Patricia Highsmith

Long out of print, this Highsmith classic resurfaces with a vengeance. The great revival of interest in Patricia Highsmith continues with the publication of this novel that will give dog owners nightmares for years to come. With an eerie simplicity of style, Highsmith turns our next-door neighbors into sadistic psychopaths, lying in wait among white picket fences and manicured lawns. In A Dog's Ransom, Highsmith blends a savage humor with brilliant social satire in this dark tale of a highminded criminal who hits a wealthy Manhattan couple where it hurts the most when he kidnaps their beloved poodle. This work attesets to Highsmith's reputation as "the poet of apprehension" (Graham Greene).

<B>An "elegant and psychologically sophisticated" novel about two men with a murdered women between them (<I>Cleveland Plain Dealer</I>).</B><br/>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. The two form an unlikely friendship, until Lelia is found brutally murdered. Both are suspects&#8212;and each suspects the other.<br/>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. An atmospheric, psychologically complex novel, <I>A Game for the Living</I> is Highsmith at her best. <p>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. </p> <p>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 the sundrenched Acapulco, and to a small colonial mountain town. A thrilling, psychologically complex novel, rich with setting, <em>A Game for the Living</em> is Highsmith at her best.</p><h3>Review</h3> <p><strong>Praise for</strong> A Game for the Living </p> <p>“Patricia Highsmith is often described as a mystery or crime writer, which is a bit like calling Picasso a draftsman. The statement contains a measure of truth, but what it leaves out is almost everything. . . . [ <em>A Game for the Living</em> is] an elegant and psychologically sophisticated morality play. . . . All of it reveals Highsmith to be in fine form.”— <em>Cleveland Plain Dealer</em> </p> <p>“Classic.”— <em>USA Today</em> </p> <p>“There’s no thriller writer’s gamesmanship in her novels, none of the reassuring trickery of professional pulp; Highsmith’s style is as blunt and straightforward as a strip-search.”— <em>New Yorker</em> </p> <p>“A coolly analytic study of friendship, neurosis, and grief.”— <em>Mystery News</em> </p> <p><strong>Praise for Patricia Highsmith</strong> </p> <p>"[Highsmith's] characters are irrational, and they leap to life in their very lack of reason. . . . Highsmith is the poet of apprehension rather than fear."—Graham Greene </p> <p>"For some obscure reason, one of our greatest modernist writers, Patricia Highsmith, has been thought of in her own land as a writer of thrillers. She is both. She is certainly one of the most interesting writers of this dismal century."—Gore Vidal </p> <p>"Miss Highsmith's genius is in presenting fantasy's paradox: successes are not what they seem. . . . Where in the traditional fairy tale the heroine turns the toad into a prince, in Miss Highsmith's fables the prince becomes a toad—success is nearly always fatal. . . . Combining the best features of the suspense genre with the best of existential fiction—a reflection—the stories are fabulous, in all the senses of that word."—Paul Theroux </p> <p>"Patricia Highsmith's novels are peerlessly disturbing—bad dreams that keep us restless and thrashing for the rest of the night."—Terrence Rafferty, <em>New Yorker</em> </p> <p>"Highsmith, who can change reality to nightmare with one well-turned phrase, is a legendary crime writer."— <em>Cleveland Plain Dealer</em></p> <h3>About the Author</h3> <p><strong>Patricia Highsmith</strong> was born in Texas in 1921, raised in New York, and lived most of her adult life in Europe. A graduate of Barnard College, prior to her career as a novelist, Highsmith wrote stories for comic books and, on Truman Capote’s recommendation, was a resident at Yaddo. She was the author of 22 novels and seven collections of stories. She died in 1995. </p> <p>Ram&#243;n, 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.<BR>Twisting in a limbo of tension and doubt, Ram&#243;n 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, <I>A Game for the Living</I> is Highsmith at her best.

