Most Popular Books by Ruth 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.

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).

Chief Inspector Wexford can no longer bear to look at the natural beauty of Framhurst Great Wood, just outside his beloved town of Kingsmarkham, as it will soon be despoiled by the construction of a new highway. Wexford rather despairs of the project; his more sanguine wife, Dora, is active on a committee to save the threatened land. Others are more desperate to achieve their end, and their means include the taking of hostages, including Dora, and the threat to begin murdering them. Wexford and his dedicated team of police officers race against time to learn the identity of the kidnappers and discover the whereabouts of the hostages. But this mortal drama raises politcal and moral questions that are not resolved with the closing of the case and apply far beyond the limits of Kingsmarkham.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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

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 . . .

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.

He was young, arrogant, wealthy and in the bloom of health—or was he? “Undoubtedly one of the best writers of English mysteries and chiller-killer plots.”—The Los Angeles Times Like any small community, Linchester has its intrigues: love affairs, money problems, unhappy marriages. But the gossip is elevated to new heights when young Patrick Selby dies on the very night of his beautiful wife’s birthday party. The whole neighborhood was there, witness to the horrible attack of wasp stings Patrick suffered at the end of the evening. But did Patrick die of a wasp sting? Dr. Greenleaf thinks not. Heart failure, more likely. Still, Greenleaf isn’t at peace about his death. After all, everyone in Linchester hated Patrick. With the help of a certain naturalist, Dr. Greenleaf begins to think about murder. . . . “Rendell is awfully good.”—The New York Times Book Review

"A female Vicar named Sarah Hussein is discovered strangled in her Kingsmarkham Vicarage. A single-mother to a teenage girl, Hussein was a woman working in a male-dominated profession. Moreover, she was of mixed race and working to modernize the church. Could racism or sexism have played a factor in her murder? As he searches the Vicar''s, Wexford sees a book containing a letter serving as a bookmark. Wexford puts it into his pocket and soon realizes his grave error - the former policeman has taken away a piece of valuable evidence without telling anybody."--

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.

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.

Rhoda Comfrey''s death seemed unremarkable; the real mystery was her life. In A Sleeping Life, master mystery writer Ruth Rendell unveils an elaborate web of lies and deception painstakingly maintained by a troubled soul. A wallet found in Comfrey''s handbag leads Inspector Wexford to Mr. Grenville West, a writer whose plots revel in the blood, thunder, and passion of dramas of old; whose current whereabouts are unclear; and whose curious secretary -- the plain Polly Flinders -- provides the Inspector with more questions than answers. And when a second Grenville West comes to light, Wexford faces a dizzying array of possible scenarios -- and suspects -- behind the Comfrey murder. Brilliantly entertaining, exceptionally well-written, A Sleeping Life evokes the dark realities, half-truths, and flights of fancy that constitute a life.

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.

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.