<div>This Edgar Award finalist from the New York Times&ndash;bestselling author is a &ldquo;suspense mystery of the highest order&rdquo; (The New Yorker). For London&rsquo;s Chief Inspector Reg Wexford, it wasn&rsquo;t an official call. He was just being neighborly when he agreed to talk to Joy Williams about her missing husband, Rodney. Apparently, he went to Ipswich on business and never came home. Wexford has an idea what happened: He most likely ran off with one of his girlfriends. However, there are a few nagging concerns, like Rodney&rsquo;s suspicious letter of resignation and his abandoned car. And is it just a fluke that his disappearance coincides with a rash of stabbings&mdash;all straight through the heart, all with male victims. Wexford&rsquo;s detective instincts must take flight in order to bring down a murderer. Or two. Or three. Because, behind the seemingly placid domesticity of his Sussex neighbors, there is a growing web of tangling secrets, double lives, and triple-crosses. &ldquo;Rendell, winner of the Mystery Writers of America&rsquo;s prestigious Edgar Award, is regarded as one of the top mystery writers working today. With An Unkindness of Ravens, she shows, once again, that reputation is well-deserved&rdquo; (Los Angeles Times).</div>

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An Unkindness of Ravens

<div>Inspector Wexford searches for answers after an elderly woman is murdered in this &ldquo;spellbinder&rdquo; from a New York Times&ndash;bestselling author (Publishers Weekly). When Chief Inspector Wexford enters the parking garage, the woman is already dead, slumped between two cars, concealed under a velvet shroud. The inspector doesn&rsquo;t even notice her as he drives away. Only later, when he sees on the news that an old woman was garroted in the shopping mall garage, does he realize how close he was to discovering the body. In a case that starts with a hidden corpse, the truth will be dangerously elusive. Before Wexford can sink his teeth into the elderly woman&rsquo;s murder, he is nearly killed himself&mdash;by a politically motivated car bombing targeting his daughter. With the inspector in the hospital, the case falls to his partner, the intrepid Mike Burden, who must solve both mysteries before the shopping mall killer strikes again. The winner of three Edgar Awards, Ruth Rendell was one of the finest mystery authors of the twentieth century. Inspector Wexford was one of her most beloved creations, and The Veiled One is another &ldquo;stunning&rdquo; entry in the series (Publishers Weekly). </div>

Overdrive

The Veiled One

<div>From a New York Times&ndash;bestselling author: A terrifying psychological thriller that dives deep into the mind of a sexual predator. In a remote corner of London, a woman is walking her dog when a man grabs her from behind. She screams, and her attacker flees, escaping into a nearby house, where he finds another victim. Victor Jenner has a compulsion he does not understand&mdash;to grab women, to hurt them&mdash;and he also has a gun. When it goes off, grievously wounding a police officer, it marks the beginning of a long stretch in jail for Victor. Released ten years later, Victor meets the young policeman he shot&mdash;and falls head over heels for the officer&rsquo;s girlfriend. Back on the street, Victor is torn between the desire to live a better life and the knowledge that he will soon give in to his most evil yearnings. The winner of three Edgar Awards, Ruth Rendell was one of the most celebrated thriller authors of the twentieth century. Live Flesh is &ldquo;a superb work [and] a compelling psychological portrait&rdquo; of a dark mind (Philadelphia Daily News).</div>

Live Flesh

<div>A psychological thriller about an isolated young woman and her murderous mother from the New York Times&ndash;bestselling author of The Girl Next Door. Far from London, the isolated estate called Shrove House looms over the English countryside. Inside, two women hide from the world. For sixteen years, Eve has protected her daughter, Liza, from the corrupting influence of modern life, never letting her outside, hiding her from those who visit, and killing to keep her safe. Raised in her mother&rsquo;s shadow, Liza has never questioned that this is the way things must be&mdash;until the night the police come to call, and Liza flees into the darkness. Alone in the world for the first time, terrified that her mother&rsquo;s murderous past may catch up with her, Liza does what she can to survive. Taking shelter with the groundskeeper, Liza delves into her own past, telling the story of her traumatic childhood as a way of finding a place for herself in this strange, terrifying new world. But she will soon find herself wondering how much like her mother she really is . . . Joyce Carol Oates called Ruth Rendell &ldquo;one of the finest practitioners of her craft in the English-speaking world.&rdquo; In New York Times Notable Book The Crocodile Bird, this three-time Edgar Award winner shows the talent that made her one of the best.</div>

