Showing results by author "Ruth Rendell" in All Categories

Wexford had almost made up his mind that he would never again set eyes on Eric Targo. And yet there he was, back in Kingsmarkham, still with that cocky, strutting walk. Years earlier, when Wexford was a young police officer, a woman called Elsie Carroll had been found strangled in her bedroom. Although many still had their suspicions that her husband was guilty, no one was convicted.

Victor Jenner has just been released from prison where he spent 10 years paying for the shooting and crippling of a young policeman. But his new freedom serves only to fuel his obsession with the events that precipitated his arrest.

Revenge is one of the great themes in literature, from Shakespeare to Poe. This collection contains 18 original stories commissioned for this volume plus a reprint of a classic Ruth Rendell mystery.

More of the Greatest Mysteries of All Time is the second in a series featuring the finest short story mystery fiction by the most acclaimed writers, past and present. From Thomas Hardy, O. Henry, Jack London, Vincent Starrett and everyone in between, this unique collection, edited by multi-award winning mystery connoisseur Otto Penzler, is a delightful mixture of mystery and suspense.

Sixteen-year-old Elvira's mother is dead. Elvira is sad, of course, but not so sad as her younger sister Spinny. Spinny is afraid their father, Luke, will be heartbroken, but Elvira knows better - after all, Luke has her to take her mother's place. But then Luke brings home a pretty young woman and introduces her as his fiancee, and Elvira decides that she will stop at nothing to stop her father's marriage.

Love and death are the principal players in these two BBC Radio full-cast dramatisations of chilling Ruth Rendell stories. In "The Bridesmaid", when Philip embarks on an affair with Senta, his sister's bridesmaid, she reminds him of the stone statue he adored as a child. Yet Senta is married, and Philip's overwhelming aversion to violence leads indirectly to murder and horror as he is drawn into erotic but murderous complicity.

Two damaged children: Teddy Brex, whom no-one loved, and so found it easier to relate to objects or things which never let him down; and Francine Hill, who was discovered sitting by the body of her mother, her skirt red with blood. She couldn’t tell the police or her father anything to help track down the killer.... Children grow up in different ways. Teddy became a handsome young man, Francine was beautiful - a sight for sore eyes. But it was death that brought them together.

Eve and Liza, Mother and Daughter, live a quiet life in their remote home; a rustic gatehouse of a country mansion. At first glance their lives appear quite ordinary, except that Liza has almost no knowledge of the outside world, has never played with a child her own age and has witnessed her mother commit murder, on multiple occasions.

A lump of concrete dropped deliberately from a little stone bridge kills the wrong person. The young woman in the car behind is spared. But only for a while... A few weeks later, George Marshalson lives every father's worst nightmare: he discovers the murdered body of his eighteen-year-old daughter on the side of the road. Wexford steps into the case but soon a second teenage girl is murdered - a victim unquestionably linked to the first - and another family is shattered...

Previously uncollected and unpublished: new short stories from a master of psychological suspense. New and uncollected tales of murder, mischief, magic and madness. Ruth Rendell was an acknowledged master of psychological suspense: these are 10 (and a quarter) of her most chillingly compelling short stories, collected here together for the first time.

When Dolly’s mother - her only friend - dies, 23-year-old Dolly becomes a second mom to her younger brother, Pup. Socially isolated and booze-addled, Dolly believes that Pup’s occult power, and a talisman he’s made for her, will give her the life she wants. But as Pup grows older and her father takes a new wife, her carefully constructed home begins to fall apart - and those around her begin to die. Is it coincidence, magic, or murder? With careful plotting and unnerving ease, Rendell delves into the inner life of an outcast.

'I think you know who killed your stepfather', said Wexford. So begins this scintillating collection of long and short stories by Ruth Rendell. It was clear both to Wexford and Burden that Tom Peterlee was not killed for 360 pounds, but various people would have liked them to think he was... It is a case which reminds the Chief Inspector that there is only a thin line dividing the cop from the criminal.

When Stuart Font decides to throw a house-warming party in his new flat, he invites all the people in his building. After some deliberation, he even includes the unpleasant caretaker and his wife. There are a few other genuine friends on the list, but he definitely does not want to include his girlfriend, as that might involve asking her husband. The party will be one everyone remembers. But not for the right reasons.

Most people would have screamed. Mrs Hathall made no sound. She had seen death many times before, but she had never before seen a death by violence. Heavily, she plodded across the room and descended the stairs to where her son waited. "There’s been an accident", she said. "Your wife’s dead." Chief Inspector Wexford could discover no motive, no reason and no suspect – all he had were his intuitive suspicions. Probably he was reading meaning where there was none; probably Angela Hathall really had picked up a stranger, and that stranger had killed her.

Sent to London for a rest by his doctor, Wexford can’t resist getting involved in the investigation of a mysterious murder. Read by TV’s Chief Inspector Wexford.

When Stuart Font decides to throw a housewarming party in his new flat, he invites all the people in his building. After some deliberation, he even includes the unpleasant caretaker and his wife. There are a few other genuine friends on the list, but he definitely does not want to include his girlfriend, as that might involve asking her husband. The party will be one everyone remembers. But not for the right reasons.

A collection of compelling short stories by the author of the Wexford novels.

Weeks went by when Ismay never thought of it at all. Then something would bring it back or it would return in a dream. The dream always began in the same way. She and her mother would be climbing the stairs, following Heather’s lead through the bedroom to what was on the other side, not a bathroom in the dream but a chamber floored and walled in marble. In the middle of it was a glassy lake.

In A Demon in My View, Ruth Rendell creates a character as frightening as he is fascinating. Mild-mannered Arthur Johnson has never known how to talk to women. And his loneliness has perverted his desire for love and respect into a carefully controlled penchant for violence. One floor below him, a scholar finishing his thesis on psychopathic personalities is about to stumble - quite literally - upon one of Arthur's many secrets.

In traditional fairytales the handsome prince rescues the beautiful princess from her wicked stepmother, and the couple live happily ever after. But in Ruth Rendell's dark and damaged contemporary universe, innocent dreams can turn into the most terrible nightmares.