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Kingdom: Book Two of the Saladin Trilogy
by Jack HightThe third book in the Insurrection trilogy, which tells the thrilling story of Robert the Bruce.1164. The young warrior Saladin joins a Saracen army headed for Egypt. He finds there a land of wonders - from the ancient pyramids and the towering lighthouse of Alexandria, to the caliph's luxurious palace - but also a land of unparalleled danger. In Egypt, no one can be trusted, not even his family. Saladin is surrounded by enemies and haunted by a secret that threatens to destroy him.Meanwhile, in Jerusalem, Saladin's closest friend, the former crusader John of Tatewic, has been branded traitor. Spared execution on condition that he serves King Amalric, he soon finds himself embroiled in court intrigue. Dark forces within Jerusalem conspire to seize the throne. As John confronts them, his loyalty to Amalric, and to his old friend Saladin, is put to the test.
Siege
by Jack HightThe year is 1453. For more than a thousand years the mighty walls of Constantinople have protected the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, the furthest outpost of Christianity. But now endless ranks of Turkish warriors cover the plains before them, their massive cannons trained on the ramparts. It is the most fearsome force the world has ever seen. No European army will help: the last crusaders were cut to pieces by the Turks on the plains of Kosovo. Constantinople is on its own. And treachery is in the air. Three people will struggle to determine the fate of an empire: the young Turkish Sultan, returned from exile and desperate to prove his greatness; a stubborn Byzantine princess, sworn to protect her city; and a mercenary captain with a personal score to settle. But of them, it is the hardened soldier Giovanni Longo who will face the worst choice: just as he prepares to make his final stand, he finds he has something to live for after all.From the intrigues within the Emperor's household to the Sultan's harem and the savage fights on the battlements, Siege is a full-blooded historical adventure novel in the tradition of Warrior of Rome, Pilgrim or Crusade.
The Talented Mr Ripley: Play (Screen and Cinema)
by Patricia Highsmith Phyllis NagyThe first stage adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's famous crime novelTomRipley is a criminal with an ambiguous past. He is sent to Italy by awealthy financier to try and coax home the rich man's son. In theprocess Ripley becomes both attracted and seduced, finding the murderthe only way to deal with the situation. From that point Ripley triesto cover up his crime. Patricia Highsmith's beguiling tale of moralityand amorality is given a dramatic rendering by contemporary dramatistPhyllis Nagy, who knew Highsmith in her later years in Paris."Eachplay I see by Phyllis Nagy confirms me in the belief that she is thefinest playwright to have emerged in the 1990s" (Financial Times)
The Talented Mr Ripley: Play (Screen and Cinema)
by Patricia Highsmith Phyllis NagyThe first stage adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's famous crime novelTomRipley is a criminal with an ambiguous past. He is sent to Italy by awealthy financier to try and coax home the rich man's son. In theprocess Ripley becomes both attracted and seduced, finding the murderthe only way to deal with the situation. From that point Ripley triesto cover up his crime. Patricia Highsmith's beguiling tale of moralityand amorality is given a dramatic rendering by contemporary dramatistPhyllis Nagy, who knew Highsmith in her later years in Paris."Eachplay I see by Phyllis Nagy confirms me in the belief that she is thefinest playwright to have emerged in the 1990s" (Financial Times)
The Animal Lover's Book of Beastly Murder: A Virago Modern Classic (Virago Modern Classics #11)
by Patricia Highsmith'Highsmith writes the verbal equivalent of a drug - easy to consume, darkly euphoric, totally addictive . . . (She) belongs in the moody company of Dostoevsky or Angela Carter' Time OutNowhere is Patricia Highsmith's affinity for animals more apparent than in The Animal-Lover's Book of Beastly Murder, for here she transfers the murderous thoughts and rages most associated with humans onto the animals themselves. You will meet, for example, in 'In the Dead of Truffle Season', a truffle-hunting pig who tries to whet his own appetite for a while; or Jumbo in 'Chorus Girl's Absolutely Final Performance', a lonely, old circus elephant who decides she's had enough of show business and cruel trainers for one lifetime. In this satirical reprise of Kafka, cats, dogs, and breeding rodents are no longer ordinary beings in the happy home, but actually have the power to destroy the world in which we live.
