he worked in to allow him just one year of happiness. But when the bank is robbed, Groombridge is caught up in a nightmare.

The Lake of Darkness

Martin Urban is a quiet bachelor with a comfortable life, free of worry and distractions. When he unexpectedly comes into a small fortune, he decides to use his newfound wealth to help out those in need. Finn also leads a quiet life, and comes into a little money of his own. Normally, their paths would never have crossed. But Martin’s ideas about who should benefit from his charitable impulses yield some unexpected results, and soon the good intentions of the one become fatally entangled with the mercenary nature of the other. In The Lake of Darkness, Ruth Rendell takes the old adage that no good deed goes unpunished to a startling, haunting conclusion.

Master of the Moor

The bleak expanse of Vangmoor lay in the middle of England, honeycombed with abandoned mines and dominated by hills. To Stephen Whalby, Master of the Moor, it was home. When he finds the body of a woman, he immediately reports it to the police, but is disturbed to find himself a suspect. Little did Stephen and the police know that there would be more horror before the moor would reveal its haunting secret…

The Killing Doll

In a shabby London suburb, sixteen year old Pup Yearman dabbles in magic. But for Pup’s older sister Dolly, the magic is more than dabbling. Deformed by a facial birthmark, Dolly desperately wants to be cured, and her obsession with Pup’s magic sends her on a dangerous downward spiral into confusion, madness, and possibly murder. And meanwhile, in a squalid boardinghouse not far away, a young Irishman sharpens a set of butcher knives…

The Tree of Hands

Mopsa, driven by a past scarred by madness and violence. Benet, stricken by the most grievous loss any woman can bear. Carol, trapped in a life of crushing drabness no lover can change. Three mothers joined by a single thread of terror, whirled into a spiral of kidnapping, murder, and a final, reckless affirmation of love.

Live Flesh

After ten years in prison for shooting and permanently crippling a young policeman, Victor Jenner is released to a strange new world and told to make a new life for himself. It’s hard to fill the days, but at least there’s one blessing he was never convicted for all those rapes he committed. Then Victor meets David, the policeman he shot all those years ago, and David’s beautiful girlfriend, Clare. And suddenly Victor’s new life is starting to look an awful lot like the old one…

A Dark-Adapted Eye (As: Barbara Vine)

Like most families they had their secrets. And they hid them under a genteelly respectable veneer. No onlooker would guess that prim Vera Hillyard and her beautiful, adored younger sister, Eden, were locked in a dark and bitter combat over one of those secrets. England in the fifties was not kind to women who erred, so they had to use every means necessary to keep the truth hidden behind closed doors, even murder. ‘A rich, complex and beautifully crafted novel’ P. D. James.

Talking to Strange Men

A thriller featuring Mungo Cameron, for whom the mysterious world of espionage is his whole existence. From the author of AN UNKINDNESS OF RAVENS, THE VEILED ONE and THE SPEAKER OF MANDARIN.

A Fatal Inversion (As: Barbara Vine)

In the long hot summer of 1976, a group of young people are camping in Wyvis Hall. Adam, Rufus, Shiva, Vivien and Zosie hardly ask why they are there or how they are to live; they scavenge, steal and sell the family heirlooms. In short, they exist. Ten years later, the bodies of a woman and child are discovered in the Hall’s animal cemetery. Which woman? Whose child? ‘I defy anyone to guess the conclusion! The clues are cunningly planted, so that it seems one should have known all along. A most satisfying end’ ‘Daily Telegraph’.

