Patricia Highsmith, Denise Mina

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 . . .

NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE, A KIND OF MURDER, STARRING PATRICK WILSON AND JESSICA BIEL By the bestselling author of The Talented Mr Ripley, Carol and Strangers on a Train'Almost unputdownable. Miss Highsmith writes about men like a spider writing about flies' OBSERVER'History will place Highsmith at the top of the pyramid' A. N. WILSON, DAILY TELEGRAPH 'Peerlessly disturbing . . . bad dreams that keep us thrashing for the rest of the night ' NEW YORKER For two years, the young, successful and handsome Walter Stackhouse has been a faithful and supportive husband to his wife, Clara. She is distant and neurotic, and Walter finds himself harbouring gruesome fantasies about her demise. Then 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. Under the intense scrutiny of the investigation he commits one mistake, then another, until - in true Highsmithian fashion - Walter finds his perfect life derailed. Now Walter is running from the obsessions of the murderer, and the suspicions of the lead cop, not to mention his own increasingly life-threatening blunders.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.

BY THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY AND STRANGERS ON A TRAIN INTRODUCED BY DENISE MINA'Highsmith is a giant of the genre. The original, the best, the gloriously twisted Queen of Suspense' MARK BILLINGHAM'She kind of takes you by the hand and walks you toward the cliff. I like that sensation' GILLIAN FLYNN 'One of Highsmith's finest novels' NEW YORK TIMES A gripping novel that explores the shifting sands of moral values - is murder still murder when committed in a lawless place?Howard Ingham, an American writer, is in Tunisia working on a screenplay, and feeling stranded. No one has written to him since he arrived - neither the film director who he is supposed to be meeting in Tunis, nor his lover in New York. The erratic mail eventually brings news of the director's suicide. For reasons obscure even to himself, Ingham decides to stay and work on a novel, but a series of events - a hushed-up murder and a vanished corpse - lures him inexorably into the deep, ambivalent shadows of the town; into deceit and away from conventional morality. Ultimately, what is in question is not justice or truth, but the state of his oddly quiet conscience. 'Highsmith is the poet of apprehension rather than fear . . . Highsmith's finest novel to my mind is The Tremor of Forgery, and if I were asked what it is about I would reply, "apprehension"' GRAHAM GREENE