New Releases by Ruth Rendell

INCLUDES AN EXCERPT OF RENDELL’S FINAL NOVEL, DARK CORNERS From crime legend Ruth Rendell, a psychologically intriguing novel about an old murder that sends shockwaves across a group of astonishingly carnal and appetiteful elderly friends: “Refined, probing, and intelligent…never less than a pleasure” (USA TODAY). In the waning months of the second World War, a group of children discover a tunnel in their neighborhood outside London. For that summer of 1944, the subterranean space becomes their “secret garden,” where the friends play games, tell their fortunes, and perform for each other. Six decades later, construction workers make a grisly discovery beneath a house on the same land: a tin box containing two skeletal hands, one male and one female. As the hands make national news, the friends come together once again, to recall their long ago days for a detective. Then the police investigation sputters, and the threads holding their friendship together begin to unravel. Is the truth buried amid the tangled relationships of these aging men and women and their memories? Will it emerge before it’s too late? Stephen King says, “no one surpasses Ruth Rendell when it comes to stories of obsession, instability, and malignant coincidence.” In The Girl Next Door—“yet another gem” (The Washington Post)—Rendell brilliantly shows that the choices people make, and the emotions behind them, remain as potent in late life as they were in youth. “Rendell’s wit, always mordant, has never been sharper than when she skewers patronizing assumptions about the elderly” (Chicago Tribune).

Stephen Whalby loves to walk the moor. He considers it his, although he and his young wife Lyn are merely tenants in a flat nearby. But the senseless and frightening murder of a young woman invades Stephen''s sense of privacy and pollutes his beloved moor with suspicion and dread. And then a second murder captures his imagination in an unpredictable and fascinating way . . .

Dazzling psychological suspense. Razor-sharp dialogue. Plots that catch and hold like a noose. These are the hallmarks of crime legend Ruth Rendell, “the best mystery writer in the English-speaking world” (Time magazine). From Doon with Death, now in a striking new paperback edition, is her classic debut novel—and the book that introduced one of the most popular sleuths of the twentieth century. There is nothing extraordinary about Margaret Parsons, a timid housewife in the quiet town of Kingsmarkham, a woman devoted to her garden, her kitchen, her husband. Except that Margaret Parsons is dead, brutally strangled, her body abandoned in the nearby woods. Who would kill someone with nothing to hide? Inspector Wexford, the formidable chief of police, feels baffled -- until he discovers Margaret''s dark secret: a trove of rare books, each volume breathlessly inscribed by a passionate lover identified only as Doon. As Wexford delves deeper into both Mrs. Parsons’ past and the wary community circling round her memory like wolves, the case builds with relentless momentum to a surprise finale as clever as it is blindsiding. In From Doon with Death, Ruth Rendell instantly mastered the form that would become synonymous with her name. Chilling, richly characterized, and ingeniously constructed, this is psychological suspense at its very finest. Praise for From Doon with Death “One of the most remarkable novelists of her generation.”—People “She has transcended her genre by her remarkable imaginative power to explore and illuminate the dark corners of the human psyche.”—P.D. James

Life in the well-manicured London locale of Hexam Place is not as placid and orderly as it appears. Behind the tranquil gardens and polished entryways, relationships between servants and their employers are set to combust. Henry, the handsome valet to Lord Studley, is sleeping with both the Lord''s wife and his university-age daughter. Montserrate, the Still family''s lazy au pair, is helping to hide Mrs. Still''s illicit affair with a television actor--for a small fee. June, the haughty housekeeper to a princess of dubious origin, is hard at work forming a "society" for servants to address complaints about their employers. Meanwhile, a disturbed gardener, Dex, believes a voice in his cellphone is giving him godlike instructions--that could endanger the lives of all who reside in Hexam Place. A deeply observed and suspenseful update to the upstairs/downstairs genre, The St. Zita Society is Ruth Rendell at her incisive best.