The Bridesmaid

Philip Wardman, an ordinary young man, sports one eccentricity: a neurotic fear of violence and death. Like Ferdinand, he likes to smell the flowers, particularly those in his mother’s garden, where stands a statue of the goddess Flora, who over time has come to represent all the female virtues. Imagine Philip’s consternation when, at his sister’s wedding, he encounters a living incarnation of the marble Flora: Senta Pelham, an actress happily contemptuous of conventional morality. She comes to him that night. But Senta has a dark side. Where death frightens Philip, it fascinates her. She proposes a wicked test: to prove his love he needs to kill.’Vintage Rendell. Shrewd psychological insight, irresistible narrative force…
a true member of that small family of great living authors.’ Scott Turow

Gallowglass (As: Barbara Vine)

When Sandor snatched little Joe from the path of a London Tube train, he was quick to make clear the terms of the rescue. ‘I saved your life,’ he told the homeless youngster, ‘so your life belongs to me now’. Sandor began to tell him a fairy tale: an ageing prince, a kidnapped princess chained by one ankle, a missed rendezvous. But what did this mysterious story have to do with Sandor’s preparations? Joe had only understood his own role: he was a gallowglass, the servant of a Chief…
‘ On one level this is a novel about kidnapping. On another its concerns are obsession, the destructive nature of romantic illusions, and love. As Ms Vine unfolds it nothing is quite what it seems’ ‘Guardian’.

King Solomon’s Carpet (As: Barbara Vine)

Eccentric Jarvis lives in a crumbling schoolhouse overlooking the tube line, compiling his obsessive history of the Underground. A group of misfits are also drawn towards his strange house: Alice, who has run away from her husband and baby; Tom, the busker who rescues her; truant Jasper who finds his terrifying thrills on the tube; and enigmatic Axel, whose deadly secret casts a shadow over all their lives. Damaged, dispossessed, outcasts, they are brought together in violent and unforeseen ways by London’s dark and dangerous underground system.

The Crocodile Bird

The award winning author of Kissing the Gunner’s Daughter creates the story of a mother, a daughter, their obsessive love for each other, and its link to a series of mysterious deaths near a remote English manor.Major Tour.

Asta’s Book (As: Barbara Vine)

Mystery author, Ruth Rendell writing as Barbara Vine evokes the life of Anna, a young Danish immigrant in turn of the century London, as she confides her rebellious thoughts to her diary. Years later Anna’s granddaughter stumbles upon missing portions of the diary that may provide the answer to an unsolved murder: the stabbing of a woman and the disappearance of her daughter. Ricocheting between diary passages and Anne’s search into the lives of her mother and grandmother, the reader learns the truth about the women in Anne’s past. Actress Wanda McCaddon reads this engrossing story within a story. 2 cassettes.

No Night Is Too Long (As: Barbara Vine)

The author of Anna’s Book who was hailed as ‘one of the finest practitioners of her craft in the English speaking world’ by the New York Times Book Review has written a relentlessly compelling tale of sexual obsession, mistaken identity, and murder. Tim thought he’d gotten away with it. For months after the murder off the Alaskan coast he’d heard not a word. No policeman at his door asking questions. Nothing. And then the letters began. At first they seemed almost innocuous accounts of historical events. But a common theme emerged quickly. It was particularly germane to Tim, and it related directly to murder. In No Night Is Too Long, Barbara Vine has written a tour de force, rich in characters and setting, a remarkable novel by an internationally celebrated master of her craft. To research the book, the author and her husband embarked on a boat trip from Seattle up the Alaskan coast. The stark beauty of that experience provides No Night Is Too Long with an extraordinarily vivid sense of place. The novel’s exploration of sexual identity and guilt represents a departure for Vine. Its resolution as always is a stunning surprise.

The Brimstone Wedding (As: Barbara Vine)

Unlike the other residents of Middleton Hall, Stella is elegant, smart and in control. Only her friend Jenny knows that Stella harbors a dark secret, and only she can prevent Stella from carrying it to the grave. Over time, certain questions arise for Jenny: Why has Stella kept possession of a house and the terrible secret that even her family doesn’t know about? And will Jenny be able to persuade Stella to reveal the shocking truth of her past?