A major new reissue of the work of a classic noir novelist. With the acclaim for The Talented Mr. Ripley, more film projects in production, and two biographies forthcoming, expatriate legend Patricia Highsmith would be shocked to see that she has finally arrived in her homeland. Throughout her career, Highsmith brought a keen literary eye and a genius for plumbing the psychopathic mind to more than thirty works of fiction, unparalleled in their placid deviousness and sardonic humor. With deadpan accuracy, she delighted in creating true sociopaths in the guise of the everyday man or woman. Now, one of her finest works is again in print: A Suspension of Mercy, a masterpiece of noir fantasy. With this novel, Highsmith revels in eliciting the unsettling psychological forces that lurk beneath the surface of everyday contemporary life. "For eliciting the menace that lurks in familiar surroundings, there's no one like Patricia Highsmith. "—Time "Highsmith's novels are peerlessly disturbing ....bad dreams that keep us thrashing for the rest of the night. "—The New Yorker

Now a major motion picture starring Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas In Deep Water, set in the quiet, small town of Little Wesley, Patricia Highsmith has created a vicious and suspenseful tale of love gone sour. Vic and Melinda Van Allen's loveless marriage is held together only by a precarious arrangement whereby, in order to avoid the messiness of divorce, Melinda is allowed to take any number of lovers as long as she does not desert her family. Eventually, Vic can no longer suppress his jealousy and tries to win back his wife by asserting himself through a tall tale of murder—one that soon comes true. In this complex portrayal of a dangerous psychosis emerging in the most unlikely of places, Highsmith examines the chilling reality behind the idyllic facade of American suburban life.

BY THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY, CAROL AND STRANGERS ON A TRAININTRODUCED 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 . . .

Short stories of suspense by the author of Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley—“a brilliant collection” with a foreword by Graham Greene (The Sunday Times). Master of tension Patricia Highsmith is best known for her novels of ever-increasing suspense, but she is equally adept at the short story, where “she is after the quick kill rather than the slow encirclement of the reader.” Eleven is Highsmith’s first collection of short stories—dark masterpieces of obsession and foreboding, violence and instability (Graham Greene, from the foreword). In these pages, naturalists meet gruesome ends and unhinged heroes disturb our sympathies; simple cases of murder turn out to be something even more sinister, and the cruelties of childhood come to unsettling life. This is a captivating, important collection from “one of the truly brilliant short-story writers of the twentieth century” (Otto Penzler).

**A chilling novel of desire and obsession in 1980s New York from the author “who can change reality to nightmare with one well-turned phrase”** (Cleveland Plain Dealer **).** Elsie Tyler turns heads wherever she goes. After leaving her upstate hometown 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. *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.

"These stories, once you get the hang of them, are very wicked, very funny and—this being Highsmith’s mission in life, as far as one can tell—very unsettling. " —The Guardian With an eerie simplicity of style, Highsmith turns our next-door neighbors into sadistic psychopaths, lying in wait among white picket fences and manicured lawns. In the darkly satiric, often mordantly hilarious sketches that make up Little Tales of Misogyny, Highsmith upsets our conventional notions of female character, revealing the devastating power of these once familiar creatures—"The Dancer," "The Female Novelist," "The Prude"—who destroy both themselves and the men around them. This work attests to Highsmith's reputation as "the poet of apprehension" (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. The stories collected in Mermaids on the Golf Course are among Highsmith's most mature, psychologically penetrating works. As in the title story, in which a man's brush with death endows his everyday desires with tragic consequences, the warm familiarities of middle-class life become the eerie setting for Highsmith's chilling portrayals of violence, secrecy, and madness.

"Highsmith is no more a practitioner of the murder mystery genre...than are Doestoevsky, Faulkner and Camus. "—Joan Smith, Los Angeles Times The Patricia Highsmith renaissance continues with Nothing That Meets the Eye, a brilliant collection of twenty-eight psychologically penetrating stories, a great majority of which are published for the first time in this collection. This volume spans almost fifty years of Highsmith's career and establishes her as a permanent member of our American literary canon, as attested by recent publication of two of these stories in The New Yorker and Harper's. The stories assembled in Nothing That Meets the Eye, written between 1938 and 1982, are vintage Highsmith: a gigolo-like psychopath preys on unfulfilled career women; a lonely spinster's fragile hold on reality is tethered to the bottle; an estranged postal worker invents homicidal fantasies about his coworkers. While some stories anticipate the diabolical narratives of the Ripley novels, others possess a Capra-like sweetness that forces us to see the author in a new light. From this new collection, a remarkable portrait of the American psyche at mid-century emerges, unforgettably distilled by the inimitable eye of Patricia Highsmith. A New York Times Notable Book and a Washington Post Rave of 2002.

