Most Popular Books by 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 basement 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.

King Solomon''s Carpet - a prize-winning crime classic from bestselling author Barbara Vine Winner of the Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger Award ''The tension grows ... an overwhelming sense of foreboding ... when the unravelling takes place, it is brilliantly unexpected and original'' The Times Jarvis Stringer lives in a crumbling schoolhouse overlooking a tube line, compiling his obsessive, secret history of London''s Underground. His presence and his strange house draw a band of misfits into his orbit: young Alice, who has run away from her husband and baby; Tom, the busker who rescues her; truant Jasper who gets his kicks on the tube; and mysterious Axel, whose dark secret later casts a shadow over all of their lives. Dispossessed and outcast, those who come to inhabit Jarvis''s schoolhouse are gradually brought closer together in violent and unforeseen ways by London''s forbidding and dangerous Undergound . . . ''I longed to know what would happen next. Towards the end the tension fairly gets you by the throat'' Sunday Express ''Vine arouses a genuine fear that all that is normal is in danger of being lost'' Sunday Times King Solomon''s Carpet is a modern masterpiece of the crime genre and will leave you gripped from the first page to the last. If you enjoy the novels of P.D. James, Ian Rankin and Scott Turow, you will love this book. Barbara Vine is the pen-name of Ruth Rendell. She has written fifteen novels using this pseudonym, including A Fatal Inversion and King Solomon''s Carpet which both won the Crime Writers'' Association Gold Dagger Award. Her other books include: A Dark Adapted Eye; The House of Stairs; Gallowglass; Asta''s Book; No Night Is Too Long; In the Time of His Prosperity; The Brimstone Wedding; The Chimney Sweeper''s Boy; Grasshopper; The Blood Doctor; The Minotaur; The Birthday Present and The Child''s Child.

The Child''s Child is the new crime novel by bestselling, prize-winning author Barbara Vine, pen-name for the late bestselling author Ruth Rendell What sort of betrayal would drive a brother and sister apart? When Grace and her brother Andrew inherit their grandmother''s house, they surprise few people by deciding to move in together. But they''ve always got on well and the London house is large enough to split down the middle. There''s just one thing they''ve not taken into account though. What if one of them wants to bring a lover to the house? When Andrew''s partner James moves in, and immediately picks a fight about the treatment of gay men, the balance is altered - with almost fatal consequences. Barbara Vine''s is the pen-name of Ruth Rendell, and The Child''s Child is the first book she has published under that name since The Birthday Present in 2008. It''s an intriguing examination of betrayal in families, and of those two once-unmentionable subjects, illegitimacy and homosexuality. A taut, thrilling read, it will be enjoyed by readers of P.D. James and Ian Rankin. ''The Rendell/Vine partnership has for years been producing consistently better work than most Booker winners put together'' Ian Rankin ''She deploys her peerless skills in blending the mundane, commonplace aspects of life with the murky impulses of desire and greed. Ruth rendall has published fourteen novels under the Vine name, two of which, Fatal Inversion and King Solomon''s Carpet, won the prestigious Crime Writers'' Association Gold Dagger Award. Also available in Penguin by Barbara Vine: The Minotaur, The Blood Doctor, Grasshopper, The Chimney Sweeper''s Boy, The Brimstone Wedding, No Night is Too Long, Asta''s Book, King Solomon''s Carpet, Gallowglass, The House of Stairs, A Dark-Adapted Eye.

''A rich, complex and beautifully crafted novel'' P.D. James The prize-winning classic that ''changed the thriller landscape'', with a new foreword from Val McDermid. VERA HILLYARD. AUNT. MOTHER. MURDERESS. Faith Severn''s life has long been overshadowed by the mystery surrounding her aunt. A respectable woman who committed a crime so terrible she was hung for it. Now, the time has come to piece her story together. What secret caused two devoted sisters to turn from love to hate? And was Vera born a killer. . .Or was she driven to it? ''Brilliantly plotted. Vine is not afraid to walk down the mean streets of the mind and can build up an almost tangible atmosphere of menace and unease'' Daily Telegraph ''Will linger in your memory long after you have closed the book. A first-rate novel'' Washington Post A Dark-Adapted Eye is a modern classic. If you enjoy the crime novels of P.D. James and Ian Rankin you will love this book. Barbara Vine is the pen-name of Ruth Rendell. She has written fifteen novels using this pseudonym, including A Fatal Inversion and King Solomon''s Carpet which both won the Crime Writers'' Association Gold Dagger Award. Her other books include: A Dark Adapted Eye; The House of Stairs; Gallowglass; Asta''s Book; No Night Is Too Long; In the Time of His Prosperity; The Brimstone Wedding; The Chimney Sweeper''s Boy; Grasshopper; The Blood Doctor; The Minotaur; The Birthday Present and The Child''s Child.