The Keys to the Street

Mary Jago had donated her own bone marrow to save the life of someone she didn’t know. And this generous act led directly to the bitter break up of her affair with Alistair. For him, it was as though her beauty had been plundered. But the man whose life she had saved would change Mary’s life in a way she could never have imagined…

A Sight for Sore Eyes

A Sight for Sore Eyes tells three stories, and for the longest time, the reader has no inkling of how they will come together. The first is a story of a little girl who has been scolded and sent to her room when her mother is brutally murdered; as Francine grows up, she is haunted by the experience, and it is years before she even speaks. Secondly, we become privy to the life of a young man, Teddy, born of unthinking young parents, who grows up almost completely ignored. Free of societal mores, he becomes a sociopath, who eventually discovers that killing can be an effective way to get what he wants. Thirdly, we meet Harriet, who from an early age has learned to use her beauty to make her way in the world. Bored by marriage to a wealthy, much older man, she scans the local newspapers for handymen to perform odd jobs around the house, including services in the bedroom. When these three plots strands finally converge, the result is harrowing and unforgettable. A Sight for Sore Eyes is not just the work of a writer at the peak of her craft. It is an extraordinary story by a writer who, after 45 books, countless awards, and decades of international acclaim, is still getting better with every book.

The Chimney Sweeper’s Boy (As: Barbara Vine)

Writing as Barbara Vine, Britain’s preeminent mystery novelist Ruth Rendell crafts literary suspense of the highest order. With this richly textured and utterly absorbing page tumer, Vine adds to her growing reputation as one of the great writers of our time. Bestselling and critically acclaimed novelist Gerald Candless dies suddenly, and leaves behind a wife and two doting daughters. To sort through her grief, his daughter Sarah puts aside her university studies and agrees to write a biography of her famous father. But as she begins her research and pulls back the veil of his past, her life is slowly torn apart: a terrible logic begins to unfold that explains her mother’s remoteness, her father’s need to continually reinvent himself and sheds shocking light on a long forgotten London murder.

Grasshopper (As: Barbara Vine)

They have sent me here because of what happened on the pylon. When Clodagh Brown writes these words at the age of nineteen, she believes that she is leaving behind the traumatic events of her youth. But Clodagh soon learns that you can never entirely escape your past. In the aftermath of the incident on the pylon one of the great electrified structures that dot the English countryside like so many gargantuan grasshoppers Clodagh goes off to university, moves into a baseme*nt flat arranged by her unsympathetic family, and finds freedom trekking across London’s rooftops with a gang of neighborhood misfits. As she begins a thrilling relationship with a fellow climber, however, both Clodagh and the reader are haunted by the memory of the pylon and of the terrible thing that happened there and by the eerie sense that another tragedy is just a footfall away.

Adam and Eve and Pinch Me

Jock Lewis was supposed to have died in that terrible train crash at Paddington. Minty, his girlfriend, received a letter from Great Western telling her so. But, curiously, the police haven t been in touch. And Jock has borrowed all her savings…
Zillah also got a letter from the railway company, informing her that her husband, Jerry Leach, was dead. Something about the letter struck her as suspicious, but she chooses not to mention her doubts to the up and coming Conservative Member of Parliament who has just proposed a marriage of convenience…
Fiona, a successful banker, met Jeff Leigh before the Paddington crash in August. Although he never seemed to have a job, and borrowed money from her, she is utterly devoted to him and can t understand why he suddenly has disappeared…
As this novel gets under way, it is not immediately apparent how the lives of these women might be connected, or how they may figure into a series of vicious stabbing deaths that have shocked and terrified the citizens of London. With consummate skill, Ruth Rendell pulls the colorful strands of this harrowing story ever tighter, increasing the tension page by page.