An "obsessively readable" mystery from the New York Times–bestselling author of Dark Corners about a century-old diary that holds clues to a murder ( The Sunday Telegraph). Asta Westerby is lonely. In 1905, shortly after coming to East London from Denmark with her husband and their two little boys, she feels like a stranger in a strange land. And it doesn''t help that her husband is constantly away on business. Fortunately, she finds solace in her diary—and she continues to do so until 1967. Decades later, her granddaughter, Ann, finds the journal, and it becomes a literary sensation, offering an intimate view of Edwardian life. But it also appears to hold the key to an unsolved murder and the disappearance of a child. A modern masterpiece by the Edgar Award–winning author of the Inspector Wexford Mysteries, and an excellent choice for readers of P. D. James, Ian Rankin, or Scott Turow, Asta''s Book is at once a crime story, a historical novel, and a psychological portrait told through the diary itself and through Ann, who is bent on unlocking the journal''s excised mystery.

From a New York Times–bestselling author: A novelist pieces together the murderous past of an old friend—"smoldering suspense . . . literally unputdownable" ( Time Out). When writer Lizzie Vetch has tea with her old friend, Bell Sanger, the women are reunited for the first time in nearly two decades. Limbo years, Lizzie calls them, full of "all the terrible things" that passed between them. Specifically, a murder for which Bell served time, and has only recently been released from prison. Seemingly out of kindness, Lizzie agrees to let Bell move back into the House of Stairs, the five-story Notting Hill boardinghouse where, seventeen years ago, a dreadful crime was committed. Maybe here, among the other odd residents, Lizzie can help pull Bell''s life together again. But is it compassion or something else? Because the more Lizzie''s long-suppressed memories are stirred, the more her motives for keeping Bell close are called into question. As for Bell, she has her own reasons for moving back into the House of Stairs with Lizzie. It''s not to put the past behind them. It''s to confront it, step by step. "Revealed in baleful flashbacks, a chilly obsession takes shape, a convicted murderess and a cruel design sidle out of the shadows" ( The Observer) in Edgar Award winner Ruth Rendell''s "compelling and disturbing" psychological thriller ( The Sunday Times).

From a New York Times–bestselling author: A terrifying psychological thriller that dives deep into the mind of a sexual predator. In a remote corner of London, a woman is walking her dog when a man grabs her from behind. She screams, and her attacker flees, escaping into a nearby house, where he finds another victim. Victor Jenner has a compulsion he does not understand—to grab women, to hurt them—and he also has a gun. When it goes off, grievously wounding a police officer, it marks the beginning of a long stretch in jail for Victor. Released ten years later, Victor meets the young policeman he shot—and falls head over heels for the officer''s girlfriend. Back on the street, Victor is torn between the desire to live a better life and the knowledge that he will soon give in to his most evil yearnings. The winner of three Edgar Awards, Ruth Rendell was one of the most celebrated thriller authors of the twentieth century. Live Flesh is "a superb work [and] a compelling psychological portrait" of a dark mind ( Philadelphia Daily News).

A psychological thriller about an isolated young woman and her murderous mother from the New York Times–bestselling author of The Girl Next Door. Far from London, the isolated estate called Shrove House looms over the English countryside. Inside, two women hide from the world. For sixteen years, Eve has protected her daughter, Liza, from the corrupting influence of modern life, never letting her outside, hiding her from those who visit, and killing to keep her safe. Raised in her mother''s shadow, Liza has never questioned that this is the way things must be—until the night the police come to call, and Liza flees into the darkness. Alone in the world for the first time, terrified that her mother''s murderous past may catch up with her, Liza does what she can to survive. Taking shelter with the groundskeeper, Liza delves into her own past, telling the story of her traumatic childhood as a way of finding a place for herself in this strange, terrifying new world. But she will soon find herself wondering how much like her mother she really is . . . Joyce Carol Oates called Ruth Rendell "one of the finest practitioners of her craft in the English-speaking world." In New York Times Notable Book The Crocodile Bird, this three-time Edgar Award winner shows the talent that made her one of the best.