The memoirs of a young Danish woman living in London at the turn of the century are published to huge commercial success. Many years later, the woman''s granddaughter discovers that one entry has been cut out of the original journals--an entry that may shed light on an unsolved multiple murder.

A GRIPPING, PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER PACKED WITH MENACE. IF YOU LIKE P.D. JAMES, IAN RANKIN AND SCOTT TUROW, YOU WILL LOVE THE BIRTHDAY PRESENT. ''Intensely imagined, fearful and satisfying'' Sunday Times Tory MP Ivor Tesham has unconventional tastes. And in bored housewife Hebe Furnal he finds someone to share and enact his sexual fantasies. However, one day it all goes terribly wrong. Ivor plans a special liaison for Hebe''s birthday - a daring sexual adventure. But dangerous games have unforeseen costs and consequences. And when there is an accidental death, scandal and ruin cannot be far behind . . . How long can a secret stay a secret? How long will friends protect a reputation? And how long before guilt catches up with you? ''The pre-eminent genius of the psychological thriller'' Herald ''Gripping, compelling'' Mail on Sunday ''Vintage Vine'' Literary Review

As Sarah researches her famous father''s past for her memoir, shocking secrets come to light and threaten her world.

Renowned mystery writer Ruth Rendell (writing as Barbara Vine) draws on the conventions of the 19th-century novel to tell a chilling and suspenseful story of cruelty and murder in a bitterly divided family.

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.

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 fiancée. 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.

"A pair of male lovers are enticed to take part in a kidnapping plot"--Best Books for Public Libraries, c1992, p. 407.

Both a finely crafted mystery and a disturbingly honest depiction of the kinship between love and madness, The Brimstone Wedding tells an unsettling story about the power and the poison of love. A gracious, dignified woman, who''s dying in an English nursing home, reveals the secrets of her erotic past to her young caretaker.

The second novel by Ruth Rendell writing as Barbara Vine is the story of the discovery of human bones buried in an animal cemetery and its lethal ramifications. With consummate skill, the mystery is unraveled, keeping the reader guessing about the killers'' and the victims'' identities.

''In a masterly and hypnotic synthesis of past, present and terrifying future, Vine casts a stone into her dark pond and lets the ripples spread . . . she has created a work that is both compelling and disturbing''. Sunday Times. ''This is the third psychological thriller by Ruth Rendell writing as Barbara Vine and when I say it surpasses the first two that''s really saying something . . . Vine has not only produced a quietly smouldering suspense novel but also presents an accurately atmospheric portrayal of London in the heady 60''s. Literally unputdownable''. Time Out.

Vera Hillyard wurde als eine der letzten Frauen in England 1950 gehenkt. Seitdem überschattet dieses Ereignis das Leben der Familie Longley. Denn: »Mord ist eine Sache der ganzen Familie. Er zeichnet das Kainsmal auf viele Stirnen.« Jahre später versucht die Nichte, Licht in die Vergangenheit zu bringen. Ist sie wirklich die geborene Mörderin?

Sandor ist ein ausgezeichneter Geschichtenerzähler. Und Sandor ist in jeder Beziehung großartig: dunkles, dichtes Haar, lange, schlanke Hände, wunderschön ist sein Lächeln. Wenn man Sandor gesehen hat, gefällt einem keiner mehr. Klein-Joe, gutmütig und eifrig bemüht zu gefallen, hört ihm begierig zu. Auch als klar wird, warum Sandor Klein-Joe gerettet hat, kann sich Joe nicht von ihm lösen.

