Most Popular Books by Patricia Highsmith

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

Discover the second novel in the iconic, mesmerising RIPLEY series - now a major Netflix series starring Andrew Scott. *** ''The No.1 Greatest Crime Writer'' THE TIMES ''Ripley, amoral, hedonistic and charming, is a genuinely original creation'' DAILY TELEGRAPH ''The sequence of novels allows Highsmith to create a frightening sense of momentum'' GUARDIAN Tom Ripley is now the owner of a beautiful estate in France, a wealthy art collector and married to an heiress. The Buckmaster Gallery is staging an exhibition by the celebrated artist, Derwatt, but an American collector claims that the expensive masterpiece he bought three years ago is a fake. It is, of course, and he wants to talk to Derwatt - but Derwatt, inconveniently, is dead. Ripley needs the perfect solution to keep his role in the fraud a secret and his reputation clean, but not everyone''s nerves are as steady as his. Especially when it comes to murder. Ripley Under Ground is an ingenious novel of masks and identity, illusion and reality, and is followed by Ripley''s Game, The Boy Who Followed Ripley and Ripley Under Water.

BY THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY, CAROL AND STRANGERS ON A TRAIN ''No one has created psychological suspense more densely and deliciously satisfying'' VOGUE ''There''s no one like Patricia Highsmith'' TIME ''Master storyteller Highsmith offers an eerily up-to-date collection of modern horror tales'' PUBLISHERS WEEKLY Patricia Highsmith, an American who lived most of her life in Europe, was the author of such bestselling crime novels as Strangers on a Train, and The Talented Mr Ripley. The stories collected here are classic Highsmith - eerie, prescient and chilling, catastrophes caused by human error and dark motives. Whether evoking the White House under siege by the homeless or a one-hundred and ninety-year-old woman perpetually near death and dimly glowing, each tale refuses to release you from its tense grip. The ten eerily up-to-date stories chronicle a world gone slightly mad; environmental degradation, apocalyptic disaster, political chaos, and religious conservatism are captured in incisive prose that leaves us haunted.

BY THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY, CAROL AND STRANGERS ON A TRAIN INTRODUCED BY DENISE MINA ''Highsmith probes to the very core of her heroine with a controlled ferocity and single-mindedness that illuminates every page of her novel'' THE TIMES ''A work of extraordinary force and feeling . . . her strongest, her most imaginative'' NEW YORKER ''One of the mere twenty or so that I would say were perfect, unimprovable masterpieces'' A. N Wilson, DAILY TELEGRAPH Edith Howland''s diary is her most precious possession, and as she is moving house she is making sure it''s safe. A suburban housewife in fifties America, she is moving to Brunswick with her husband Brett and her beloved son, Cliffie, to start a new life for them all. She is optimistic, but most of all she has high hopes for her new venture with Brett, a local newspaper, the Brunswick Corner Bugle. As Edith Howland''s life becomes harsh, her diary entries only become brighter and brighter. Life seems full of promise, and indeed, to read her diary, filled with her most intimate feelings and revelations, you would never think otherwise. Strange, then, that reality is so dangerously different . . .

"Strangers on a Train has lost none of its power to disturb…We will likely be reading Patricia Highsmith for the next one hundred years." —Paula Hawkins Just in time for the centennial celebration of groundbreaking noir fiction writer Patricia Highsmith comes a reissue of her propulsive, engrossing debut, Strangers on a Train, with a new introduction by best-selling author Paula Hawkins. Guy Haines and Charles Anthony Bruno are passengers on the same train. Haines is a successful architect in the midst of a divorce, Bruno a mysterious smooth-talker with a sadistic proposal: he’ll murder Haines’s wife if Haines will murder Bruno’s father. As Bruno carries out his twisted plan, Guy finds himself trapped in Highsmith’s perilous world, where, under the right circumstances, ordinary people are capable of extraordinary crimes. The inspiration for Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1951 film, Strangers on a Train launched Highsmith’s prolific career, proving her a master at depicting the unsettling forces that tremble beneath the surface of everyday life.

"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 nightmare is only beginning for a wealthy Manhattan couple, the Reynolds, when they receive a note saying that their beloved miniature poodle is being held for ransom.

“Fabulous, in all senses of that word . . . combining the best features of the suspense genre with the best of existential fiction—a thrilled reflection.”—Paul Theroux Elsie Tyler turns heads wherever she goes. After leaving her hometown upstate for Greenwich Village, the charming young waitress soon finds herself surrounded by admirers, including Jack and Natalia Sutherland, a married couple who invite Elsie into their bohemian inner circle and help her launch a career as a model. Meanwhile, Ralph Linderman, a middle-aged security guard with a dog named God, is nursing his own obsession with Elsie. He sets out to protect her from the “bad company” she attracts, but his uninvited affections are overbearing, possibly even pathological. When Ralph finds Jack’s wallet on a morning stroll through the Village, and returns it, he is entirely unprepared for the complex maze of sexual obsession and disturbing psychological intrigue he is about to be drawn into. Originally published in 1986, Found in the Street is classic Highsmith—an engrossing, unsettling thriller that explores the bleakest alleyways of human desire, and a kaleidoscopic portrait of 1980s New York City. Patricia Highsmith, author of Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley, has been called “one of the finest crime novelists” by the New York Times and is now considered one of the most original voices in twentieth-century American fiction.