The Black House: A Virago Modern Classic (Virago Modern Classics #13)
by Patricia Highsmith'A border zone of the macabre, the disturbing, the not-quite accidental' New York Times Book ReviewThe Black House eerily evokes the warm familiarities of suburban life: the manicured lawns, the white picket fences, and the local pubs, each providing the setting for Highsmith's chilling portraits.Some neighbours are playing scrabble one evening when their cat drags into their house not a bird, or some other catch, but human fingers; a guest arrives at a dinner party where he is not welcome, and his hosts conspire to find and attack his Achilles heel; the crew of the Emma C rescue a beautiful girl floating unconscious in the sea and tension explodes between the men on board; a childless thirty-something couple decide to invite two elderly folk to live with them, but have they been too generous? In this collection of Patricia Highsmith's wonderfully unsettling short stories, people's motives are frequently twisted and no occurrence is without a sinister underlying meaning.
The Blunderer: A Virago Modern Classic (Virago Modern Classics #713)
by Patricia Highsmith'My suspicion is that when the dust has settled and when the chronicle of 20th-century American literature comes to be written, history will place Highsmith at the top of the pyramid, as we should place Dostoevsky at the top of the Russian hierarchy of novelists' A. N. Wilson, Daily TelegraphThe Blunderer was written by Highsmith in between Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr Ripley. The novel follows the young, successful and handsome, Walter Stackhouse who seems to have it all, that is, until the day his wife's body is found at the bottom of a cliff. Under the intense scrutiny of the investigation he commits one mistake, then another, until - in true Highsmithian fashion - Walter finds his perfect life derailed. Now Walter is running from the obsessions of the murderer, and the suspicions of the lead cop, not to mention his own increasingly life-threatening blunders.
The Boy Who Followed Ripley: A Virago Modern Classic (Virago Modern Classics #23)
by Patricia HighsmithThe continuing adventures of Ripley, played by Matt Damon in The Talented Mr Ripley.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.The Boy Who Followed Ripley is followed by Ripley Under Water.
Carol: A Virago Modern Classic (Virago Modern Classics #21)
by Patricia HighsmithNow a hugely acclaimed, six-times Oscar-nominated film by Todd Haynes, starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara.Therese is just an ordinary sales assistant working in a New York department store when an alluring woman in her thirties walks up to her counter. Standing there, Therese is wholly unprepared for the first shock of love. She is an awkward nineteen-year-old with a job she hates and a boyfriend she doesn't love; Carol is a sophisticated, bored suburban housewife in the throes of a divorce and a custody battle for her only daughter. As Therese becomes irresistibly drawn into Carol's world, she soon realises how much they both stand to lose . . .First published pseudonymously in 1952 as The Price of Salt, Carol is a hauntingly atmospheric love story set against the backdrop of fifties New York.