<p><strong>New York Times &#8226; Times Critics Top Books of 2021<br/>The Times (of London) &#8226; Best Books of the Year<br/>Excerpted in The New Yorker<br/>Profiled in The Los Angeles Times</strong></p><strong>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).</strong><p>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&#8212;with tantalizing instructions to be read.</p><p>For years thereafter, von Planta meticulously culled from... <div> <p><strong>Publishing for the centenary of her birth, Patricia Highsmith’s diaries “offer the most complete picture ever published” of the canonical author ( </strong><span style="font-weight: 600; font-style: italic">New York Times</span><strong> ).</strong> 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 <em>The Price of Salt</em> (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 <em>The Talented Mr. Ripley</em> (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, <em>Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks</em> is an historic work that chronicles a woman’s rise against the conventional tide to unparalleled literary prominence. 5 illustrations </p></div>

<p><strong>"Ripley is an unmistakable descendant of Gatsby, that 'penniless young man without a past' who will stop at nothing."&#8212;Frank Rich</strong></p>Now part of American film and literary lore, Tom Ripley, "a bisexual psychopath and art forger who murders without remorse when his comforts are threatened" (New York Times Book Review), was Patricia Highsmith's favorite creation. In these volumes, we find Ripley ensconced on a French estate with a wealthy wife, a world-class art collection, and a past to hide. In Ripley Under Ground (1970), an art forgery goes awry and Ripley is threatened with exposure; in The Boy Who Followed Ripley (1980), Highsmith explores Ripley's bizarrely paternal relationship with a troubled young runaway, whose abduction draws them into Berlin's seamy underworld; and in Ripley Under Water (1991), Ripley is confronted by a snooping American couple obsessed with the disappearance of an art collector who visited Ripley years before. More than any... <div><p><strong>"Ripley is an unmistakable descendant of Gatsby, that 'penniless young man without a past' who will stop at nothing."—Frank Rich</strong></p><p>Now part of American film and literary lore, Tom Ripley, "a bisexual psychopath and art forger who murders without remorse when his comforts are threatened" (<em>New York Times Book Review</em>), was Patricia Highsmith's favorite creation. In these volumes, we find Ripley ensconced on a French estate with a wealthy wife, a world-class art collection, and a past to hide. In <em>Ripley Under Ground</em> (1970), an art forgery goes awry and Ripley is threatened with exposure; in <em>The Boy Who Followed Ripley</em> (1980), Highsmith explores Ripley's bizarrely paternal relationship with a troubled young runaway, whose abduction draws them into Berlin's seamy underworld; and in <em>Ripley Under Water</em> (1991), Ripley is confronted by a snooping American couple obsessed with the disappearance of an art collector who visited Ripley years before. More than any other American literary character, Ripley provides "a lens to peer into the sinister machinations of human behavior" (John Freeman, <em>Pittsburgh Gazette</em>).</p><h3>Review</h3><p>"In Ripley Under Ground Patricia Highsmith is in her most brilliant form" Daily Telegraph "The No.1 Greatest Crime Writer" The Times "Ripley Under Ground is Highsmith back on top of her most enjoyable humour-and-horrors form" Sunday Telegraph "By her hypnotic art Highsmith puts the suspense story into a toweringly high place in the hierachy of fiction" The Times "The Ripley books are marvellously, insanely readable" The Times </p><h3>From the Inside Flap</h3><p>In this harrowing illumination of the psychotic mind, the enviable 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 such a gracious life has not come easily. One inopportune inquiry, one inconvenient friend, and Ripley's world will come tumbling down--unless he takes decisive steps. In a mesmerizing novel that coolly subverts all traditional notions of literary justice, Ripley enthralls us even as we watch him perform acts of pure and unspeakable evil. </p></div>

"Ripley is an unmistakable descendant of Gatsby, that 'penniless young man without a past' who will stop at nothing. " —Frank Rich Now part of American film and literary lore, Tom Ripley, "a bisexual psychopath and art forger who murders without remorse when his comforts are threatened" (New York Times Book Review), was Patricia Highsmith's favorite creation. In these volumes, we find Ripley ensconced on a French estate with a wealthy wife, a world-class art collection, and a past to hide. In Ripley Under Ground (1970), an art forgery goes awry and Ripley is threatened with exposure; in The Boy Who Followed Ripley (1980), Highsmith explores Ripley's bizarrely paternal relationship with a troubled young runaway, whose abduction draws them into Berlin's seamy underworld; and in Ripley Under Water (1991), Ripley is confronted by a snooping American couple obsessed with the disappearance of an art collector who visited Ripley years before. More than any other American literary character, Ripley provides "a lens to peer into the sinister machinations of human behavior" (John Freeman, Pittsburgh Gazette).