The Crocodile Bird

<div>A lonely man stumbles into a dangerous game in this twisting novel of psychological suspense by the New York Times&ndash;bestselling author of The Crocodile Bird. In a desolate alley on the bank of the Thames, a spy slips through the shadows. Mungo is the Director General of English intelligence, and he knows Moscow Centre has been watching him for weeks, but there is no spy in London better at losing a tail. Satisfied he hasn&rsquo;t been followed, he drops off his message and disappears into the night. It&rsquo;s a classic scene of Cold War espionage, save for one detail: Mungo isn&rsquo;t a spy at all. He&rsquo;s a teenager, playing an epic game of make-believe. John Creevey, still reeling from the implosion of his marriage, is dreaming of taking revenge against his wife&rsquo;s lover when he discovers one of Mungo&rsquo;s coded signals. Unaware that the message is simply part of a child&rsquo;s game, he becomes obsessed with uncovering the rest of the spy network&mdash;a tragic misunderstanding that threatens to turn this imaginary war into something very real&mdash;and very deadly. &ldquo;Rendell has brilliantly interwoven these compelling strands into one masterful tale of suspense,&rdquo; writes Library Journal. Three-time Edgar Award winner Ruth Rendell was a master of psychological suspense, and Talking to Strange Men is one of the most unusual espionage stories in the history of the Cold War. </div>

Talking to Strange Men

<div>From a New York Times&ndash;bestselling author: A chilling psychological thriller about one man&rsquo;s murderous obsession with his childhood sweetheart. Growing up in the roughest part of London, Guy Curran never imagined he would fall in love with a rich girl. But from the moment he meets Leonora Chisholm, he knows it&rsquo;s their destiny to be together. They have a short, passionate teenage fling&mdash;over almost before it begins. Leonora moves on, but Guy never will. His love for her is dangerous, and it will destroy them both. Over the next ten years, Guy becomes a millionaire, selling hard drugs and bad art to the jet set of Western Europe. He and Leonora remain friends, sharing weekly lunches&mdash;until the day he learns she&rsquo;s fallen in love with someone else. Seized by murderous jealousy, Guy is about to embark on a mad quest to claim the woman he desires&mdash;or die trying. &ldquo;Rendell is a master of depicting the long, slow slide into madness&rdquo; and Going Wrong shows her brilliant ability to walk the line between elegance and terror (Publishers Weekly). </div>

Going Wrong

<div>A girl experiments with the occult to keep her family together in this psychological thriller from the New York Times&ndash;bestselling author of Dark Corners. In a quiet house in the London suburb of Manningtree, fifteen-year-old Pup and his emotionally damaged older sister, Dolly, have become closer than ever since the death of the their mother. Pup&rsquo;s bookish obsession with witchcraft gives their disordered life a sense of purpose. Dolly isn&rsquo;t sure what to expect from the talisman Pup makes her, until their father brings home a vulgar new wife. Then, Dolly, resentful and suddenly empowered, makes a deadly wish&mdash;the first of many. In a depressed neighborhood on the other side of town, a paranoid hermit has been questioned in a series of brutal murders. Lately, he&rsquo;s taken to living in a tunnel behind a fort of mattresses, where he keeps his knives. Soon, his life and the lives of Pup and Dolly will converge. As one of them struggles toward something close to sanity, the other two will descend even further into darkness. &ldquo;Only Rendell can show us how chillingly easy it is for ordinary people to slide into criminal behavior,&rdquo; and in The Killing Doll, the tumble is relentless (Oprah.com). &ldquo;Rendell, who perfected the art of the truly suspenseful psychological thriller&rdquo; is a three-time recipient of the Edgar Award, and the author of numerous bestsellers (The Boston Globe).</div>