Inspector Wexford returns in his most surprising case yet "He had never told anyone. The strange relationship, if it could be called that, had gone on for years, decades, and he had never breathed a word about it. He had kept silent because he knew no one would believe him. None of it could be proved, not the stalking, not the stares or the conspiratorial smiles, not the killings, not any of the signs Targo had made because he knew Wexford knew and could do nothing about it." Wexford had almost made up his mind that he would never again set eyes on Eric Targo''s short, muscular figure. 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. Another woman was strangled shortly afterwards, and every personal and professional instinct told Wexford that the killer was still at large. And it was Eric Targo. A psychopath who would kill again... As the Chief Inspector investigates a new case, Ruth Rendell looks back to the beginning of Wexford''s career, even to his courtship of the woman who would become his wife. The past is a haunted place, with clues and passions that leave an indelible imprint on the here and now.

Rendell delivers a captivating and intricate tale that weaves together the troubled lives of several people in the gentrified neighborhood of one of London''s most intriguing neighborhoods, Notting Hill--and the dangers beneath its newly posh veneer.

What on earth could have provoked a modern day St. Valentine''s Day massacre? On Valentine''s Day, four members of the Coverdale family--George, Jacqueline, Melinda and Giles--were murdered in the space of 15 minutes. Their housekeeper, Eunice Parchman, shot them, one by one, in the blue light of a televised performance of Don Giovanni. When Detective Chief Superintendent William Vetch arrests Miss Parchman two weeks later, he discovers a second tragedy: the key to the Valentine''s Day massacre hidden within a private humiliation Eunice Parchman has guarded all her life. A brilliant rendering of character, motive, and the heady discovery of truth, A Judgement in Stone is among Ruth Rendell''s finest psychological thrillers.

Two things interest Stanley Manning: crossword puzzles, and the substantial sum his wife Vera stands to inherit when his mother-in-law dies. Otherwise, life at 61 Lanchester Road is a living hell. For Mrs. Kinaway lives with them now—and she will stop at nothing to tear their marriage apart. One afternoon, Stanley sets aside his crossword puzzles and changes all their lives forever... In One Across, Two Down, master crime writer Ruth Rendell describes a man whose strained sanity and stained reputation transform him from a witless loser into a killer afraid of his own shadow. Mischievously plotted, smart, maddeningly entertaining, One Across, Two Down is a dark delight—classic Rendell.

The first victim had bite marks on her neck so the London papers nicknamed her killer, “the Rottweiler.” He has been stalking the small and diverse London community of Lisson Grove, where Inez Ferry runs an antique shop frequented by a motley collection of eccentric individuals. When the Rottweiler’s trinkets start showing up in the shop, suddenly, everyone Inez knows is a suspect, and the killer feels all too close. Enthralling and deeply unsettling, The Rottweiler alternates expertly between the mind of a psychopath and the daily affairs of those living in his shadow. It is a transfixing mystery that only Ruth Rendell could write.

Mary Jago had donated her own bone marrow to save the life of someone she didn''t know. And this generous act led directly to the bitter break-up of her affair with Alistair. But the man whose life she had saved would change Mary''s life in a way she could never have imagined. The Keys to the Street creates an atmospherically charged universe, where a young woman''s life is in danger from both the middle-class world she knows and another world of the dispossessed and deranged.

With floods threatening both the town of Kingsmarkham and his own home and no end to the rain in sight, Chief Inspector Wexford already has his hands full when he learns that two local teenagers have gone missing along with their sitter, Joanna Troy. Their hysterical mother is convinced that all three have drowned, and as the hours stretch into days Wexford suspects a case of kidnapping, perhaps connected with an unusual sect called the Church of the Good Gospel. But when the sitter'' s smashed-up car is found at the bottom of a local quarry- occupied by a battered corpse- the investigation takes on a very different hue. The Babes in the Wood is Ruth Rendell at her very best, a scintillating, precise and troubling story of seduction and religious fanaticism- and murder.