The Blood Doctor (As: Barbara Vine)

Sometimes it’s best to leave the past alone. For when biographer Martin Nanther looks into the life of his famous great grandfather Henry, Queen Victoria s favorite physician, he discovers some rather unsettling coincidences, like the fact that the doctor married the sister of his recently murdered fianc e. The more Martin researches his distant relative, the more fascinated and horrified he becomes. Why did people have a habit of dying around his great grandfather? And what did his late daughter mean when she wrote that he s done monstrous, quite appalling things ? Barbara Vine a.k.a. Ruth Rendell deftly weaves this story of an eminent Victorian with a modern yarn about the embattled biographer, who is watching the House of Lords prepare to annul membership for hereditary peers and thus strip him of his position. Themes of fate and family snake throughout this teasing psychological suspense, a typically chilling tale from a master of the genre.

The Rottweiler

The first girl had a bite mark on her neck but they traced the DNA to her boyfriend. But the tabloids got hold of the story and called the killer ‘The Rottweiler‘ and the name stuck. The latest murder takes place very near Inez Ferry’s antique shop in Marylebone. Someone saw a shadowy figure running away past the station, but the only other clues are that the murderer usually strangles his victims and removes something personal like a cigarette lighter or a necklace…
Since her husband died, too soon in their relationship, Inez has supplemented her income by taking in tenants. The murderous activities of the sinister ‘Rottweiler’ will exert a profound influence on the lives of this heterogeneous little community, especially when the suspicion emerges that one of them may be a homicidal maniac.

13 Steps Down

From the multi award winning author of The Babes in the Wood and The Rottweiler, a chilling new novel about obsession, superstition, and violence, set in Rendell’s darkly atmospheric London. Mix Cellini which he pronounces with an S rather than a C is superstitious about the number 13. In musty old St. Blaise House, where he is the lodger, there are thirteen steps down to the landing below his rooms, which he keeps spick and span. His elderly landlady, Gwendolen Chawcer, was born in St. Blaise House, and lives her life almost exclusively through her library of books, so cannot see the decay and neglect around her. The Notting Hill neighbourhood has changed radically over the last fifty years, and 10 Rillington Place, where the notorious John Christie committed a series of foul murders, has been torn down. Mix is obsessed with the life of Christie and his small library is composed entirely of books on the subject. He has also developed a passion for a beautiful model who lives nearby a woman who would not look at him twice. Both landlady and lodger inhabit weird worlds of their own. But when reality intrudes into Mix s life, a long pent up violence explodes.

Minotaur (As: Barbara Vine)

Kerstin Kvist didn’t quite know what to expect when she took up a job with the Cosway family at their odd, almost grand home, Lydstep Old Hall, deep in the Essex countryside. The family turned out to be even odder than the house: the widowed Mrs Cosway lived with her three unmarried daughters, in thrall to the old lady. A mysterious fourth daughter a widow herself and apparently quite rich came and went, with ill disguised contempt for the others. More puzzling still was Mrs Cosway’s son, John, a sad, self absorbed figure in his thirties who haunted the house. There’s madness in the family’ offered one of the daughters by way of explanation, but Kerstin had trained as a nurse and knew it wasn’t right to be administering such powerful drugs to a vulnerable figure like John. Barbara Vine’s new book, her twelfth, is compelling in its depiction of the sex, lies and secrets within an apparently respectable family, at a time when the sixties revolution hadn’t quite reached rural England.

The Water’s Lovely

The award winning author of The Babes in the Wood and The Rottweiler brings us another terrifically paced, richly drawn novel of suspense and psychological intrigue. Weeks went by when Ismay never thought of it at all. Then something would bring it back or it would return in a dream. The dream always began in the same way. She and her mother would be climbing the stairs, following Heather’s lead through the bedroom to what was on the other side, not a bathroom in the dream but a chamber floored and walled in marble. In the middle of it was a glassy lake. The white thing in the water floated towards her, its face submerged, and her mother said, absurdly, Don t look! The dead man was Ismay s stepfather, Guy. Now, nine years on, she and her sister, Heather, still live in the same house in Clapham. But it has been divided into two self contained flats. Their mother had lived upstairs with her sister, Pamela. And the bathroom, where Guy had drowned, had disappeared. Ismay worked in public relations, and Heather in catering. They got on well. They always had. They never discussed the changes to the house, still less what had happened that August day…
But even lives as private as these, where secrets hang in the air like dust, intertwine with other worlds and other individuals. And, with painful inevitability, the truth will emerge. From the Hardcover edition.