The Cry of the Owl: A Virago Modern Classic (Virago Modern Classics #20)
by Patricia HighsmithRobert Forester, depressed after a painful divorce, begins to spy on Jenny, his pretty young neighbour. Watching her, bright and seemingly carefree, alleviates his loneliness and helps him escape the discontent of his life. Caught in the act, he is surprised when Jenny invites him in, but all is not what it seems. With striking clarity and horrible inevitability, Forester becomes caught up in a series of deaths in which he, although the innocent bystander, is presumed guilty.'The No.1 Greatest Crime Writer' The Times
Deep Water: A Virago Modern Classic (Virago Modern Classics #19)
by Patricia Highsmith'If I really don't like somebody, I kill him . . . You remember Malcolm McRae, don't you?'Melinda Van Allen is beautiful, headstrong and sexy. Unfortunately for Vic Van Allen, she is his wife. Their love has soured, and Melinda takes pleasure in flaunting her many affairs to her husband. When one of her lovers is murdered, Vic hints to her latest conquest that he was responsible. As rumours spread about Vic's vicious streak, fiction and reality start to converge. It's only a matter of time before Vic really does have blood on his hands.Books included in the VMC 40th anniversary series include: Frost in May by Antonia White; The Collected Stories of Grace Paley; Fire from Heaven by Mary Renault; The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter; The Weather in the Streets by Rosamond Lehmann; Deep Water by Patricia Highsmith; The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West; Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston; Heartburn by Nora Ephron; The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy; Memento Mori by Muriel Spark; A View of the Harbour by Elizabeth Taylor; and Faces in the Water by Janet Frame
Edith's Diary: A Virago Modern Classic (Virago Modern Classics #712)
by Patricia Highsmith'Edith's fall takes the form of a psychological chiller, but there is also something larger, the poignancy of her struggle not to go under. She is betrayed by such ordinary dreams' New York TimesEdith Howland's diary is her most precious possession, and as she is moving house she is making sure it's safe. A suburban housewife in fifties America, she is moving to Brunswick with her husband Brett and her beloved son, Cliffie, to start a new life for them all. She is optimistic, but most of all she has high hopes for her new venture with Brett, a local newspaper, the Brunswick Corner Bugle. Life seems full of promise, and indeed, to read her diary, filled with her most intimate feelings and revelations, you would never think otherwise. Strange, then, that reality is so dangerously different . . .
Eleven: A Virago Modern Classic (Virago Modern Classics #16)
by Patricia Highsmith'What is striking about these stories is their integrity: they are all of a piece . . . a brilliant collection' Sunday TimesUnsuspecting victims are devoured by their own obsessions in this perfectly chilling collection of short stories. A man becomes devoted to his pet snails, with fatal results. A young nanny turns arsonist in a bid to become heroine of the hour. A boy finally stands up to his mother, with knife in hand. Highsmith weaves a world claustrophobic in its intensity, disturbing in its mundanity, as she probes the dark corners of the human psyche. Eleven is a collection of masterpieces of Highsmith's particular art, full of compulsion, foreboding and cruel pleasures.
Found in the Street: A Virago Modern Classic (Virago Modern Classics #8)
by Patricia Highsmith'Uncomfortable, frightening, compulsive and, worst of all, terribly believable. It's vintage Highsmith' Time OutOn 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.
A Game for the Living: A Virago Modern Classic (Virago Modern Classics #6)
by Patricia Highsmith'I love Highsmith so much . . . What a revelation her writing is' Gillian Flynn'Ramón had done it. Obviously! He thought about Ramón, his Catholic soul trapped in his passion for Lelia. He'd find Ramón and see that he paid with his life for what he had done.'In A Game for the Living threads of sexual jealousy and guilt are shot through with all Patricia Highsmith's uncanny talent for the unexpected.Mild-mannered Theo is a wealthy German expatriate; hot-tempered Ramón was born into poverty in Mexico City. The two men are unlikely friends - especially as they are in love with the same woman. When Lelia is found brutally murdered, both lovers are suspects - and each suspects the other. But then they discover that a thief was seen at Lelia's apartment, and their hunt leads them on a frantic chase to sun-drenched Acapulco. Theo begins to get the uneasy feeling that his every move is being watched.
The Glass Cell: A Virago Modern Classic (Virago Modern Classics #4)
by Patricia Highsmith'The Glass Cell has lost little of its disturbing power . . . Highsmith was a genuine one-off, and her books will haunt you' Daily TelegraphPhilip 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.