The Killing Doll

<div>A woman investigates the shocking secrets that brought down her once proud family in this suspenseful Edgar Award winner from a New York Times&ndash;bestselling author. Faith Severn has never understood why the willful matriarch of her high-society family, aunt Vera Hillyard, snapped and murdered her own beloved sister. But long after Vera is condemned to hang, a journalist&rsquo;s startling discoveries allow Faith to perceive her family&rsquo;s story in a new light. Set in post&ndash;World War II Britain, A Dark-Adapted Eye is both a gripping mystery and a harrowing psychological portrait of a complex woman at the head of a troubled family. Called &ldquo;a rich, beautifully crafted novel&rdquo; by P. D. James, Time magazine has described its author as &ldquo;the best mystery writer in the English-speaking world.&rdquo; </div>

A Dark-Adapted Eye

<div>Edgar Award Finalist: In London, a missing child unites three mothers in grief, madness, and murder. When Benet Archdale was a young girl in North London, her mother, Mopsa, made her nervous. The woman was unsound, and posed ever-present dangers. Yet Benet understood her sickness and forgave her threats. In pursuit of a relatively sane life as a novelist and loving single parent, Benet has since kept Mopsa at a distance. But it&rsquo;s not only the sudden death of Benet&rsquo;s two-year-old son that shakes her safe world. It&rsquo;s the past. Mopsa has returned to be at her inconsolable daughter&rsquo;s side. Nurturing, rational, and seemingly cured, Mopsa is going to do everything she can to ease Benet&rsquo;s grief. Then, on the other side of town, the child of a barmaid has gone missing. Authorities fear the search can&rsquo;t end well. As Benet and Mopsa are drawn into the disappearance, the secrets, lies, and desperation of three mothers will converge&mdash;by chance and by design. For them, it&rsquo;s a crime that is at once a delusion, an escape, and a nightmare. &ldquo;No one surpasses Ruth Rendell when it comes to stories of obsession, instability, and malignant coincidence,&rdquo; says Stephen King of this New York Times&ndash;bestselling author, and all three come into play in this novel, a winner of the Crime Writers&rsquo; Association Silver Dagger Award. A classic of psychological suspense, The Tree of Hands was adapted twice for the screen: first in 1989, as Innocent Victim starring Lauren Bacall and Helen Shaver; then again in 2001, for the French film Alias Betty.</div>

The Tree of Hands

<div>From the New York Times&ndash;bestselling author of A Dark-Adapted Eye: A unique psychological thriller about a gentle young man tempted to kill for love. Philip Wardman is disgusted by murder. He cannot tolerate violent films or the local news, and when his friends discuss such things he often leaves the room. At his sister&rsquo;s wedding, Philip becomes infatuated with a strange, silver-haired woman named Senta Pelham. They sleep together after the reception, and Philip finds himself falling headfirst into obsessive, all-consuming love. He wants to marry Senta and live an ordinary life&mdash;but before they can, she has a murderous idea. To prove the unconventionality of their love, Senta proposes that each of them commit a murder. Shocked by the idea, but unable to resist his beloved, Philip is drawn into a maze of violence and deceit&mdash;and is horrified to find that he feels quite at home. &ldquo;Subdued tones, stultifying atmosphere, and omniscient narration mark this telling depiction of mutual psychological obsession,&rdquo; writes Library Journal. Ruth Rendell was one of the twentieth century&rsquo;s finest thriller writers, and The Bridesmaid is one of her most chilling.</div>

The Bridesmaid

<div>An &ldquo;obsessively readable&rdquo; mystery from the New York Times&ndash;bestselling author of Dark Corners about a century-old diary that holds clues to a murder (The Sunday Telegraph). Asta Westerby is lonely. In 1905, shortly after coming to East London from Denmark with her husband and their two little boys, she feels like a stranger in a strange land. And it doesn&rsquo;t help that her husband is constantly away on business. Fortunately, she finds solace in her diary&mdash;and she continues to do so until 1967. Decades later, her granddaughter, Ann, finds the journal, and it becomes a literary sensation, offering an intimate view of Edwardian life. But it also appears to hold the key to an unsolved murder and the disappearance of a child. A modern masterpiece by the Edgar Award&ndash;winning author of the Inspector Wexford Mysteries, and an excellent choice for readers of P. D. James, Ian Rankin, or Scott Turow, Asta&rsquo;s Book is at once a crime story, a historical novel, and a psychological portrait told through the diary itself and through Ann, who is bent on unlocking the journal&rsquo;s excised mystery. </div>