Portobello

The Portobello area of West London has a rich personality vibrant, brilliant in colour, noisy, with graffiti that approach art, bizarre and splendid. An indefinable edge to it adds a spice of danger. There is nothing safe about Portobello
Eugene Wren inherited an art gallery from his father near an arcade that now sells cashmere, handmade soaps and children’s clothes. But he decided to move to a more upmarket site in Kensington Church Street. Eugene was fifty, with prematurely white hair. He was, perhaps, too secretive for his own good. On a shopping trip one day, Eugene, quite by chance, came across an envelope containing money. He picked it up. For some reason, rather than report the matter to the police, he wrote a note and stuck it up on a lamppost near his house: ”Found in Chepstow Villas, a sum of money between eighty and a hundred and sixty pounds. Anyone who has lost such a sum should apply to the phone number below.’ This note would link the lives of a number of very different people each with their obsessions, problems and dreams and despairs. And through it all the hectic life of Portobello would bustle on.

Birthday Present (As: Barbara Vine)

Ivor Tesham is a handsome, single, young member of Parliament whose political star is on the rise. When he meets a woman in a chance encounter a beautiful, leggy, married woman named Hebe the two become lovers obsessed with their trysts, spiced up by what the newspapers like to call adventure sex.

It’s the dress up and role play that inspire Ivor to create a surprise birthday present for his beloved that involves a curbside kidnapping. It s all intended as mock dangerous foreplay, but then things take a dark turn.

After things go horribly wrong, Ivor begins to receive anonymous letters that reveal astonishingly speci c details about the affair and its aftermath. Somehow he must keep his role from being uncovered and his political future from being destroyed by scandal.

Like a heretic on the inquisitor s rack, Ivor is not to be spared the exquisitely slow and tortuous unfolding of events, as hints, nuances, and small revelations lay his darkest secrets hideously bare for all the world to see.

The Birthday Present is a deft, insightful, and compulsively readable exploration of obsessive desire and the dark twists of fate that can shake the lives of even those most insulated by privilege, sophistication, and power.

Tigerlily’s Orchids

From the incomparable, award winning Ruth Rendell ‘the grand dame of British crime fiction’ The Gazette comes her latest psychological thriller. When Stuart Font decides to throw a house warming party in his new flat he invites everyone in his building. The party will be one everyone remembers. But not for the right reasons…
. Living opposite, in reclusive isolation, is a young, beautiful Asian woman, christened Tigerlily by Stuart. As though from some strange urban fairytale, she emerges to exert a terrible spell on the occupants of Lichfield House.

Heartstones

Sixteen year old Elvira’s mother is dead. Elvira is sad, of course, but not so sad as her younger sister Spinny. Spinny is afraid their father, Luke, will be heartbroken, but Elvira knows better after all, Luke has her to take her mother’s place. But then Luke brings home a pretty young woman and introduces her as his fiancee, and Elvira decides that she will stop at nothing to stop her father’s marriage…

Thornapple

Stories in the Travelman Short Stories series take the reader to places of mystery, fantasy, horror, romance, and corners of the universe yet unexplored. In turn, readers take them on the bus or subway, slip them into briefcases and lunchboxes, and send them from Jersey to Juneau. Each classic or original short story is printed on one sheet of paper and folded like a map. This makes it simple to read while commuting, convenient to carry when not, and easy to give or send to a friend. A paper envelope is provided for mailing or gift giving, and both are packaged in a clear plastic envelope for display. The cost is not much more than a greeting card.