Die alte Dame Stella vererbt ihrer jungen Pflegerin Jenny ein leeres Haus im Moor und ein dunkles Geheimnis. Doch auch Jenny verbirgt etwas, das keiner wissen darf. Abgründig spannend und zutiefst beunruhigend zeichnet Barbara Vine das Doppelporträt zweier faszinierender, höchst unterschiedlicher Frauen, für die das Paradies der Erinnerung auch eine Hölle ist.

Ivor Tesham, ein Machtmensch, Draufgänger und Politiker, macht seiner anderweitig verheirateten Geliebten zum achtundzwanzigsten Geburtstag ein riskantes Überraschungsgeschenk. Ein Geschenk, das seine Karriere und sein Leben zu zerstören droht. Sex, Lügen, Karriere und die Angst vor dem Skandal: ›Das Geburtstagsgeschenk‹ ist eine bitterböse Satire über einen ebenso attraktiven wie amoralischen britischen Politiker, der die Verlogenheit einer ganzen Ära verkörpert.

Einsam im fremden England, vertraut Asta, eine junge Dänin, ihre Freuden und Nöte einem Tagebuch an: Probleme mit dem Mann, ihre Bemühungen um Eigenständigkeit in der anderen Umgebung, das Nahen des Ersten Weltkrieges... Kein leichtes Schicksal, wäre nicht Swanny, ihre Lieblingstochter. Doch ob Swanny überhaupt Astas Tochter ist? Und könnte es Verbindungen geben zu dem skandalösen Mordprozeß im Fall Roper?

Sie waren Papas ein und alles, aber sie hatten keine Ahnung, wer Papa in Wirklichkeit war. Die älteste Tochter Sarah beginnt, die Lebensgeschichte des verstorbenen Vaters zu schreiben. Sarah taucht ein in die Untiefen eines Lebens, das wie das Meer an der Küste von Devonshire, an der der Familiensitz liegt, morsche Bruchstücke freigibt. Zum Vorschein kommen beängstigende Details eines Doppellebens.

Ein langer, heißer Sommer im Jahr 1976. Eine zufällig zusammengewürfelte Gruppe junger Leute sammelt sich um Adam, der ein altes Haus in Suffolk geerbt hat. Sorglos leben sie in den Tag hinein, lieben, stehlen, existieren. Zehn Jahre später werden auf dem bizarren Tierfriedhof des Ortes zwei Skelette gefunden – das einer jungen Frau und das eines Säuglings...

Als Cosettes Ehemann stirbt, wagt sie im vorgerückten Alter einen Neuanfang, verlässt ihren Landsitz und erwirbt das ›Haus der Stufen‹. In diesem offenen Haus in einem Londoner Vorort gehen Alt und Jung ein und aus. Ja, sie leben in einer gemischten WG zusammen, in der entspannten Atmosphäre der 60er Jahre. Bis Bell Sager, eine ebenso schöne wie bodenlos abgründige Frau, die Bühne betritt.

Salomons Zauberteppich war aus grüner Seide und so groß, daß beliebig viele Menschen darauf Platz fanden. König Salomon nannte dem Teppich das Reiseziel, und der erhob sich in die Lüfte und setzte alle an der gewünschten Stelle ab. – Welcher fliegende Teppich trägt uns heute überallhin? Die Londoner U-Bahn! Von ihr aber gibt es Begebenheiten zu erzählen, die alles andere als märchenhaft sind...

Clodagh Brown klettert für ihr Leben gern: zunächst auf Bäume, dann, als Teenager mit ihrem ersten Freund Daniel, auf Hochspannungsmaste. In späteren Jahren ist sie auf Londons Dächern unterwegs und erhascht, gemeinsam mit Gleichaltrigen, einen Blick in fremde Leben. Doch die Freiheit in den Lüften hat einen entsetzlichen Preis ...

Asta and Raymus come to Hackney in 1905 from Denmark. To keep loneliness at bay, Asta writes her diaries. When these are published 70 years later, they uncover the truth of an unsolved crime.