Asta's Book

<div>An award-winning novel from a New York Times&ndash;bestselling author: The long-buried bodies of a woman and child are unearthed on a Suffolk country estate. When the new owners of Wyvis Hall, a rural estate in Suffolk, set out to bury their pet dog on the grounds, they stumbled upon a ghastly relic: the bones of a woman and small child in a shallow grave. The gruesome find makes stunning headlines, especially so for the previous occupants. A decade before, nineteen-year-old Adam Verne-Smith inherited the property and spent one debauched summer there with runaways, drifters, and his two best friends&mdash;none of whom have spoken since that fatal season. Adam is now a doting father and husband. His old buddy Rufus is a respectable doctor. And there&rsquo;s Shiva, whose dreams of upward mobility drifted away. Unhinged by the discovery, they reunite, each with a protest of innocence. As the past slowly emerges, their regrets, desperation, and bitter incriminations get the best of them&mdash;and so will their secrets. A master of &ldquo;deep, disquieting insight into the pathological dynamics of love&rdquo; (The New York Times), author Ruth Rendell&rsquo;s Crime Writers&rsquo; Association Gold Dagger Award&ndash;winning A Fatal Inversion is &ldquo;rife with lost Edens, family secrets and stifled sexual urges&rdquo; (Chicago Tribune). It was adapted for television by the BBC in 1992. </div>

A Fatal Inversion

<div>From a New York Times&ndash;bestselling author: A novelist pieces together the murderous past of an old friend&mdash;&ldquo;smoldering suspense . . . literally unputdownable&rdquo; (Time Out). When writer Lizzie Vetch has tea with her old friend, Bell Sanger, the women are reunited for the first time in nearly two decades. Limbo years, Lizzie calls them, full of &ldquo;all the terrible things&rdquo; that passed between them. Specifically, a murder for which Bell served time, and has only recently been released from prison. Seemingly out of kindness, Lizzie agrees to let Bell move back into the House of Stairs, the five-story Notting Hill boardinghouse where, seventeen years ago, a dreadful crime was committed. Maybe here, among the other odd residents, Lizzie can help pull Bell&rsquo;s life together again. But is it compassion or something else? Because the more Lizzie&rsquo;s long-suppressed memories are stirred, the more her motives for keeping Bell close are called into question. As for Bell, she has her own reasons for moving back into the House of Stairs with Lizzie. It&rsquo;s not to put the past behind them. It&rsquo;s to confront it, step by step. &ldquo;Revealed in baleful flashbacks, a chilly obsession takes shape, a convicted murderess and a cruel design sidle out of the shadows&rdquo; (The Observer) in Edgar Award winner Ruth Rendell&rsquo;s &ldquo;compelling and disturbing&rdquo; psychological thriller (The Sunday Times). </div>

The House of Stairs

<div>From an Edgar Award&ndash;winning author: Murder intrudes on a student&rsquo;s secret history of the London Underground in this &ldquo;brilliantly unexpected&rdquo; mystery (The Times, London). Jarvis Stringer is a young man of many peculiarities, but no obsession has taken hold quite like that of writing the strange and twisting history of the London Underground. To finance his project, he rents out cheap rooms in the long-disused West Hampstead schoolhouse he inherited&mdash;a crumbling monument to morbid local lore. The boarders, each eking out their invisible lives above&mdash;and beneath&mdash;the city&rsquo;s surface, are a collection of strays, waifs, subway buskers, and loners, who are raising the concern of Jarvis&rsquo;s relatives and more proper neighbors. But even Jarvis has become suspicious. One of his outcasts may be a killer who&rsquo;s plotting something unforgettable and catastrophic&mdash;and Jarvis himself has unwittingly become a conspirator. &ldquo;A jolting novel of psychological suspense,&rdquo; King Solomon&rsquo;s Carpet was the recipient of the Crime Writers&rsquo; Association Gold Dagger Award (The New York Times Book Review). </div>