With its sinister humor and genius plotting, Ripley's Game is an enduring portrait of a compulsive, sociopathic American antihero. Living on his posh French estate with his elegant heiress wife, Tom Ripley, on the cusp of middle age, is no longer the striving comer of The Talented Mr. Ripley. Having accrued considerable wealth through a long career of crime—forgery, extortion, serial murder—Ripley still finds his appetite unquenched and longs to get back in the game. In Ripley's Game, first published in 1974, Patricia Highsmith's classic chameleon relishes the opportunity to simultaneously repay an insult and help a friend commit a crime—and escape the doldrums of his idyllic retirement. This third novel in Highsmith's series is one of her most psychologically nuanced—particularly memorable for its dark, absurd humor—and was hailed by critics for its ability to manipulate the tropes of the genre. With the creation of Ripley, one of literature's most seductive sociopaths, Highsmith anticipated the likes of Norman Bates and Hannibal Lecter years before their appearance.

"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.

"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.

**"For eliciting the menace that lurks in familiar surroundings, there's no one like Patricia Highsmith." ―** Time The world of Patricia Highsmith has always been filled with ordinary people, all of whom are capable of very ordinary crimes. This theme was present from the beginning, when her debut, *Strangers on a Train* , galvanized the reading public. Here we encounter Guy Haines and Charles Anthony Bruno, passengers on the same train. But while Guy is a successful architect in the midst of a divorce, Bruno turns out to be a sadistic psychopath who manipulates Guy into swapping murders with him. "Some people are better off dead," Bruno remarks, "like your wife and my father, for instance." As Bruno carries out his twisted plan, Guy is trapped in Highsmith's perilous world, where, under the right circumstances, anybody is capable of murder. The inspiration for Alfred Hitchcock's classic 1951 film, *Strangers on a Train* launched Highsmith on a prolific career of *noir* fiction, proving her a master at depicting the unsettling forces that tremble beneath the surface of everyday contemporary life.

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.

Short stories filled with “satire, mischief, and menace” by the author of The Talented Mr. Ripley (Harper’s Bazaar). These ten stories chronicle a world gone slightly mad, with dark, inventive takes on environmental degradation, apocalyptic disaster, political chaos, religious conservatism, and more. From a winner of both an O. Henry Award and a Silver Dagger Award, among other honors, and the author of Strangers on a Train, the basis for the classic Hitchcock film, this collection of short fiction is filled with “afterimages that will tremble—but stay—in our minds” (The New Yorker). “Whereas we read Stephen King or Ruth Rendell to relish the thrills that come from carefully controlled verbal terror, Highsmith is not to be taken so lightly. She conveys a firm, unshakable belief in the existence of evil—personal, psychological, and political. . . . The genius of Tales—and all of Highsmith’s writing—is that it is at once deeply disturbing and exhilarating.” —The Boston Phoenix “Combining the best features of the suspense genre with the best of existential fiction . . . The stories are fabulous, in all senses of that word.” —Paul Theroux

"Grisly and atmospheric…[these] stories feature small worlds of animal amorality in which the sweet taste of revenge leaves no aftertaste of guilt. " —Publishers Weekly Nowhere is Patricia Highsmith's affinity for animals more apparent than in The Animal-Lover's Book of Beastly Murder, for here she transfers the murderous thoughts and rages most associated with humans onto the animals themselves. You will meet, for example, in "In the Dead of Truffle Season," a truffle-hunting pig who tries to whet his own appetite for a while; or Jumbo in "Chorus Girl's Absolutely Final Performance," a lonely, old circus elephant who decides she's had enough of show business and cruel trainers for one lifetime. In this satirical reprise of Kafka, cats, dogs, and breeding rodents are no longer ordinary beings in the happy home, but actually have the power to destroy the world in which we live.

"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.

"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.

"Ripley is an unmistakable descendant of Gatsby, that 'penniless young man without a past' who will stop at nothing. " —Frank Rich The Boy Who Followed Ripley, the fourth novel in the Ripley series, is one of Patricia Highsmith's darkest and most twisted creations. Tom Ripley meets a young American runaway who has a dark secret that he is desperate to hide. Soon this unlikely pair is drawn into the seamy underworld of Berlin and a shocking kidnapping. In this masterful thriller, Highsmith shatters our perceptions of her most famous creation by letting us glimpse a more compassionate side of this amoral charmer.