An Inspector Wexford mystery. He thought he was merely doing a neighbourly good deed when he agreed to talk to Joy Williams about her missing husband, and certainly didn''t expect to be investigating a most unusual homicide.

What kind of a person would kidnap two children? That is the question that haunts Wexford when a five-year-old boy and a twelve-year-old girl disappear from the village of Kingsmarkham. When a child''s body turns up at an abandoned country home one search turns into a murder investigation and the other turns into a race against time. Filled with pathos and terror, passion, bitterness, and loss, No More Dying Then is Rendell at her most chillingly astute. With her Inspector Wexford novels, Ruth Rendell, winner of the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award, has added layers of depth, realism and unease to the classic English mystery. For the canny, tireless, and unflappable policeman is an unblinking observer of human nature, whose study has taught him that under certain circumstances the most unlikely people are capable of the most appalling crimes.

A young girl is murdered in a cemetery. And Wexford''s doctor has prescribed no alcohol, no rich food and, above all, no police work. When a young girl''s body is found in a London cemetery and the local police, under the command of Wexford''s nephew, are baffled, Wexford decides to brave his doctor''s wrath and the condescension of the London police by doing a little investigating of his own. A compelling story of mysterious identity and untimely death, Murder Being Once Done is Rendell at her most sublime. With her Inspector Wexford novels, Ruth Rendell, winner of the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award, has added layers of depth, realism and unease to the classic English mystery. For the canny, tireless, and unflappable policeman is an unblinking observer of human nature, whose study has taught him that under certain circumstances the most unlikely people are capable of the most appalling crimes.

A mutilated body found at a rock festival. In spite of dire predictions, the rock festival in Kingsmarkham seemed to be going off without a hitch, until the hideously disfigured body is discovered in a nearby quarry. And soon Wexford is investigating the links between a local girl gone bad and a charismatic singer who inspires an unwholesome devotion in his followers. Some Lie and Some Die is a devilishly absorbing novel, in which Wexford''s deductive powers come up against the aloof arrogance of pop stardom. With her Inspector Wexford novels, Ruth Rendell, winner of the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award, has added layers of depth, realism and unease to the classic English mystery. For the canny, tireless, and unflappable policeman is an unblinking observer of human nature, whose study has taught him that under certain circumstances the most unlikely people are capable of the most appalling crimes.

Inspector Wexford confronts the terrifying world of domestic violence when a series of kidnappings leads back to his own daughter''s volunteer work at a shelter for battered women.

Ruth Rendell now delivers an all-new collection of long and short story mysteries.

Sir Manuel Camargue had just announced his i ntention of taking a second wife, fifty years his junior. On the same cold winter''''s day he died as a result of what was surely a tragic accident. But Wexford doubts that Camargue''''s death came by misadventure. ''

Investigating the disappearance of a missing girl, Chief Inspector Wexford discovers the murdered body of the person who last saw the girl alive and learns of another killing that may be connected

The Reverend Henry Archery has a problem. His son wants to marry the lovely, clever daughter of a man hanged sixteen years ago for a brutal axe-killing. So he decides that he must try and clear the dead criminal''s name. The girl''s mother has always maintained, in the teeth of the police''s evidence, that her daughter''s father was no murderer. And there are certain areas of doubt - more than one person had stood to gain by the victim''s death, for instance. So Archery starts digging. Soon, he unearths some disturbing fragments of previously buried information.

Chief Inspector Wexford investigates the circumstances surrounding a blood-soaked hotel room which lacks any other signs of a victim, and the disappearance of a beautiful, promiscuous woman and the bundle of cash she''d had in her pocket.