Most Popular Books by Ruth Rendell

Readers of PD James, Ann Cleeves and Donna Leon will love this utterly compelling and captivating thriller from multi-million copy and SUNDAY TIMES bestselling author Ruth Rendell. Full of suspense, this will have you hooked from page one... ''With immaculate control, Ruth Rendell builds a menacing crescendo of tension and horror that keeps you guessing right up to the brilliantly paced finale'' -- Good Housekeeping ''Another cracking tale to keep you guessing right until the end'' -- ***** Reader review ''Lost sleep with this one as I really wanted to finish it and find out what went on'' -- ***** Reader review ''Maybe the best Wexford mystery...'' -- ***** Reader review ''Could not put it down'' -- ***** Reader review ************************************************************************ A by-pass is planned in the sleepy village of Kingsmarkham, a move that would destroy its peace and natural habitat forever. Wexford''s wife Dora joins the protest movement, but Wexford must be more circumspect. Trouble is expected. Before the protesters even have a chance to make their presence felt, the badly decomposed body of a young woman is discovered. Burden believes he knows the identity of the murderer, but Wexford is not convinced. Just as Wexford is about to investigate the murder, a number of people disappear - including Dora Wexford. The Chief Inspector must battle with his powerful emotions and solve the case immediately, before his wife is placed in any mortal danger...

Edgar Award Finalist: In London, a missing child unites three mothers in grief, madness, and murder. When Benet Archdale was a young girl in North London, her mother, Mopsa, made her nervous. The woman was unsound, and posed ever-present dangers. Yet Benet understood her sickness and forgave her threats. In pursuit of a relatively sane life as a novelist and loving single parent, Benet has since kept Mopsa at a distance. But it''s not only the sudden death of Benet''s two-year-old son that shakes her safe world. It''s the past. Mopsa has returned to be at her inconsolable daughter''s side. Nurturing, rational, and seemingly cured, Mopsa is going to do everything she can to ease Benet''s grief. Then, on the other side of town, the child of a barmaid has gone missing. Authorities fear the search can''t end well. As Benet and Mopsa are drawn into the disappearance, the secrets, lies, and desperation of three mothers will converge—by chance and by design. For them, it''s a crime that is at once a delusion, an escape, and a nightmare. "No one surpasses Ruth Rendell when it comes to stories of obsession, instability, and malignant coincidence," says Stephen King of this New York Times–bestselling author, and all three come into play in this novel, a winner of the Crime Writers'' Association Silver Dagger Award. A classic of psychological suspense, The Tree of Hands was adapted twice for the screen: first in 1989, as Innocent Victim starring Lauren Bacall and Helen Shaver; then again in 2001, for the French film Alias Betty.

The stag party was terrific. The incident that followed was terrifying. . . . “The best mystery writer anywere in the English-speaking world.”—The Boston Globe Who could have suspected that the exciting stag party for the groom would be a prelude to the murder of his close friend Charlie Hatton? But it was—and Charlie''s death sentence was only the first in a string of puzzling murders involving small-time gangsters, cheating husbands, and loose women. Suspense is spiced with ironic twists as Chief Inspector Wexford and his assistant join forces with the groom to track down a killer. . . . Praise for The Best Man to Die “You cannot afford to miss Ruth Rendell!”—The New York Times Book Review “For readers who have almost given up mysteries . . . Rendell may be just the woman to get them started again.”—Ellery Queen''s Mystery Magazine “First-rate entertainment.”—Saturday Review

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

This captivating novel about residents and servants on one block of a posh London street is a “sex comedy and a social satire, of the ‘Upstairs Downstairs’ variety, with a few murders mixed in for our added delight” (The Washington Post Book World). *Includes an excerpt of Rendell''s final novel, Dark Corners * Life on Hexam Place appears orderly on the outside: drivers take their employers to and from work, dogs are walked, flowers are planted in gardens. But beneath this tranquil veneer, this quintessentially London world of servants and their masters is set to combust. Henry, the handsome valet to Lord Studley, is sleeping with both the Lord’s wife and his university-age daughter. Montserrat, the Still family’s lazy au pair, assists Mrs. Still in keeping secret her illicit affair with a television actor—in exchange for pocket cash. June, the haughty housekeeper to a princess of dubious origin, tries to enlist her fellow house-helpers into a “society” to address complaints about their employers. Meanwhile, Dex, the disturbed gardener to several families on the block, thinks a voice on his cell phone is giving him godlike instructions—commands that could imperil the lives of all those in Hexam Place.

Carl Martin''s life begins to unravel in ways he never could have imagined when a friend he sold homeopathic diet pills to turns up dead and his new tenant, Dermot McKinnon, begins to blackmail him.

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 the multi-award-winning author of The Babes in the Wood and The Rottweiler, a chilling new novel about obsession, superstition, and violence, set in Rendell’s darkly atmospheric London. Mix Cellini (which he pronounces with an ‘S’ rather than a ‘C’) is superstitious about the number 13. In musty old St. Blaise House, where he is the lodger, there are thirteen steps down to the landing below his rooms, which he keeps spick and span. His elderly landlady, Gwendolen Chawcer, was born in St. Blaise House, and lives her life almost exclusively through her library of books, so cannot see the decay and neglect around her. The Notting Hill neighbourhood has changed radically over the last fifty years, and 10 Rillington Place, where the notorious John Christie committed a series of foul murders, has been torn down. Mix is obsessed with the life of Christie and his small library is composed entirely of books on the subject. He has also developed a passion for a beautiful model who lives nearby — a woman who would not look at him twice. Both landlady and lodger inhabit weird worlds of their own. But when reality intrudes into Mix’s life, a long pent-up violence explodes.