First published in 1952, "The Price of Salt" is Patricia Highsmith''s unprecedented novel concerning the love affair between two women. Highsmith originally published the novel under the pseudonym "Claire Morgan" out of fear that she might be branded as a writer of lesbian literature and out of respect for the characters and occurrences depicted in the novel which referenced her own real life relationships. The story is concerned with the life of Therese Belivet, a young woman living in Manhattan who aspires to be a theatrical set designer. Despite the fact that she is dating a young man named Richard, Therese feels quite lonely as she does not truly love Richard or enjoy their intimacies. By day she works in the toy department at a New York department store. It is there that she meets Carol, an elegant woman in her early thirties, when she waits on her as a customer. The two soon spark up a friendship which eventually develops into a romantic relationship. Noted for being one of the first novels not to depict lesbian relationships in a completely unfavorable light, "The Price of Salt," or "Carol," as it was also published, has been adapted into a 2015 film which received numerous award nominations. This edition is printed in premium acid-free paper.

At the ''small g'', a Zurich bar known for its not exclusively gay clientele, the lives of a small community are played out one summer. Rickie Markwalder is a designer whose lover Petey was brutally murdered. Rickie and his performing dog Lulu are regulars at the bar, as are vindictive Renate, a seamstress, and her teenage apprentice Luisa. Into their lives comes Teddie, impressionable and beautiful, and a catalyst for the series of events that will change everything. Patricia Highsmith''s final novel is an intricate exploration of love and sexuality, the depths of spite and the triumph of human kindness. It is a work that, in the tradition of Shakespeare''s A Midsummer Night''s Dream, shows us how bizarre and unpredictable love can be. Small g, in the words of her biographer Andrew Wilson, is an ''extended fairy tale suggesting that...happiness is precarious and...romance should be embraced.''

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.

Comment assassiner deux mafiosi sans se salir les mains ? Pour rendre ce service à un ami, Tom Ripley a besoin d''un homme au-dessus de tout soupçon et disposé à se charger de la besogne. Jonathan Trevanny, pauvre et honnête père de famille, atteint de leucémie, pourrait être celui-là, et il accepterait afin de laisser aux siens une coquette somme d''argent... Et le voilà, hésitant mais tenté, aux mains du séduisant et diabolique Ripley, qui sait comment faire naître la corruption et le meurtre chez un être hanté par sa mort prochaine. Troisième roman consacré par Patricia Highsmith à son inquiétant héros, Ripley s''amuse a été porté à l''écran, en 1977, par Wim Wenders sous le titre L''Ami américain.

"A border zone of the macabre, the disturbing, the not-quite accidental." —John Gross, New York Times Book Review Horrific tragedy becomes disturbingly ordinary in The Black House, a masterful collection of short stories, written during a particularly dark time in Patricia Highsmith''s life. As readers will discover, the work eerily evokes the warm familiarities of suburban life: the manicured lawns, the white picket fences, and the local pubs, each providing the backbone for her chilling portraits. Seemingly small indiscretions and infidelities—along with love affairs and murder—consume the characters that commit them. Cycles of destructive jealousy overwhelm the cheating protagonists of "Blow It" and "When in Rome," and the title story explores small-town male camaraderie and the destructive secret it masks. This enthralling collection of eleven stories presents Highsmith at her finest: melancholy, suspenseful, and sizzling with a powerful awareness of human emotion.

Gentle, generous Theo would tell you that he feels quite logically happy about sharing Lelia with his best friend, Ramón. Although the word ''logical'' troubles him sometimes. (Can love ever be logical?) It is he, at any rate, who eventually finds Lelia dead in her painter''s studio in Mexico City. She has been raped, her handsome face bloodily mutilated. Theo''s thoughts immediately turn to Ramón as the natural suspect: hot tempered, moody, a man whose Catholic soul has already been damned by passion - unable to marry Lelia, unable to give her up . . . A confession is made, but are we to believe it?

Elf verhalen waarin steeds de menselijke zwakheid centraal staat.

The Price of Salt (1952) is a romance novel by Patricia Highsmith, written under the pseudonym Claire Morgan. The author - known as a suspense writer following the publication of her previous book, Strangers on a Train - became notorious due to the story''s latent lesbian content and happy ending, the latter having been unprecedented in homosexual fiction. The Price of Salt was an inspiration for Nabokov''s Lolita.

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

Ripley wants out - he wants money, success, the good life, and to get it he is prepared to lie, cheat and kill.

La suite me plut encore davantage : " Une idée formidable ! Supposez que chacun de nous tue pour le compte de l''autre ? Nous nous sommes rencontrés dans le train et personne ne sait que nous nous connaissons. Nous avons chacun un alibi parfait. Un alibi sans la moindre fissure ! " Cette fois, je sentis que je tenais un beau sujet, car chacun n''a-t-il pas, au moins une fois dans sa vie, souhaité tuer quelqu''un, à condition bien entendu d''être sûr de l''impunité. Le crime parfait ! Tout le monde s''y intéresse ! Alfred Hitchcock. On ne cesse de la relire. Elle a créé un monde original, un monde clos, irrationnel, oppressant où nous ne pénétrons qu''avec un sentiment personnel de danger et presque malgré nous. Car nous allons au-devant d''un plaisir mêlé d''effroi. Graham Greene.

The great revival of interest in Patricia Highsmith continues with this work that reveals the chilling reality behind the idyllic facade of American suburban life.

Tom Ripley stops at nothing to accomplish his goals.