New Releases by Patricia Highsmith

Essential for understanding Patricia Highsmith’s transgressive life and prophetic work, this volume is also “one of the most observant and ecstatic accounts . . . about being young and alive in New York City” (Dwight Garner,—New York Times). Before Alfred Hitchcock adapted her debut novel, Strangers on a Train, for the big screen; before her suave and sociopathic Thomas Ripley snaked his way into the canon of psychological suspense; and before The Price of Salt became a cult classic of romantic obsession, who was Patricia Highsmith? Focused on her formative years in Manhattan, this condensed edition of Highsmith’s monumental Diaries and Notebooks reveals “Pat” at her most passionate and florescent. Beginning in 1941 at Barnard College and encompassing the Texas native’s adventurous twenties,?The New York Years intertwines scenes from her dizzying social life—rife with sleepless nights barhopping in the queer underground Greenwich Village scene, always juggling too many lovers—with an intimate self-portrait of a young artist who by day dispassionately wrote comics for a paycheck. Amid all the hangovers and the breakups, she read voraciously and honed her craft with verve. Laid bare in this perennial reader’s edition are the bold, hilarious, romantic, tragic, and maddeningly contradictory observations of one of “our greatest modernist writers” (Gore Vidal).

Penguin Readers is an ELT graded reader series. Please note that the eBook edition does NOT include access to the audio edition and digital book. Written for learners of English as a foreign language, each title includes carefully adapted text, new illustrations and language learning exercises. Titles include popular classics, exciting contemporary fiction, and thought-provoking non-fiction, introducing language learners to bestselling authors and compelling content. The eight levels of Penguin Readers follow the Common European Framework of Reference for language learning (CEFR). Exercises at the back of each Reader help language learners to practise grammar, vocabulary, and key exam skills. Before, during and after-reading questions test readers'' story comprehension and develop vocabulary. The Talented Mr Ripley, a Level 6 Reader, is B1+ in the CEFR framework. The longer text is made up of sentences with up to four clauses, introducing future continuous, reported questions, third conditional, was going to and ellipsis. A small number of illustrations support the text. In the 1950s, Tom Ripley travels from the United States of America to Italy, to find Dickie Greenleaf and bring him home to his father. But when Tom sees Dickie''s money and relaxed way of life, he becomes jealous and begins to make other plans. Visit the Penguin Readers website Register to access online resources including tests, worksheets and answer keys. Exclusively with the print edition, readers can unlock a digital book and audio edition (not available with the eBook).

Five gripping plays based on Patricia Highsmith''s bestselling ''Ripley'' series - plus bonus material Charming, cultured and clever, Tom Ripley has a taste for the finer things in life. And he is determined to get them, by any means necessary... These five plays - The Talented Mr Ripley, Ripley Under Ground, Ripley''s Game, The Boy Who Followed Ripley and Ripley Under Water - chart Tom''s journey from impoverished conman to wealthy bon viveur and serial killer. His homicidal adventures begin when he befriends shipping heir Dickie Greenleaf: he wants money, success, and he''s willing to kill for it. But when he attains the luxurious lifestyle he craves, he is always on the edge of being discovered. Will his shadowy past finally catch up with him? BAFTA-winning actor Ian Hart stars as Ripley in these tense, thrilling dramas. Also included are two bonus documentaries: Looking for Ripley, in which crime writer Mark Billingham unravels the mystery behind our lasting fascination with Tom Ripley, and A Passionate Affair, presented by Marcel Berlins, who asks whether Patricia Highsmith fell in love with her suave, amoral anti-hero. Text © 1993 by Diogenes Verlag AG Zurich, all rights reserved. © 2021 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd (p) 2021 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd

New York Times • Times Critics Top Books of 2021 The Times (of London) • Best Books of the Year Excerpted in The New Yorker Profiled in The Los Angeles Times 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). 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 The Price of Salt (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 The Talented Mr. Ripley (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, Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks is an historic work that chronicles a woman’s rise against the conventional tide to unparalleled literary prominence.

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.

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.

“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.

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.''

"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.

"En El talento de Mr. Ripley, la más célebre novela de Patricia Highsmith, aparece su más fascinante personaje: el inquietante y amoral Tom Ripley, figura prototípica de un género que Highsmith inventó, que se sitúa entre la novela policíaca y la novela negra, entre Graham Greene y Raymond Chandler, donde el más trepidante suspense se aúna a un vertiginoso análisis psicológico. Mr. Greenleaf, un millonario americano, le pide a Tom Ripley que intente convencer a su hijo Dickie de que regrese al hogar. Tom acepta el encargo ?de paso pone tierra por medio a posibles problemas policiales? y encuentra a Dickie y a su amiga Marga, con quienes establece una turbia relación que desemboca en el crimen y el engaño. Con el título de A pleno sol, la novela fue llevada al cine en 1960 por René Clement, con Alain Delon en el papel de Ripley." Tomado de la fuente.

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.

Named by The Times as the all-time number one crime writer, Patricia Highsmith was an author who broke new ground and defied genre clichés with novels such as The Talented Mr Ripley and Strangers on a Train. In the classic creative writing guide Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction, Highsmith reveals her secrets for producing world-class crime and thrillers, from imaginative tips for generating ideas to useful ways of turning them into stunning stories.

"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.

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.

The legendary writer Patricia Highsmith is best remembered today for her chilling psychological thrillers The Talented Mr. Ripley and Strangers on a Train. A critically acclaimed best seller in Europe, Highsmith has for too long been underappreciated in the United States. Starting in 2011, Grove Press will begin to reissue nine of Highsmith’s works. Eleven is Highsmith’s first collection of short stories, an arresting group of dark masterpieces of obsession and foreboding, violence and instability. Here naturalists meet gruesome ends and unhinged heroes disturb our sympathies. This is a captivating, important collection from “one of the truly brilliant short-story writers of the twentieth century” (Otto Penzler).

"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, a picture of happy domesticity that brings him peace. Soon, Robert can''t keep himself away. But when he is inevitably discovered, obsession is turned on its head, and Robert finds himself unable to shake the young woman, nor entirely sure whether he should"--P. [4] of cover.

Tom Ripley stops at nothing to accomplish his goals.

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.

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.

A brilliant collection of stories from the creator of Tom Ripley.

"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.

With Norton''s publication of The Black House, Patricia Highsmith''s entire body of work is now back in print. First published in 1981, this volume is one of Highsmith''s most nuanced and psychologically suspenseful works. The stories in The Black House mine classic Highsmith terrain as they sketch the lives of suburban dwellers that appear quite normal at first but unravel to reveal their proximity to the macabre. This collection is a perfect example of Highsmith''s view of human nature and a fitting capstone to the reintroduction of one of the twentieth century''s greatest writers.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

The great revival of interest in Highsmith continues with "Deep Water, " set in the small town of Little Wesley. Vic and Melinda''s loveless marriage is held together only by Melinda''s extramarital affairs. Eventually, Vic tries to win her back by asserting himself through a tall tale of murder--one that soon comes true.