Virago Strangers on a Train Хайсмит Патриция

Philip Carter has spent six years in prison for a crime he didn't commit. On his release his beautiful wife is waiting for him. He has never had any reason to doubt her. Nor their friend, Sullivan. Carter has never been suspicious, or violent. But prison can change a man • In 1961, Patricia Highsmith received a fan letter from a prison inmate. A correspondence ensued and Highsmith became fascinated with the psychological traumas that incarceration can inflict

"Эта сладкая болезнь" - психологический триллер Патрисии Хайсмит о мужчине, одержимом отвергнущей его женщиной, мучительный роман о навязчивой, воображаемой любви • Дэвид Келси непоколебимо убежден, что жизнь сложится именно так, как он планирует, - если он только сможет исправить ситуацию. Его единственная настоящая любовь, блестящая, красивая Аннабель, вышла замуж за другого мужчину. Но это не значит, что они не могут по-прежнему оставаться друзьями. И хотя она беременна ребенком от своего мужа Джеральда, это, конечно, не значит, что однажды она не сойдется с Дэвидом. Она все еще любит его, в этом он уверен. Дэвид уверен, что она примет его обратно, и под вымышленным именем строит для них двоих чудесный дом в соседнем городке. И все идет по плану, пока события не принимают ужасающий оборот

"Hey! Cheeses, what an idea! I kill your wife and you kill my father! We meet on a train, see, and nobody knows we know each other! Perfect alibis! Catch?" • From this moment, almost against his conscious will, Guy Haines is trapped in a nightmare of shared guilt and an insidious merging of personalities. The psychologists would call it folie a deux • Strangers on a Train was Patricia Highsmith's first novel, and adapted into a classic film by Alfred Hitchcock

On a stroll through Greenwich Village, security guard Ralph Linderman finds a wallet on the sidewalk. It belongs to Jack Sutherland, a wealthy aspiring artist, and it is his misfortune to have it returned to him - with all $263 and credit cards untouched. Because now Ralph knows where Jack lives • Elsie Tyler is a beautiful young waitress - an innocent in New York - and Ralph feels he must protect her from 'bad company'. When he sees Elsie leaving Jack's apartment, he is not pleased. Not pleased at all • By the author of The Talented Mr Ripley, Found in the Street is an unsettling thriller that explores the bleakest alleyways of human desire

В этой до безжалостности честной истории о царящем в американских пригородах ханжестве Патриция Хайсмит знакомит нас с семейством Олдерманов, переживающим моральный кризис • Когда Ричард Олдерман, страховщик из маленького городка, становится фанатично верующим христианином, его, казалось бы, дружная семья начинает трещать по швам. Он сам и его младший сын Робби находят себя в новообретённой вере, а вот Артур, его старший сын, отвергает её • Из разногласий и противоречий рождается паутина лжи, в которую угодила Лоис, жена Ричарда. Она пытается сохранить семью, но когда церковь начинает вмешиваться в любовную жизнь Артура, угроза насилия становится всё реальнее • Хайсмит мастерски поднимает проблему слепой веры и странных представлений о справедливости, которые нередко разделяют респектабельные, на первый взгляд, люди

A gripping novel that explores the shifting sands of moral values - is murder still murder when committed in a lawless place? • Howard Ingham, an American writer, is in Tunisia working on a screenplay, and feeling stranded. No one has written to him since he arrived - neither the film director who he is supposed to be meeting in Tunis, nor his lover in New York. The erratic mail eventually brings news of the director's suicide. For reasons obscure even to himself, Ingham decides to stay and work on a novel, but a series of events - a hushed-up murder and a vanished corpse - lures him inexorably into the deep, ambivalent shadows of the town; into deceit and away from conventional morality. Ultimately, what is in question is not justice or truth, but the state of his oddly quiet conscience

When a troubled young runaway arrives on Tom Ripley's French estate, he is drawn into a world he thought he'd left behind: the seedy underworld of Berlin, involving kidnapping plots, lies and deception. Ripley becomes the boy's protector as friendship develops between the young man with a guilty conscience and the older one with no conscience at all

Shena Mackay, who first came to fame before the age of twenty with two novellas, is the doyenne of the short form. In this volume of previously uncollected stories - including those read on radio - she constantly surprises with a view of the ordinary world that is not at all ordinary • A grasshopper determinedly takes up residence on a bathroom ceiling; a gecko hiding in a cupboard brings a strange sort of luck; a woman spies from a distance two older women friends after many long years and a memory of how they gallopedin the playground as Starlight Blaze and Pepperpot plays sweetly, suddenly in her mind; pigs are swaddled in blankets, looking like babies in shawls; luggage is packed with youthful hopes and ideals • She observes how people rub along and reveals the best and worst of us all: a disgruntled schoolboy and his hapless teacher conquer mountains and their antipathy for each other; a girl with green eyes and iridescent hair discovers revenge; a race to be the best mushroom-picker creates only losers; and rotten apples, in the right pair of hands, make a loving pie

'My life changed. It had been restricted by invisible barriers almost as effectively as the physically restricted lives of my aunts in the zenana. A window had opened here, a door there, a curtain had been drawn aside; but outside lay a world narrowed by one's field of vision.' • Laila, orphaned daughter of a distinguished Muslim family, is brought up in her grandfather's traditional household by her aunts, who keep purdah. At fifteen she moves to the home of her 'liberal' but autocratic uncle in Lucknow. As the struggle for Independence sharpens, Laila is surrounded by relatives and university friends caught up in politics, but she is unable to commit herself to any cause: her own fight for independence is a struggle against tradition • With its stunning evocation of India, its political insight and unsentimental understanding of the human heart, Sunlight on a Broken Column is a classic of Muslim life

'Dear Sir, I suppose you are pretty pleased with yourself? Superior to everyone, you think. A fancy apartment and a snob dog. You are a disgusting little machine, nothing else. Your days are numbered.' • Ed Reynolds, an editor at a prestigious publishing house, has received a number of anonymous poison pen letters. He has no idea who could bear him such a grudge. Returning home one night, he finds a ransom note for his wife's beloved French poodle: 'I have your dog Lisa. She is well and happy . . . I gather the dog is important to you? We'll see!' • The criminal has hit the Manhattan couple where it hurts most. And so, with this bizarre event, their nightmare begins. A Dog's Ransom captures the fragility of middle-class life in this riveting, scathing tale

Published to celebrate the centenary of one of the twentieth century's most influential writers, this is the most comprehensive collection of Highsmith's short fiction, including two unpublished stories • Disturbing, exhilarating, potent, savagely funny

Little Tales of Misogyny is Highsmith's legendary, cultish short-story collection. With an eerie simplicity of style, Highsmith turns our next-door neighbours into sadistic psychopaths, lying in wait among white picket fences and manicured lawns. In these darkly satirical, often hilarious, sketches you'll meet seemingly familiar women with the power to destroy both themselves and the men around them