On the day Lizzie came back from the dead, the police and her family and neighbors had already begun to search for her body. She had been missing for three days. Never an articulate child, between her confusion and amnesia she could not plausibly describe where she''d been or why she''d been away. Soon after, a convicted pedophile is released back into the community, adding to the already heightened fears of parents in the Muriel Campden Estate where he lives. Then the child of a wealthy executive disappears, and not long after, a suspect in the kidnapping is found stabbed to death. Chief Inspector Wexford is charged with solving the mysterious disappearances, protecting a pedophile, and catching a killer. As he searches for connections, he finds himself focusing on domestic violence. His daughter, Sylvia, a social worker, has come to work nearby in a refuge for battered women called The Hide. Her marriage is also strained, although her husband has never raised a hand to her. Others in Kingsmarkham are not so fortunate. As Wexford moves closer to the truth, he confronts the discomfiting lesson that when it comes to the inner life of families, justice is rarely as straightforward as the letter of the law.

An award-winning novel from a New York Times–bestselling author: The long-buried bodies of a woman and child are unearthed on a Suffolk country estate. When the new owners of Wyvis Hall, a rural estate in Suffolk, set out to bury their pet dog on the grounds, they stumbled upon a ghastly relic: the bones of a woman and small child in a shallow grave. The gruesome find makes stunning headlines, especially so for the previous occupants. A decade before, nineteen-year-old Adam Verne-Smith inherited the property and spent one debauched summer there with runaways, drifters, and his two best friends—none of whom have spoken since that fatal season. Adam is now a doting father and husband. His old buddy Rufus is a respectable doctor. And there''s Shiva, whose dreams of upward mobility drifted away. Unhinged by the discovery, they reunite, each with a protest of innocence. As the past slowly emerges, their regrets, desperation, and bitter incriminations get the best of them—and so will their secrets. A master of "deep, disquieting insight into the pathological dynamics of love" ( The New York Times), author Ruth Rendell''s Crime Writers'' Association Gold Dagger Award–winning A Fatal Inversion is "rife with lost Edens, family secrets and stifled sexual urges" ( Chicago Tribune). It was adapted for television by the BBC in 1992.

Weeks went by when Ismay never thought of it at all. Then something would bring it back or it would return in a dream. This is a new psychological thriller from the bestselling, record breaking author Ruth Rendell.

A psychological thriller following Teddy Brex, a handsome, young autistic man who comes to the aid of Francine Hill, a beautiful young woman traumatised by the murder of her mother, and now stifled by the overprotectiveness of an obsessive stepmother; but Teddy has already committed two murders.

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

A girl experiments with the occult to keep her family together in this psychological thriller from the New York Times–bestselling author of Dark Corners. In a quiet house in the London suburb of Manningtree, fifteen-year-old Pup and his emotionally damaged older sister, Dolly, have become closer than ever since the death of the their mother. Pup''s bookish obsession with witchcraft gives their disordered life a sense of purpose. Dolly isn''t sure what to expect from the talisman Pup makes her, until their father brings home a vulgar new wife. Then, Dolly, resentful and suddenly empowered, makes a deadly wish—the first of many. In a depressed neighborhood on the other side of town, a paranoid hermit has been questioned in a series of brutal murders. Lately, he''s taken to living in a tunnel behind a fort of mattresses, where he keeps his knives. Soon, his life and the lives of Pup and Dolly will converge. As one of them struggles toward something close to sanity, the other two will descend even further into darkness. "Only Rendell can show us how chillingly easy it is for ordinary people to slide into criminal behavior," and in The Killing Doll, the tumble is relentless (Oprah.com). "Rendell, who perfected the art of the truly suspenseful psychological thriller" is a three-time recipient of the Edgar Award, and the author of numerous bestsellers ( The Boston Globe).

While Sarah Hussain, the reverend of St Peter''s Church, was not popular with many people in the community of Kingsmarkham, it comes as a profound shock to everyone when she is found strangled in the vicarage. A garrulous cleaner, Maxine, also shared by the Wexfords, discovers the body. The former Detective Chief Inspector, in his comparatively recent retirement, has little patience with Maxine''s prattle. But when his old friend Mike Burden asks if he might like to assist on this case as Crime Solutions Adviser (unpaid), Wexford leaps at the chance to tag along. Upon searching the vicar''s house, he discovers a letter serving as a bookmark, and what he finds inside begins to illuminate the murky past of Hussain. Was there more to her than meets the eye?

London''s wealthiest, poorest, kindest, and most vicious citizens all cross paths in Regents Park. Quiet, pretty Mary Jago could never have suspected that a series of unspeakable murders in the park contained threads that tangled around her simple, ordinary life. "From the Paperback edition.