The Fallen Curtain

A stranger lures a child into his car with the promise of sweets. A young man spots his fianc e’s double in a public park of ill repute. An executive visits the secluded home of a former employee whose intentions are frightfully unclear. A modest soul weds the woman he rescues from suicide only to fall victim to an unfathomable form of possessiveness…
In the eleven tales gathered in The Fallen Curtain, Ruth Rendell the grande dame of the literary mystery lays bare the twisted inner workings of the unbalanced mind. Here are eleven tales of haunting psychological accuracy: the gesture that betrays a parent’s madness, the childhood memory clouded with denial, the utterance that introduces the threat of violence in a situation as benign as a dinner date. Instantly engaging, maddeningly addictive, The Fallen Curtain testifies to the enduring talents of a master of the genre.

The Copper Peacock and Other Stories

With deceptive economy in these nine short stories, Ruth Rendell indicates hidden depths in ordinary events and creates a sense of profound unease…
The stories are: A Pair of Yellow Lilies, Paperwork, Mother’s Help, Long Live the Queen, Dying Happy, The Copper Peacock, Weeds, The Fish Sitter and An Unwanted Woman.

Blood Lines

So begins this scintillating collection of long and short stories by Ruth Rendell. It was clear to both Wexford and Burden that Tom Peterlee was not killed for 360, but various people would have liked them to think he was…
It is a case which reminds the Chief Inspector that there is only a thin line dividing the cop from the criminal.

In the second story, poetry is the inspiration for murderous passion. In ‘Shreds and Slivers,’ the accidental discovery of Amanita phalloides a poisonous mushroom leads to a game of Russian Roulette in a supermarket. In all the stories, Ruth Rendell probes behind the patterns of everyday life to pinpoint the frailties, the desires and deceptions, the guilty secrets of human beings.

Piranha to Scurfy

Nine deliciously frightening and exquisitely crafted tales of psychological terror from Ruth Rendell.A self appointed critic reads books only to catch out their errors of fact and usage, which he points out to their authors in vicious letters: Then one day he comes upon a book that attacks him. An elderly woman finally avenges herself on the man who raped her sixty years before. An idyllic village in the English countryside offers newcomers its own peculiar kind of hospitality and exacts a terrible price on those who reject it. Delivering high voltage shocks with the elegance of a Henry James, Piranha to Scurfy is further evidence of Ruth Rendell’s mastery of any form she puts her hand to.

The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories 1

More than 200,000 words of great crime and suspense fictionEach year, Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg, editors of The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories, have reached farther past the boundaries of the United States to find the very best suspense from the world over. In this third volume of their series they have included stories from Germany, Belgium, and the United Kingdom as well as, of course, a number of fine stories from the U.S.A. Among these tales are winners of the Edgar Award, the Silver Dagger Award of the British Crime Writers, and other major awards in the field. In addition, here are reports on the field of mystery and crime writing from correspondents in the U.S. Jon L. Breen, England Maxim Jakubowski, Canada Edo Van Belkom, Australia David Honeybone, and Germany Thomas Woertche. Altogether, with nearly 250,000 words of the best short suspense published in 2001, this bounteous volume is, as the Wall Street Journal said of the previous year s compilation, the best value for money of any such anthology. The A to Z of the authors should excite the interest of any mystery reader:Robert Barnard Lawrence Block Jon L. Breen Wolfgang Burger Lillian Stewart Carl Margaret Coel Max Allan Collins Bill Crider Jeffery Deaver Brendan DuBois Susanna Gregory Joseph Hansen Carolyn G. Hart Lauren Henderson Edward D. Hoch Clark Howard Tatjana Kruse Paul Lascaux Dick Lochte Peter Lovesey Mary Jane Maffini Ed McBain Val McDermid Marcia Muller Joyce Carol Oates Anne Perry Nancy Pickard Bill Pronzini Ruth Rendell S. J. Rozan Billie Rubin Kristine Kathryn Rusch Stephan Rykena David B. Silva Nancy Springer Jac. Toes John Vermeulen Donald E. Westlake Carolyn Wheat.

