Best Selling Books by Patricia Highsmith

"Like Ripley, [Highsmith''s characters] burn in a reader''s memory."—Susan Salters Reynolds, Los Angeles Times Book Review In unmistakable Highsmithian fashion, Small g, Patricia Highsmith''s final novel, opens near a seedy Zurich bar with the brutal murder of Petey Ritter. Unraveling the vagaries of love, sexuality, jealousy, and death, Highsmith weaves a mystery both hilarious and astonishing, a classic fairy tale executed with a characteristic penchant for darkness. Published in paperback for the first time in America, Small g is at once an exorcism of Highsmith''s literary demons and a revelatory capstone to a wholly remarkable career. It is a delightfully incantatory work that, in the tradition of Shakespeare''s A Midsummer Night''s Dream, shows us how bizarre and unpredictable love can be.

"A great American writer…Highsmith''s writing is wicked…it puts a spell on you." —Entertainment Weekly Now a major motion picture. Patricia Highsmith''s story of romantic obsession may be one of the most important, but still largely unrecognized, novels of the twentieth century. First published in 1952 and touted as "the novel of a love that society forbids," the book soon became a cult classic. Based on a true story plucked from Highsmith''s own life, Carol tells the riveting drama of Therese Belivet, a stage designer trapped in a department-store day job, whose routine is forever shattered by a gorgeous epiphany—the appearance of Carol Aird, a customer who comes in to buy her daughter a Christmas toy. Therese begins to gravitate toward the alluring suburban housewife, who is trapped in a marriage as stultifying as Therese''s job. They fall in love and set out across the United States, ensnared by society''s confines and the imminent disapproval of others, yet propelled by their infatuation. Carol is a brilliantly written story that may surprise Highsmith fans and will delight those discovering her work. This authorized edition includes an afterword by Patricia Highsmith. Previously titled The Price of Salt.

The legendary writer Patricia Highsmith is best remembered today for her chilling psychological thrillers The Talented Mr. Ripley and Strangers on a Train. A critically acclaimed best seller in Europe, Highsmith has for too long been underappreciated in the United States. Starting in 2011, Grove Press will begin to reissue nine of Highsmith’s works. Eleven is Highsmith’s first collection of short stories, an arresting group of dark masterpieces of obsession and foreboding, violence and instability. Here naturalists meet gruesome ends and unhinged heroes disturb our sympathies. This is a captivating, important collection from “one of the truly brilliant short-story writers of the twentieth century” (Otto Penzler).

With the savage humor of Waugh and the macabre sensibility of Poe, Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995) brought a distinctly contemporary acuteness to her prolific body of noir fiction. Including over 60 short stories written throughout her career, this collection reveals the stunning versatility and terrifying power of her work.

In This Sweet Sickness, Patricia Highsmith, in her own inimitable fashion, has created a complex psychological tale as suspenseful as The Talented Mr. Ripley. David Kelsey, a young scientist, has an unyielding conviction that life will turn out all right for him; he just has to fix the Situation: he is in love with a married woman. Obsessed with Annabelle and the life he has imagined for them—including the fully furnished cabin he maintains for her—David prepares to win her over, whatever it takes. In this riveting tale of a deluded loner, Highsmith reveals her uncanny ability to draw out the secret obsessions that overwhelm the human heart.

NOW A MAJOR NEW NETFLIX SERIESTom Ripley wants money, success, and the good life - and he''s willing to kill for it.Struggling to stay one step ahead of his creditors (and the law), Ripley leaps at the chance to start afresh on a free trip to Europe. But when his new-found happiness is threatened, his response is as swift as it is shocking.Now a[Bokinfo].

Tom Ripley is struggling to stay one step ahead of his creditors, and the law, when an unexpected acquaintance offers him a free trip to Europe and a chance to start over. Ripley wants money, success and the good life and he''s willing to kill for it. When his new-found happiness is threatened, his response is as swift as it is shocking. -- Cover.

A major new reissue of the work of a classic noir novelist.

When a troubled young runaway arrives on Tom Ripley''s French estate, he is drawn into a world he thought he''d left behind, the seedy underworld of Berlin and kidnapping plots, lies and deception. Ripley becomes the boy''s protector as a friendship develops between the young man with a guilty conscience and the older one with no conscience at all.