King Solomon's Carpet

<div>In this &ldquo;dark, hypnotic story of romantic obsession,&rdquo; an elderly woman shares her disturbing secrets with a spellbound young caregiver (The New York Times). Stuck in a loveless marriage and mired in a troubled affair, Jenny Warner doesn&rsquo;t have a single friend in whom she can confide. Then she meets Stella Newland, a patient at Middleton Hall, the English manor-house-turned-nursing-home where Jenny works as a caregiver. Unlike most of the other residents, the gracefully dying Stella is elegant, completely lucid, and generously open to hearing all about Jenny&rsquo;s life. Stella understands; she has her secrets, too. As their daily confessions become more intimate and revealing, a bond is forged&mdash;one born out of the illicit affairs at the heart of their unsettled lives. But there&rsquo;s much more to Stella&rsquo;s story, something she&rsquo;s been afraid to share with anyone, until now. When she gives Jenny the key to her house, it unlocks a maze of mysteries about the heartbreaking and horrifying consequences of love. It&rsquo;s a discovery&mdash;and a warning&mdash;that could prove to be Jenny&rsquo;s salvation, or lead her toward a doomed and inevitable end.</div>

The Brimstone Wedding

<div>A daughter&rsquo;s research into her father&rsquo;s life unearths shocking family secrets in this &ldquo;frightening&rdquo; novel (Express on Sunday). After celebrated English author Gerald Candless dies of a heart attack at his clifftop home above Gaunton Dunes in Devon, his eldest daughter, Sarah, is commissioned to write his biography. Ever-present in her life, her father was generous, passionate, and talented, yet always a bit of a mystery. Who&rsquo;s to blame for his chilly relationship with her mother that seemed to survive something unspoken? Why, in each successive novel, did he seem to reinvent himself, never settling for one public persona? What of his odd little parlor games for which only he knew the rules and purpose? And was it really true that he had no living relatives? What begins as an admiring project becomes an obsession. For Sarah&rsquo;s first discovery is a stunner: Gerald Candless was not his real name. The more she uncovers, the deeper Sarah&rsquo;s fear and fascination grows. Her father&rsquo;s life was nothing more than an ingeniously plotted work of fiction. As each lie gives way to another, her journey into the past of a familiar stranger gets so dark that seeing the truth could be last thing she wants. From the New York Times&ndash;bestselling author of Dark Corners and three-time Edgar Award winner comes a novel &ldquo;about the power of taboos, transgressions, guilts, deceptions, horrors, atonements, upsets and upheavals&rdquo; (Independent). And it&rsquo;s &ldquo;as jolting as a flash of lightning&rdquo; (Sunday Times). </div>

The Chimney Sweeper's Boy

<div>Stories of dark desire and wicked payback from Jonathan Lethem, Joyce Carol Oates, Caitl&iacute;n R. Kiernan, Richard Christian Matheson, and more. From Shakespeare to Poe, revenge has always been one of the great themes in literature. This anthology contains eighteen stories of ruthless vengeance. A philanderer spends a night with one nameless woman too many. A second-rate music video talent turns down a chance at superstardom and escapes a deadly contract. A comedy duo realizes that retribution is no laughing matter. And a single woman must face the shocking reasons for her solitary lifestyle. Multiple-award-winning editor Ellen Datlow commissioned these and fourteen other tales from some of the most talented authors of our time to make up Lethal Kisses. Available for the first time in the United States, this is a collection of eighteen horrifying tales on evening the score. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Ellen Datlow, including rare photos from the editor&rsquo;s personal collection.</div>

Lethal Kisses

<div>London&rsquo;s Inspector Wexford has two cases to solve&mdash;a murdered wife and a missing husband&mdash;in this double dose of a &ldquo;masterful series&rdquo; (Los Angeles Times). Now in one volume, two novels in &ldquo;one of the best-written detective series in the genre&rsquo;s history,&rdquo; from a New York Times&ndash;bestselling and three-time Edgar Award&ndash;winning author (The Washington Post). The Veiled One: &ldquo;Why on earth?&rdquo; wonders London&rsquo;s chief inspector Reginald Wexford when a sixtyish housewife is found garroted in a shopping mall garage, her body concealed under a velvet shroud. Before he can find the answer, he&rsquo;s nearly killed himself&mdash;by a politically motivated car bombing targeting his activist daughter. With the inspector in the hospital, the case falls to his partner, Mike Burden. But when a strange mother and son are suspected, Burdon&rsquo;s trail leads him down a very twisted road. An Unkindness of Ravens: When a neighbor&rsquo;s husband vanishes, Chief Inspector Wexford suspects the cad most likely ran off with one of his girlfriends. However, there are a few nagging concerns, like the man&rsquo;s suspicious letter of resignation and his abandoned car. And is it just a fluke that his disappearance coincides with a rash of stabbings&mdash;all straight through the heart, all with male victims? Behind the seemingly placid domesticity of Wexford&rsquo;s Sussex neighbors, there&rsquo;s a growing web of tangling secrets, double lives, and triple-crosses. An Edgar Award finalist, this is a &ldquo;mystery of the highest order&rdquo; (The New Yorker).</div>