Her Diaries and Notebooks: 1941-1995
by Patricia Highsmith'Offers the most complete picture ever published of how Highsmith saw herself' New York Times'One of the finest writers in the English language' Richard Osman'I love Highsmith so much. What a revelation her writing was' Gillian Flynn 'My secrets - the secrets that everyone has - are here, in black and white.'Published for the very first time for the centenary of her birth, Patricia Highsmith's diaries and notebooks offer an unforgettable insight into the life and mind of one of the twentieth century's most fascinating writers.Though the famously secretive Highsmith refused to authorise a biography during her lifetime, she left behind 8,000 pages of notebooks and diaries, along with tantalising instructions on how they should be read. This one-volume assemblage reveals, at last, the inscrutable figure behind the pen. The diaries show Highsmith's unwavering literary ambitions - coming often at huge personal sacrifice. We see Highsmith drafting Strangers on a Train while attending the Yaddo artists' colony in 1948, alongside Flannery O'Connor and at Truman Capote's recommendation. We feel her euphoria writing The Price of Salt (later adapted into the film Carol), one of the first mainstream novels to depict two women in love. And we watch Highsmith in Positano, subsisting on little more than cigarettes and gleefully conjuring Mr Ripley, the sociopathic anti-hero that would cement her reputation.In these pages Highsmith reflects on good and evil, loneliness and intimacy, sexuality and sacrifice, love and murder. She describes her tumultuous romantic relationships, alongside her sometimes dizzying social life involving Jane Bowles, Peggy Guggenheim, Carson McCullers, Arthur Koestler and W. H. Auden. And in her skewering of McCarthy-era America, her prickly disparagement of contemporary art and ever-percolating prejudices, we see Highsmith revealing the roots of her psychological angst and acuity.At once lovable, detestable and mesmerising, Highsmith put her turbulent life to paper for five decades. Offering all the pleasures of Highsmith's novels, the result is one of the most compulsively readable literary diaries to publish in generations
Little Tales of Misogyny: A Virago Modern Classic (Virago Modern Classics #5)
by Patricia Highsmith'These little tales are tremendous fun, glorious hand grenades lobbed at the reader by a gleeful, cackling Patricia Highsmith' Dan Rhodes 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. 'The No.1 Greatest Crime Writer' The Times
Mermaids on the Golf Course: A Virago Modern Classic (Virago Modern Classics #14)
by Patricia Highsmith'One of the exhilarating effects of reading Highsmith's stories . . . is their surehandednes, their amazing breadth and abundance . . . they compel attention and they add significantly to her already formidable presence' Washington PostThe stories collected in Mermaids on the Golf Course, first published in 1985, are among Patricia Highsmith's most mature, psychologically penetrating works. Published in the latter part of her career, these stories reveal Highsmith's mastery of the short story form. Moving between locales as various as France, Mexico, Zurich, and New York, Highsmith transforms the mundane features of everyday life into an eerie backdrop for her penetrating stories of violence, secrecy, and madness. In 'The Stuff of Madness', Christopher Waggoner, increasingly dismayed by his wife's habit of preserving dead pets in their garden, enacts a devious revenge by adding a bizarre new exhibit to their collection; in the title story, a eminent economist's brush with death endows his once-familiar desires with tragic consequences; and in 'A Shot from Nowhere', a young painter who witnesses a gruesome death on a vacant Mexican Street becomes trapped in an unimaginable nightmare. In these piercing stories, Highsmith creates a world all the more frightening because we recognise it as our own.
Nothing that Meets the Eye: The Uncollected Stories of Patricia Highsmith: A Virago Modern Classic (Virago Modern Classics #10)
by Patricia Highsmith'These tales should not be glanced at by those with even the slightest history of poor mental health . . . Highsmith's dark humour oozes through this new collection like a particularly delicious poison' Andrew Wilson, Independent on SundayThis volume of stories spans almost fifty years of Highsmith's career, allowing us to see how she evolved from a struggling freelance writer in New York to one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. 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 sweetness that forces us to see the author in a new light.These are suspenseful, playful, taut and psychologically gripping stories, evidence of an extraordinary talent.