New York Times • Times Critics Top Books of 2021 The Times (of London) • Best Books of the Year Excerpted in The New Yorker Profiled in The Los Angeles Times Publishing for the centenary of her birth, Patricia Highsmith’s diaries “offer the most complete picture ever published” of the canonical author (New York Times). Relegated to the genre of mystery during her lifetime, Patricia Highsmith is now recognized as one of “our greatest modernist writers” (Gore Vidal). Beloved by fans who were unaware of the real psychological turmoil behind her prose, the famously secretive Highsmith refused to authorize a biography, instead sequestering herself in her Switzerland home in her final years. Posthumously, her devoted editor Anna von Planta discovered her diaries and notebooks in 1995, tucked in a closet—with tantalizing instructions to be read. For years thereafter, von Planta meticulously culled from over eight thousand pages to help reveal the inscrutable figure behind the legendary pen. Beginning with her junior year at Barnard in 1941, Highsmith ritualistically kept a diary and notebook—the former to catalog her day, the latter to brainstorm stories and hone her craft. This volume weaves diary and notebook simultaneously, exhibiting precisely how Highsmith’s personal affairs seeped into her fiction—and the sheer darkness of her own imagination. Charming yet teetering on the egotistical, young “Pat” lays bare her dizzying social life in 1940s Greenwich Village, barhopping with Judy Holliday and Jane Bowles, among others. Alongside Flannery O’Conner and Chester Himes, she attended—at the recommendation of Truman Capote—the Yaddo artist colony in 1948, where she drafted Strangers on a Train. Published in 1950 and soon adapted by Alfred Hitchcock, this debut novel brought recognition and brief financial security, but left a heartsick Highsmith agonizing: “What is the life I choose?” Providing extraordinary insights into gender and sexuality in mid-twentieth-century America, Highsmith’s diaries convey her euphoria writing The Price of Salt (1951). Yet her sophomore novel would have to be published under a pseudonym, so as not to tarnish her reputation. Indeed, no one could anticipate commercial reception for a novel depicting love between two women in the McCarthy era. Seeking relief from America, Highsmith catalogs her peripatetic years in Europe, subsisting on cigarettes and growing more bigoted and satirical with age. After a stay in Positano with a new lover, she reflects in her notebooks on being an expat, and gleefully conjures the unforgettable The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955); it would be this sociopathic antihero who would finally solidify her true fame. At once lovable, detestable, and mesmerizing, Highsmith put her turbulent life to paper for five decades, acutely aware there must be “a few usable things in literature.” A memoir as significant in our own century as Sylvia Plath’s journals and Simone de Beauvoir’s writings were to another time, Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks is an historic work that chronicles a woman’s rise against the conventional tide to unparalleled literary prominence.

Penguin Readers is an ELT graded reader series. Please note that the eBook edition does NOT include access to the audio edition and digital book. Written for learners of English as a foreign language, each title includes carefully adapted text, new illustrations and language learning exercises. Titles include popular classics, exciting contemporary fiction, and thought-provoking non-fiction, introducing language learners to bestselling authors and compelling content. The eight levels of Penguin Readers follow the Common European Framework of Reference for language learning (CEFR). Exercises at the back of each Reader help language learners to practise grammar, vocabulary, and key exam skills. Before, during and after-reading questions test readers'' story comprehension and develop vocabulary. The Talented Mr Ripley, a Level 6 Reader, is B1+ in the CEFR framework. The longer text is made up of sentences with up to four clauses, introducing future continuous, reported questions, third conditional, was going to and ellipsis. A small number of illustrations support the text. In the 1950s, Tom Ripley travels from the United States of America to Italy, to find Dickie Greenleaf and bring him home to his father. But when Tom sees Dickie''s money and relaxed way of life, he becomes jealous and begins to make other plans. Visit the Penguin Readers website Register to access online resources including tests, worksheets and answer keys. Exclusively with the print edition, readers can unlock a digital book and audio edition (not available with the eBook).

A chance encounter between two lonely women leads to a passionate romance in this lesbian cult classic. Therese, a struggling young sales clerk, and Carol, a homemaker in the midst of a bitter divorce, abandon their oppressive daily routines for the freedom of the open road, where their love can blossom. But their newly discovered bliss is shattered when Carol is forced to choose between her child and her lover. Author Patricia Highsmith is best known for her psychological thrillers Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley. Originally published in 1952 under a pseudonym, The Price of Salt was heralded as "the novel of a love society forbids." Highsmith''s sensitive treatment of fully realized characters who defy stereotypes about homosexuality marks a departure from previous lesbian pulp fiction. Erotic, eloquent, and suspenseful, this story offers an honest look at the necessity of being true to one''s nature. The book is also the basis of the acclaimed 2015 film Carol, starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara.