A man’s obsession with a beautiful woman leads to danger in this psychological thriller by the author of The Talented Mr. Ripley and The Price of Salt. 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. Soon, he can’t keep himself away. But when Robert is inevitably discovered, obsession is turned on its head, and he finds himself unable to shake the young woman, nor entirely sure whether he should. From Patricia Highsmith, once called “the balladeer of stalking” by The New Yorker, The Cry of the Owl is a modern classic ready to be reborn. Praise for The Cry of the Owl“Kafka with a vengeance.” —The Spectator (London)“Highsmith generates suspense out of a different sort of fear: not the fear of death, which drives most crime-centered entertainment, but the pettier, more intimate dread of humiliation, of being caught on the street with nothing on. . . . There’s something else here, hard to identify, pulling us along relentlessly, as thrillers do—an undertow, a surge of third-rail current.” —The New Yorker“The Cry of the Owl is a deceptively easy stroll toward personal chaos and destruction. It is thoroughly chilling because nothing seems farfetched. Odd, yes, but believable. . . . The Cry of the Owl is creepy and unsettling, a taut psychological thriller.” —Linnea Lannon, Detroit Free Press“One of her lesser-known works . . . and one of her most unsettling. Which is saying plenty. . . . The crime writer Elmore Leonard has written a host of novels with the same basic plot: Plans go wrong. The story message driving all of Highsmith’s work is similarly simple and clear: We live on thin ice. Highsmith revolts some readers, yet hypnotizes many others. She’s sui generis, a writer of almost occult power.” —Richard Rayner, Los Angeles Times

At last back in print, one of Patricia Highsmith's most disturbing works. Rife with overtones of Dostoyevsky, The Glass Cell, first published forty years ago, combines a quintessential Highsmith mystery with a penetrating critique of the psychological devastation wrought by the prison system. Falsely convicted of fraud, the easygoing but naïve Philip Carter is sentenced to six lonely, drug-ravaged years in prison. Upon his release, Carter is a more suspicious and violent man. For those around him, earning back his trust can mean the difference between life and death. The Glass Cell's bleak and compelling portrait of daily prison life—and the consequences for those who live it—is, sadly, as relevant today as it was when the book was first published in 1964.

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.

An expatriate is beset by dark temptations in this tale by the author of The Talented Mr. Ripley: “Her best novel” (The New Yorker). Set in Tunisia in the mid-1960s, this 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 toward the girlfriend he left behind in New York—but his feelings start to change when she doesn’t answer his increasingly aggravated letters, and 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, Ingham tries to pass the time by working on a writing project. But a series of peculiar events—a hushed-up murder, a vanished corpse, secret broadcasts to the Soviet Union—will pull him in, and may finally put his increasingly fragile sense of morality to the test. “Highsmith’s finest novel.” —Graham Greene, author of The Quiet American “Her books have stylistic texture, psychological depth, mesmeric readability.” —The Sunday Times

The award-winning “classic psychological thriller” by the author of Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley (USA Today). In a grubby Athens hotel, Rydal Keener is bored and killing time with petty scams. But when he runs into another American, Chester MacFarland, dragging a man’s body down the hotel hall, Rydal impulsively agrees to help, perhaps because Chester looks like his father. Then Rydal meets Collete, Chester’s younger wife, and captivated, becomes entangled in their sordid lives, as the drama marches to a shocking climax at the ruins of the labyrinth at Knossos. A winner of a Crime Writers of America award, The Two Faces of January was the basis of a film starring Viggo Mortensen, Kirsten Dunst, and Oscar Isaac. “An offbeat, provocative and absorbing suspense novel.” —The New York Times “Patricia Highsmith is one of the few suspense writers whose work transcends genre.” —The Austin American-Statesman

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.

**“Patricia Highsmith’s novels are peerlessly disturbing . . . bad dreams that keep us thrashing for the rest of the night.” —** The New Yorker Ray Garrett, a wealthy young American living in Europe, is grieving over the death of his wife. Ray is at a loss for why she would take her own life, but Peggy’s father Ed Coleman, 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 with 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* becomes a literary thriller that simmers with violence and unease from the acclaimed author of such classics as *Strangers on a Train* and *The Talented Mr. Ripley*. “An atmosphere of nameless dread, of unspeakable foreboding, permeates every page of Patricia Highsmith.” — *The Boston Globe* “For eliciting the menace that lurks in familiar surroundings, there’s no one like Patricia Highsmith.” — *Time*