A spectacularly compelling story of blackmail, murders both accidental and opportunistic, and of one life’s fateful unraveling from Ruth Rendell—“one of the most remarkable novelists of her generation” (People)—writing at her most acute and mesmerizing.When his father dies, Carl Martin inherits a house in an increasingly rich and trendy London neighborhood. Carl needs cash, however, so he rents the upstairs room and kitchen to the first person he interviews, Dermot McKinnon. That was colossal mistake number one. Mistake number two was keeping his father’s bizarre collection of homeopathic “cures” that he found in the medicine cabinet, including a stash of controversial diet pills. Mistake number three was selling fifty of those diet pills to a friend, who is then found dead. Dermot seizes a nefarious opportunity and begins to blackmail Carl, refusing to pay rent, and creepily invading Carl’s space. Ingeniously weaving together two storylines that finally merge in one shocking turn, Ruth Rendell describes one man’s spiral into darkness—and murder—as he falls victim to a diabolical foe he cannot escape. This is masterful storytelling that gets under your skin, brilliant psychological suspense from Ruth Rendell. “No one surpasses Ruth Rendell when it comes to stories of obsession, instability, and malignant coincidence” (Stephen King).

Product Description: En torno a una mesa del pub Dugong, los trabajadores domesticos de la aristocratica callejuela londinense Hexam Place han creado una informal sociedad. Alli, criadas y conductores, mayordomos y cocineros, nineras y au pairs se sienten liberados para contarse las miserias de sus trabajos y las manias de sus empleadores pero, hasta que punto son sinceros los unos con los otros? La llegada del jardinero Dex, un hombre recien salido del psiquiatrico que cree que los mensajes de su compania de movil proceden de una voz divina, abrira una caja de Pandora llena de obsesiones, adulterios y, quiza, asesinatos...read more

'Bizarre, isn't it? The teenagers are 15 and 13, the sitter's in her 30s, they can all swim and the house is miles above the floods'. As Burden introduces the case to Wexford with these words, the Subaqua Task Force looks in vain for drowned bodies. Yet their mother is sure her children are dead.

Product Description: Anita Margolis had vanished. There was no body, no crime, nothing more concrete than an anonymous letter and a name. A pattern soon emerged to the investigation. Not only had Anita been wealthy and flighty, she had been thoroughly immortal, too.

Product Description: Mix Cellini esta obsesionado. Y no solo con la supermodelo que ha estado acechando. Tambien esta fascinado por la vida de Christie de Reggie, un asesino en serie ahorcado hace cincuenta anos. Asi que cuando las cosas se ponen dificiles, la mezcla se convierte en su heroe, Reggie Christie, en busca de inspiracion...read more

Product Description: INCLUDES AN EXCERPT OF RENDELL’S FINAL NOVEL, DARK CORNERS From “one of the most remarkable novelists of her generation” (People) a “refined, probing, and intelligent” (USA TODAY) mystery in the masterful Inspector Wexford series…more enthralling than ever after fifty years...read more

Product Description: En torno a una mesa del pub Dugong, los trabajadores domesticos de la aristocratica callejuela londinense Hexam Place han creado una informal sociedad. Alli, criadas y conductores, mayordomos y cocineros, nineras y au pairs se sienten liberados para contarse las miserias de sus trabajos y las manias de sus empleadores pero, hasta que punto son sinceros los unos con los otros? La llegada del jardinero Dex, un hombre recien salido del psiquiatrico que cree que los mensajes de su compania de movil proceden de una voz divina, abrira una caja de Pandora llena de obsesiones, adulterios y, quiza, asesinatos...read more

The first full-fledged application of the sacrificial model to fiction from the Middle Ages to the modern era. Cesareo Bandera contends that we badly misjudge our own historical situation if we believe that the sacred is something that can be left behind or ignored as utterly irrelevant. The Sacred Game argues that the sacred is all around us and its most characteristic manifestation is precisely the 'allergic' reaction and subsequent barrier it produces in our 'secular' sensitivity as soon as we come in contact with it. The Sacred Game examines the transition from the Middle Ages to the modern era from a Girardian perspective. It brings light to the weakening of the traditional association of literature with the sacred and its far-reaching consequences, and it studies the logic that governs the emergence of the most characteristic forms of modern fiction, the modern novel and the modern theater. Bandera emphasizes the unprecedented character of what happened to literary fiction during this transition. While the historical facts of the period are well known, Bandera presents them in a new light. The result is a new theory of literary fiction that challenges certain well-established approaches, in particular the nineteenth-century liberal romantic and Marxist approaches.