Mr. Ripley emerges from retirement to preside over one last deadly game, but can he persuade an innocent man to commit murder?

Twenty-eight psychologically penetrating stories span almost 50 years of Highsmith''s career and establish her as a permanent member of the American literary canon.

Ray Garrett, a wealthy young American living in Europe, is grieving over the death of his wife Peggy. Ray is at a loss for why she would take her own life, but Peggy’s father Ed Coleman, a painter, has no such uncertainty—he blames Ray completely. Late one night in Rome, Coleman shoots Ray at point-blank range. He thinks he’s had his revenge, but Ray survives and follows Coleman and his wealthy girlfriend to Venice. In Venice, it happens again: Coleman attacks his loathed son-in-law, dumping him into the cold waters of the laguna. Ray survives thanks to the help of a boatman, and this time he goes into hiding, living in a privately rented room under a fake name. So begins an eerie game of cat-and-mouse. Coleman wants vengeance, Ray wants a clear conscience, and the police want to solve the mystery of what happened to the missing American. As Ray and Coleman stalk each other through the narrow streets and canals, the hotels and bars of the beguiling city, Those Who Walk Away simmers with violence and unease. Originally published in 1967, this is vintage Highsmith.

Ramón, a devout Catholic, fixes furniture in Mexico City, not far from where he was born into poverty. Theodore, a rich German expatriate and painter, believes in nothing at all. You’d think the two had nothing in common. Except, of course, that both had slept with Lelia. Two form an unlikely friendship, until Lelia is found brutally murdered. Both are suspects and each suspects the other. Twisting in a limbo of tension and doubt, Ramón and Theodore seize on a third man, a thief seen at Lelia’s apartment, and their hunt takes them from Mexico City to sun-drenched Acapulco, and to a small colonial mountain town. A thrilling, psychologically complex novel, rich with setting, A Game for the Living is Highsmith at her best.

Kriminalroman.

Tom Ripley has a lovely house in the French countryside, a beautiful and very rich wife, and an art collection worthy of a connoisseur. But this gracious life has not come easily; it is based on murder, forgery, and smuggling, and could topple at any moment.

"In a small Pennsylvania town, Robert Forrester is recuperating from a nasty divorce and a bout of psychological trouble. One evening, while driving home, he sees a pretty young woman framed by her bright kitchen window, a picture of happy domesticity that brings him peace. Soon, Robert can''t keep himself away. But when he is inevitably discovered, obsession is turned on its head, and Robert finds himself unable to shake the young woman, nor entirely sure whether he should"--P. [4] of cover.

"Suave, agreeable, and completely amoral ... Tom Ripley stops at nothing--not even murder--to accomplish his goals."--Jacket.

The great revival of interest in Highsmith continues with "Deep Water, " set in the small town of Little Wesley. Vic and Melinda''s loveless marriage is held together only by Melinda''s extramarital affairs. Eventually, Vic tries to win her back by asserting himself through a tall tale of murder--one that soon comes true.

Introduces a gallery of highly unusual characters in these seventeen tales of women who destroy their men and women who destroy themselves.

Two men, a tennis star and a psychopath, meet by chance on a train and "swap" murders. "Strangers on a Train", Highsmith''s first novel, was the source for Alfred Hitchcock''s classic masterpiece.

"Highsmith''s writing is wicked . . . it puts a spell on you, after which you feel altered, even tainted."—Entertainment Weekly Slowly, Slowly in the Wind brilliantly assembles many of Patricia Highsmith''s most nuanced and psychologically suspenseful works. Rarely has an author articulated so well the hypocrisies of the Catholic Church while conveying the delusions of a writer''s life and undermining the fantasy of suburban bliss. Each of these twelve pieces, like all great short fiction, is a crystal-clear snapshot of lives both static and full of chaos. In "The Pond" Highsmith explores the unforeseen calamities that can unalterably shatter a single woman''s life, while "The Network" finds sinister loneliness and joy in the mundane yet engrossing friendships of a small community of urban dwellers. In this enduring and disturbing collection, Highsmith evokes the gravity and horror of her characters'' surroundings with evenhanded prose and a detailed imagination.