Patricia Highsmith: The New York Years, 1941–1950
by Patricia Highsmith'My secrets - the secrets that everyone has - are here, in black and white.'Before Alfred Hitchcock adapted her debut novel, Strangers on a Train, for the big screen; before Thomas Ripley snaked his way into the canon of psychological suspense; before Carol became a cult classic of romantic obsession, who was Patricia Highsmith?Beginning in 1941 and encompassing Highsmith's adventurous twenties, The New York Years is an intimate self-portrait of a young artist, reading voraciously and honing her craft, intertwined with scenes from her dizzying social life, rife with sleepless nights spent in the queer bars of Greenwich Village.This condensed edition of Highsmith's monumental Diaries and Notebooks offers all the pleasures of her fiction, along with an unparalleled insight into the life, mind and times of this enigmatic, iconic, trailblazing author. 'One of the most observant and ecstatic accounts . . . about being young and alive in New York City' New York Times
Penguin Readers Level 6: The Talented Mr Ripley (ELT Graded Reader)
by Patricia HighsmithPenguin 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 websiteRegister 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).
People Who Knock on the Door: A Virago Modern Classic (Virago Modern Classics #3)
by Patricia HighsmithPeople Who Knock on the Door, is a tale about blind faith and the slippery notion of justice that lies beneath the peculiarly American veneer of righteousness.'A border zone of the macabre, the disturbing, the not quite accidental . . . Highsmith achieves the effect of the occult without any resources to supernatural machinery' New York Times Book ReviewIn a pitiless story of prying suburban self-righteousness, Patricia Highsmith introduces the Alderman family as they descend into moral crisis. When small-town insurance salesman Richard Alderman becomes a born-again Christian, his once tight-knit family quickly begins to rip apart at the seams. He and his youngest son, Robbie, embrace their newfound faith, while his elder son Arthur rejects it. Caught in the middle of the ensuing web of lies, his wife, Lois, tries to keep the family together, but when the church elders start to interfere in Arthur's love life, events spiral toward violence. In this masterful late work, Highsmith weaves a powerful tale about blind faith and the peculiar ideas of justice that lie underneath the veneer of respectability.
Ripley Under Ground: A Virago Modern Classic (Ripley Series #25)
by Patricia HighsmithThis is the second novel in Highsmith's hugely influential, groundbreaking Ripley series.'The No.1 Greatest Crime Writer' The TimesTom Ripley is now the owner of a beautiful estate in France, a wealthy art collector and married to an heiress. The Buckmaster Gallery is staging an exhibition by the celebrated artist, Derwatt, but an American collector claims that the expensive masterpiece he bought three years ago is a fake. It is, of course and he wants to talk to Derwatt - but Derwatt, inconveniently, is dead.Ripley needs the perfect solution to keep his role in the fraud a secret and his reputation clean, but not everyone's nerves are as steady as his. Especially when it comes to murder.Ripley Under Ground is an ingenious novel of masks and identity, illusion and reality, and is followed by Ripley's Game, The Boy Who Followed Ripley and Ripley Under Water.
Ripley Under Water: A Virago Modern Classic (Virago Modern Classics #24)
by Patricia HighsmithRipley Under Water is a psychological thriller by Patricia Highsmith, the last in her series of five books known as the 'Ripliad'.'The No.1 Greatest Crime Writer' The TimesTom Ripley is quietly living in luxury at his chateau at Villeperce. He has a past, however, that would not bear too much close scrutiny. He is certain that he has covered his tracks where murder and forgery are concerned. But when a certain American couple move in next door, he soon realises his every move is being shadowed. Ripley fears his secrets may be discovered and he will stop at nothing to prevent that from happening . . .'The No.1 Greatest Crime Writer' The Times