   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 Saint Zita Society is Ruth Rendell at her incisive best.

Product Description: Desde hace nueve anos, Ismay tiene un sueno recurrente: sube las escaleras tras los pasos de su hermana menor, Heather, cuyo vestido se encuentra empapado. Al llegar al cuarto de bano del piso de arriba su madre le grita que no mire, pero ella ya ha visto el cuerpo de Guy, su padrastro, que yace ahogado en la banera...read more

Product Description: INCLUDES AN EXCERPT OF RENDELL’S FINAL NOVEL, DARK CORNERS Ruth Rendell is widely considered to be crime fiction’s reigning queen, with a remarkable career spanning more than forty years. Now, in Portobello, she delivers a captivating and intricate tale that weaves together the troubled lives of several people in the gentrified neighborhood of London’s Notting Hill...read more

During his investigation into a series of seemingly unrelated murders, Inspector Wexford discovers that the victim of a falling piece of concrete, pushed off a highway overpass, is somehow linked to the bludgeoning death of a teenage girl, killed while returning home from a late night of clubbing with her friends. Reader's Guide available. Reprint.

Product Description: Searching for truffles in a wood, a man and his dog unearth something less savoury - a human hand. The body, as Chief Inspector Wexford is informed later, has lain buried for ten years or so, wrapped in a purple cotton sheet. The post mortem cannot reveal the precise cause of death...read more

Product Description: Children and young people spend a great deal of their time in schools and other education settings. Consequently those working in such contexts have a huge impact and influence on the development, experiences and thinking of the children and young people with whom they interact...read more

'Don't forget', Wexford said, 'I've lived in a world where the improbable happens all the time'. However, the impossible has happened. Chief Inspector Reg Wexford has retired. He and his wife, Dora, now divide their time between Kingsmarkham and a coachhouse in Hampstead, belonging to their actress daughter, Sheila. Wexford takes great pleasure in his books, but, for all the benefits of a more relaxed lifestyle, he misses being the law. But a chance meeting in a London street, with someone he had known briefly as a very young police constable, changes everything. Tom Ede is now a Detective Superintendent, and is very keen to recruit Wexford as an adviser on a difficult case. The bodies of two women and a man have been discovered in the old coal hole of an attractive house in St John's Wood. None carries identification. But the man's jacket pockets contain a string of pearls, a diamond and a sapphire necklace as well as other jewellery valued in the region of GBP40,000. It is not a hard decision for Wexford. He is intrigued and excited by the challenge, and, in the early stages, not really anticipating that this new investigative role will bring him into physical danger.

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 a string of serial killings that may be racial in nature

Product Description: Who would have believed that Alice Whittaker’s life could change? She was 37, rich but dowdy, with no career. Her life was a lonely failure, though she had got by with the one thing she did have: money.Then handsome Andrew Fielding came into her life, and just as suddenly her beautiful friend Nesta vanished from it, leaving behind a trail of broken questions and confused clues...read more

INCLUDES AN EXCERPT OF RENDELL’S FINAL NOVEL, DARK CORNERSIs it dangerous to know too much about your neighbors? When Stuart Font throws a housewarming party, he invites all the residents of his new building—among them, three flippant young girls, a lonely spinster, a man with a passion for classical history, and a woman determined to drink herself to death. He definitely does not want his girlfriend, Claudia, in attendance, as he would also have to invite her lawyer husband. But careful planning can only get a person so far. As it turns out, this party will be one everyone remembers. Meanwhile, living in a town house opposite Stuart’s building, in reclusive isolation, is a young, beautiful Asian woman known as Tigerlily. As though from some strange urban fairy tale, she emerges infrequently to exert a terrible spell. In Tigerlily’s Orchids, Ruth Rendell has written a darkly humorous and psychologically thrilling novel about the eccentric inhabitants of a London terrace—about the secrets they keep, and what they will do to hide them.

Product Description: Mix Cellini esta obsesionado. Y no solo con la supermodelo que ha estado acechando. Tambien esta fascinado por la vida de Christie de Reggie, un asesino en serie ahorcado hace cincuenta anos. Asi que cuando las cosas se ponen dificiles, la mezcla se convierte en su heroe, Reggie Christie, en busca de inspiracion...read more