A Judgement In Stone

Author: Ruth Rendell
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1409067866
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 228

Book Description
WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY BESTSELLING AUTHOR AND CRIME LEGEND DONNA LEON 'One of her masterpieces' TELEGRAPH 'A classic' THE TIMES 'Quite possibly the best crime book I have ever read' READER REVIEW 'Eunice Parchman killed the Coverdale family because she could not read or write.' Eunice, the Coverdales' housekeeper, guns down four of her employers in the space of fifteen minutes one Valentine's Day. None of them suspected anything. Her motive remained hidden. As the police investigate, Eunice schemes to escape the blame - desperate to preserve the terrible secret of her illiteracy. But Eunice's blindness to a crucial aspect of the world throws her plans into jeopardy . . .

A Judgement in Stone

Author: Ruth Rendell
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0099171406
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 228

Book Description
Four members of the Coverdale family - George, Jacqueline, Melinda and Giles - died in the space of fifteen minutes on the 14th February, St Valentine's Day. Eunice Parchman, the housekeeper, shot them down on a Sunday evening while they were watching ope

A Demon In My View

Author: Ruth Rendell
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1409067807
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 228

Book Description
Perfect for fans of PD James, Ann Cleeves and Donna Leon, this haunting insight into the mind of a pathological criminal is one of multi-million copy and SUNDAY TIMES bestselling author Ruth Rendell's most terrifying novels... 'Rendell is unrivalled at depicting psychologically warped people and at creating unease through the simplest things. This is another triumph' -- Observer 'Wonderful at exploring the dark corners of the human mind, and the way private fantasies can clash and explode into terrifying violence' -- Daily Mail 'Brilliantly written' -- ***** Reader review 'Absolutely fantastic!' -- ***** Reader review 'Mesmerizing' -- ***** Reader review 'Intensely absorbing' -- ***** Reader review ************************************************************************** Arthur Johnson doesn't look like a murderous psychopath; he is a mild-mannered man who has never known how to talk to women. Years of loneliness has warped his mind, turning his desire for a woman's love and respect into a pathological need for carefully controlled violence. Locked in the cellar of his building is the perfect willing victim, a woman who can be murdered over and over again, a woman who waits for Arthur every night...a mannequin in the form of a female. But when a young scholar of psychopathic personalities moves in downstairs and Arthur's mannequin disappears, where will he turn to satisfy his urgent craving for violence?

Thirteen Steps Down

Author: Ruth Rendell
Publisher: Seal Books
ISBN: 0385673183
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 370

Book Description
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.

A Judgement in Stone

Author: Ruth Rendell
Publisher: MacMillan Publishing Company
ISBN: 9780816166046
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 372

Book Description
When a housekeeper carries out a modern "Valentine's Day Massacre" on the family that employs her, Detective Chief Superintendent William Vetch investigates to uncover evidence of a personal tragedy that precipitated the crime.

The Killing Doll

Author: Ruth Rendell
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1453210830
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 183

Book Description
A girl experiments with the occult to keep her family together in this psychological thriller from the New York Times–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’s bookish obsession with witchcraft gives their disordered life a sense of purpose. Dolly isn’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—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’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. “Only Rendell can show us how chillingly easy it is for ordinary people to slide into criminal behavior,” and in The Killing Doll, the tumble is relentless (Oprah.com). “Rendell, who perfected the art of the truly suspenseful psychological thriller” is a three-time recipient of the Edgar Award, and the author of numerous bestsellers (The Boston Globe).

A Dark-adapted Eye

Author: Barbara Vine
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780143570035
Category : Families
Languages : en
Pages : 299

Book Description
Vera was prim and fastidious. Eden was beautiful and adored. Like most families they had their secrets...and they hid them under a genteelly respectable veneer. Yet their sisterly bond was strained by obsession, manipulation and murderous jealousy. Buried secrets rarely stay buried, and their past still wields the power to tear their family apart. The Green Popular Penguins Story It was in 1935 when Allen Lane stood on a British railway platform looking for something good to read on his journey. His choice was limited to popular magazines and poor quality paperbacks. Lane's disappointment at the range of books available led him to found a company - and change the world. In 1935 the Penguin was born, but it took until the late 1940s for the Crime and Mystery series to emerge. The genre thrived in the post-war austerity of the 1940s, and reached heights of popularity by the 1960s. Suspense, compelling plots and captivating characters ensure that once again you need look no further than the Penguin logo for the scene of the perfect crime.

Come, Thou Tortoise

Author: Jessica Grant
Publisher: Vintage Canada
ISBN: 0307373924
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 434

Book Description
A delightfully offbeat story that features an opinionated tortoise and her owner who find themselves in the middle of a life-changing mystery. Audrey (a.k.a. Oddly) Flowers is living quietly in Oregon with Winnifred, her tortoise, when she finds out her dear father has been knocked into a coma back in Newfoundland. Despite her fear of flying, she goes to him, but not before she reluctantly dumps Winnifred with her unreliable friends. Poor Winnifred. When Audrey disarms an Air Marshal en route to St. John’s we begin to realize there’s something, well, odd about her. And we soon know that Audrey’s quest to discover who her father really was – and reunite with Winnifred – will be an adventure like no other. Excerpt: Winnifred is old. She might be three hundred. She came with the apartment. The previous tenant, a rock climber named Cliff, was embarking on a rock-climbing adventure that would not have been much fun for Winnifred. Back then her name was Iris. Cliff had inherited Iris from the previous tenant. Nobody knew how old Iris was or where she had come from originally. Now Cliff was moving out. He said, Would you like a tortoise. I would not say no to a tortoise, I said. I was alone in Portland and the trees were giant. I picked her up and she blinked at me with her upside-down eyelids. I felt instantly calm. Her eyes were soft brown. Her skin felt like an old elbow. I will build you a castle, I whispered. With a pool. And I was true to my word.

The Judgment of the Nations

Author: Christopher Dawson
Publisher: CUA Press
ISBN: 0813218802
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 177

Book Description
Christopher Dawson wrote The Judgment of the Nations in 1942, in the midst of the horrors of World War II.

A Spot of Folly

Author: Ruth Rendell
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1504054814
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 192

Book Description
A spine-tingling anthology by the New York Times–bestselling author and master of “psychological insight . . . and, not infrequently, teeth-chattering terror” (The New York Times). These never-before-collected stories by Ruth Rendell—the three-time Edgar Award–winning mistress of dark suspense and one of the most celebrated thriller writers of the twentieth century—are “deliciously riveting, all the more so because Rendell’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” (The Guardian). In “The Thief,” 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 “Trebuchet.” In the title story, a caddish boor can’t help but boast of his infidelities. A historic murder weighs heavy on the unholy reputation of a quaint local landmark in “The Haunting of Shawley Rectory.” And in “Never Sleep in a Bed Facing a Mirror,” 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’s little wonder Joyce Carol Oates hails Ruth Rendell as “one of the finest practitioners of her craft.”