The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories 2

More than 200,000 words of great crime and suspense fictionEach year, Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg, editors of The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories, have reached farther past the boundaries of the United States to find the very best suspense from the world over. In this third volume of their series they have included stories from Germany, Belgium, and the United Kingdom as well as, of course, a number of fine stories from the U.S.A. Among these tales are winners of the Edgar Award, the Silver Dagger Award of the British Crime Writers, and other major awards in the field. In addition, here are reports on the field of mystery and crime writing from correspondents in the U.S. Jon L. Breen, England Maxim Jakubowski, Canada Edo Van Belkom, Australia David Honeybone, and Germany Thomas Woertche. Altogether, with nearly 250,000 words of the best short suspense published in 2001, this bounteous volume is, as the Wall Street Journal said of the previous year s compilation, the best value for money of any such anthology. The A to Z of the authors should excite the interest of any mystery reader:Robert Barnard Lawrence Block Jon L. Breen Wolfgang Burger Lillian Stewart Carl Margaret Coel Max Allan Collins Bill Crider Jeffery Deaver Brendan DuBois Susanna Gregory Joseph Hansen Carolyn G. Hart Lauren Henderson Edward D. Hoch Clark Howard Tatjana Kruse Paul Lascaux Dick Lochte Peter Lovesey Mary Jane Maffini Ed McBain Val McDermid Marcia Muller Joyce Carol Oates Anne Perry Nancy Pickard Bill Pronzini Ruth Rendell S. J. Rozan Billie Rubin Kristine Kathryn Rusch Stephan Rykena David B. Silva Nancy Springer Jac. Toes John Vermeulen Donald E. Westlake Carolyn Wheat.

The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories 3

More than 200,000 words of great crime and suspense fictionEach year, Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg, editors of The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories, have reached farther past the boundaries of the United States to find the very best suspense from the world over. In this third volume of their series they have included stories from Germany, Belgium, and the United Kingdom as well as, of course, a number of fine stories from the U.S.A. Among these tales are winners of the Edgar Award, the Silver Dagger Award of the British Crime Writers, and other major awards in the field. In addition, here are reports on the field of mystery and crime writing from correspondents in the U.S. Jon L. Breen, England Maxim Jakubowski, Canada Edo Van Belkom, Australia David Honeybone, and Germany Thomas Woertche. Altogether, with nearly 250,000 words of the best short suspense published in 2001, this bounteous volume is, as the Wall Street Journal said of the previous year s compilation, the best value for money of any such anthology. The A to Z of the authors should excite the interest of any mystery reader:Robert Barnard Lawrence Block Jon L. Breen Wolfgang Burger Lillian Stewart Carl Margaret Coel Max Allan Collins Bill Crider Jeffery Deaver Brendan DuBois Susanna Gregory Joseph Hansen Carolyn G. Hart Lauren Henderson Edward D. Hoch Clark Howard Tatjana Kruse Paul Lascaux Dick Lochte Peter Lovesey Mary Jane Maffini Ed McBain Val McDermid Marcia Muller Joyce Carol Oates Anne Perry Nancy Pickard Bill Pronzini Ruth Rendell S. J. Rozan Billie Rubin Kristine Kathryn Rusch Stephan Rykena David B. Silva Nancy Springer Jac. Toes John Vermeulen Donald E. Westlake Carolyn Wheat.