Two Inspector Wexford Mysteries

<div>Three spellbinders from a New York Times&ndash;bestselling Edgar Award winner, &ldquo;unequivocally the most brilliant mystery writer of our time&rdquo; (Patricia Cornwell). This trio of Barbara Vine mysteries provides undisputable evidence that &ldquo;no one surpasses Ruth Rendell when it comes to stories of obsession, instability, and malignant coincidence&rdquo; (Stephen King). A Dark-Adapted Eye: Faith Severn never understood why her respectable aunt Vera snapped and murdered her own beloved sister. But thirty years after Vera is condemned and hanged, a true crime writer&rsquo;s new investigation into the case is finally allowing Faith to see her family&rsquo;s unspeakable history and its bygone tragedy in a chilling new light. An Edgar Award winner, this &ldquo;rich, beautifully crafted novel&rdquo; (P. D. James) is Ruth Rendell &ldquo;at her formidable best&rdquo; (The New York Times Book Review). The Chimney Sweeper&rsquo;s Boy: When celebrated author Gerald Candless dies at his clifftop home in Devon, his daughter Sarah is commissioned to write his admiring biography&mdash;only to discover her father&rsquo;s entire life was a lie. Now, Sarah fears that understanding all her father has hidden&mdash;and why&mdash;is the last thing she wants. A novel &ldquo;about the power of taboos, transgressions, guilts, deceptions, horrors, [and] atonements&rdquo; (Independent) from &ldquo;the best mystery writer in the English-speaking world&rdquo; (Time). The Brimstone Wedding: Mired in a loveless marriage and a troubled affair, Jenny Warner has only Stella Newland to confide in. A patient at the English nursing home where Jenny works, Stella is open to hearing all about Jenny&rsquo;s life. Stella understands; she has secrets too. When she gives Jenny the key to her house, it unlocks a mystery about the horrifying consequences of love&mdash;and Stella is drawn into a &ldquo;dark, hypnotic story of romantic obsession&rdquo; (The New York Times Book Review). </div>

Three Barbara Vine Mysteries

<div>A spine-tingling anthology by the New York Times&ndash;bestselling author and master of &ldquo;psychological insight . . . and, not infrequently, teeth-chattering terror&rdquo; (The New York Times). These never-before-collected stories by Ruth Rendell&mdash;the three-time Edgar Award&ndash;winning mistress of dark suspense and one of the most celebrated thriller writers of the twentieth century&mdash;are &ldquo;deliciously riveting, all the more so because Rendell&rsquo;s extraordinary ability to delve coolly and forensically into the dustiest nooks of the human psyche is amplified, not diminished, by the short story form. . . . Often the reader is taken by the throat&rdquo; (The Guardian). In &ldquo;The Thief,&rdquo; a chance encounter with a stranger triggers the most destructive impulses in a vindictive pathological liar. A family shares an unnamable feeling of dread and a necessary denial to make it through the night in &ldquo;Trebuchet.&rdquo; In the title story, a caddish boor can&rsquo;t help but boast of his infidelities. A historic murder weighs heavy on the unholy reputation of a quaint local landmark in &ldquo;The Haunting of Shawley Rectory.&rdquo; And in &ldquo;Never Sleep in a Bed Facing a Mirror,&rdquo; Rendell delivers a masterstroke of gasp-inducing brevity. Here are tales of mystery, madness, terrible crimes, and chilling perdition, all dispatched with a wit so knife-edged and deviousness, so impeccably cool that it&rsquo;s little wonder Joyce Carol Oates hails Ruth Rendell as &ldquo;one of the finest practitioners of her craft.&rdquo; </div>

Ruth Rendell
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Books By Ruth Rendell (19 Books)