"En El talento de Mr. Ripley, la más célebre novela de Patricia Highsmith, aparece su más fascinante personaje: el inquietante y amoral Tom Ripley, figura prototípica de un género que Highsmith inventó, que se sitúa entre la novela policíaca y la novela negra, entre Graham Greene y Raymond Chandler, donde el más trepidante suspense se aúna a un vertiginoso análisis psicológico. Mr. Greenleaf, un millonario americano, le pide a Tom Ripley que intente convencer a su hijo Dickie de que regrese al hogar. Tom acepta el encargo ?de paso pone tierra por medio a posibles problemas policiales? y encuentra a Dickie y a su amiga Marga, con quienes establece una turbia relación que desemboca en el crimen y el engaño. Con el título de A pleno sol, la novela fue llevada al cine en 1960 por René Clement, con Alain Delon en el papel de Ripley." Tomado de la fuente.

"Highsmith''s novels are peerlessly disturbing...bad dreams that keep us thrashing for the rest of the night." —The New Yorker For two years, Walter Stackhouse has been a faithful and supportive husband to his wife, Clara. She is distant and neurotic, and Walter finds himself harboring gruesome fantasies about her demise. When Clara''s dead body turns up at the bottom of a cliff in a manner uncannily resembling the recent death of a woman named Helen Kimmel who was murdered by her husband, Walter finds himself under intense scrutiny. He commits several blunders that claim his career and his reputation, cost him his friends, and eventually threaten his life. The Blunderer examines the dark obsessions that lie beneath the surface of seemingly ordinary people. With unerring psychological insight, Patricia Highsmith portrays characters who cross the precarious line separating fantasy from reality.

Essential for understanding Patricia Highsmith’s transgressive life and prophetic work, this volume is also “one of the most observant and ecstatic accounts . . . about being young and alive in New York City” (Dwight Garner,—New York Times). Before Alfred Hitchcock adapted her debut novel, Strangers on a Train, for the big screen; before her suave and sociopathic Thomas Ripley snaked his way into the canon of psychological suspense; and before The Price of Salt became a cult classic of romantic obsession, who was Patricia Highsmith? Focused on her formative years in Manhattan, this condensed edition of Highsmith’s monumental Diaries and Notebooks reveals “Pat” at her most passionate and florescent. Beginning in 1941 at Barnard College and encompassing the Texas native’s adventurous twenties,?The New York Years intertwines scenes from her dizzying social life—rife with sleepless nights barhopping in the queer underground Greenwich Village scene, always juggling too many lovers—with an intimate self-portrait of a young artist who by day dispassionately wrote comics for a paycheck. Amid all the hangovers and the breakups, she read voraciously and honed her craft with verve. Laid bare in this perennial reader’s edition are the bold, hilarious, romantic, tragic, and maddeningly contradictory observations of one of “our greatest modernist writers” (Gore Vidal).

Five gripping plays based on Patricia Highsmith''s bestselling ''Ripley'' series - plus bonus material Charming, cultured and clever, Tom Ripley has a taste for the finer things in life. And he is determined to get them, by any means necessary... These five plays - The Talented Mr Ripley, Ripley Under Ground, Ripley''s Game, The Boy Who Followed Ripley and Ripley Under Water - chart Tom''s journey from impoverished conman to wealthy bon viveur and serial killer. His homicidal adventures begin when he befriends shipping heir Dickie Greenleaf: he wants money, success, and he''s willing to kill for it. But when he attains the luxurious lifestyle he craves, he is always on the edge of being discovered. Will his shadowy past finally catch up with him? BAFTA-winning actor Ian Hart stars as Ripley in these tense, thrilling dramas. Also included are two bonus documentaries: Looking for Ripley, in which crime writer Mark Billingham unravels the mystery behind our lasting fascination with Tom Ripley, and A Passionate Affair, presented by Marcel Berlins, who asks whether Patricia Highsmith fell in love with her suave, amoral anti-hero. Text © 1993 by Diogenes Verlag AG Zurich, all rights reserved. © 2021 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd (p) 2021 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd

The Tremor of Forgery is considered by many to be Patricia Highsmith''s finest novel. Set in Tunisia in the mid-1960s, it is the story of Howard Ingham, an American writer who has gone abroad to gather material for a movie too sordid to be set in America. Ingham is cool towards Ina, the girlfriend he left behind in New York, but his feelings start to change when she doesn''t answer his increasingly aggravated letters, and John Castlewood, the filmmaker who hired Ingham, fails to show in Tunisia. Amid the tea shops and alleys of the souk, the sun-blasted architecture, and the beaches and hotels frequented by international tourists, will Ingham’s morality survive the withering heat? Includes an introduction by Francine Prose.

To escape the terrible realities of an alcoholic son, a departed husband, a bedridden uncle, and a dreary parttime job, Edith records the activities of a happy family in her journal.

For those around him, earning back his trust can mean the difference between life and death."--Jacket.