The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories 4

More than 200,000 words of great crime and suspense fictionEach year, Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg, editors of The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories, have reached farther past the boundaries of the United States to find the very best suspense from the world over. In this third volume of their series they have included stories from Germany, Belgium, and the United Kingdom as well as, of course, a number of fine stories from the U.S.A. Among these tales are winners of the Edgar Award, the Silver Dagger Award of the British Crime Writers, and other major awards in the field. In addition, here are reports on the field of mystery and crime writing from correspondents in the U.S. Jon L. Breen, England Maxim Jakubowski, Canada Edo Van Belkom, Australia David Honeybone, and Germany Thomas Woertche. Altogether, with nearly 250,000 words of the best short suspense published in 2001, this bounteous volume is, as the Wall Street Journal said of the previous year s compilation, the best value for money of any such anthology. The A to Z of the authors should excite the interest of any mystery reader:Robert Barnard Lawrence Block Jon L. Breen Wolfgang Burger Lillian Stewart Carl Margaret Coel Max Allan Collins Bill Crider Jeffery Deaver Brendan DuBois Susanna Gregory Joseph Hansen Carolyn G. Hart Lauren Henderson Edward D. Hoch Clark Howard Tatjana Kruse Paul Lascaux Dick Lochte Peter Lovesey Mary Jane Maffini Ed McBain Val McDermid Marcia Muller Joyce Carol Oates Anne Perry Nancy Pickard Bill Pronzini Ruth Rendell S. J. Rozan Billie Rubin Kristine Kathryn Rusch Stephan Rykena David B. Silva Nancy Springer Jac. Toes John Vermeulen Donald E. Westlake Carolyn Wheat.

The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories 5

More than 200,000 words of great crime and suspense fictionEach year, Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg, editors of The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories, have reached farther past the boundaries of the United States to find the very best suspense from the world over. In this third volume of their series they have included stories from Germany, Belgium, and the United Kingdom as well as, of course, a number of fine stories from the U.S.A. Among these tales are winners of the Edgar Award, the Silver Dagger Award of the British Crime Writers, and other major awards in the field. In addition, here are reports on the field of mystery and crime writing from correspondents in the U.S. Jon L. Breen, England Maxim Jakubowski, Canada Edo Van Belkom, Australia David Honeybone, and Germany Thomas Woertche. Altogether, with nearly 250,000 words of the best short suspense published in 2001, this bounteous volume is, as the Wall Street Journal said of the previous year s compilation, the best value for money of any such anthology. The A to Z of the authors should excite the interest of any mystery reader:Robert Barnard Lawrence Block Jon L. Breen Wolfgang Burger Lillian Stewart Carl Margaret Coel Max Allan Collins Bill Crider Jeffery Deaver Brendan DuBois Susanna Gregory Joseph Hansen Carolyn G. Hart Lauren Henderson Edward D. Hoch Clark Howard Tatjana Kruse Paul Lascaux Dick Lochte Peter Lovesey Mary Jane Maffini Ed McBain Val McDermid Marcia Muller Joyce Carol Oates Anne Perry Nancy Pickard Bill Pronzini Ruth Rendell S. J. Rozan Billie Rubin Kristine Kathryn Rusch Stephan Rykena David B. Silva Nancy Springer Jac. Toes John Vermeulen Donald E. Westlake Carolyn Wheat.

Women of Mystery

A diverse collection of stories of drama and suspense from writers such as Ruth Rendell, Sara Paretsky and Mary Higgins Clark. From cops to private eyes to ordinary people caught up in extraordinary situations, these stories feature hero*ines who face danger and solve crimes with panache.

The Year’s 25 Finest Crime and Mystery Stories

The stories by the mystery genre’s best writers, such as Tony Hillerman, Lawrence Block, P. D James, Ruth Rendell and Ray Bradbury, are compiled into an anthology of twenty five of the year’s most suspenseful stories.

Tales of Obsession

Fourteen spine tingling stories of suspense include P. D. James’s ”The Victim,” in which a gorgeous celebrity uses her infatuated ex husband as a murder weapon, and tales by Ruth Rendell, Patricia Highsmith, and other authors.

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.

Unforgettable Ghost Stories by Women Writers

Assembled by a noted anthologist, this unique collection presents 18 supernatural fables by female masters of the genre. Haunting tales include ‘The Lost Ghost,’ by Mary Wilkins Freeman, ‘Kerfol’ by Edith Wharton, Mary Molesworth’s ‘The Shadow in the Moonlight,’ and ‘From the Dead’ by E. Nesbit. Each story features a brief author biography.

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