Patricia Highsmith

Tom Ripley is a calculating young man who believes it's better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody. He's hired to go to Italy to bring back the playboy son of a millionaire and soon is plunged into a daring scheme of duplicity, lies and murder.

From the Publisher: "I have long had a theory that Nabokov knew The Price of Salt and modeled the climactic cross-country car chase in Lolita on Therese and Carol's frenzied bid for freedom," writes Terry Castle in The New Republic about this novel, arguably Patricia Highsmith's finest, first published in 1952 under the pseudonym Clare Morgan. Soon to be a new film, The Price of Salt tells the riveting story of Therese Belivet, a stage designer trapped...

Collects two novels and thirteen short stories by American writer Patricia Highsmith, including "Strangers on a Train" in which successful architect Guy Haines is harassed on a train by Charles Bruno, who offers to kill Haines' estranged wife if Haines will in turn kill Bruno's father--and then goes on to carry out the unconfirmed bargain.

Though his talent for evil has in no way diminished, Tom Ripley has aged, even mellowed. Now leading the good life in the French countryside, complete with chic wife and devoted housekeeper, he is more interested in his wine stores than the bloodstains on the cellar floor. Then a meddlesome American couple takes up residence in the same village. Though at first the Pritchards seem a mere curiosity, their taste as execrable as their manners, they are...

Highsmith explores Ripley's bizarrely paternal relationship with a troubled young runaway, whose abduction draws them into Berlin's seamy underworld.

A chance encounter between two lonely women leads to a passionate romance in this lesbian cult classic. Therese, a struggling young sales clerk, and Carol, a homemaker in the midst of a bitter divorce, abandon their oppressive daily routines for the freedom of the open road, where their love can blossom. But their newly discovered bliss is shattered when Carol is forced to choose between her child and her lover.

In This Sweet Sickness, David Kelsey has an unyielding conviction that life will turn out all right for him; he just has to fix "the situation" of being in love with a married woman. Obsessed with Annabelle and the life he has imagined for them, David prepares to win her over, whatever it takes. In this riveting tale of a deluded loner, Highsmith reveals her uncanny ability to draw out the secret obsessions that overwhelm the human heart.

The great revival of interest in Patricia Highsmith continues with the publication of a novel that will give dog owners nightmares for years to come. With an eerie simplicity of style, Highsmith turns next-door neighbors into sadistic psychopaths, lying in wait among white picket fences and manicured lawns. In A Dog's Ransom, Highsmith blends savage humor with brilliant social satire in this dark tale of a high-minded criminal who hits a wealthy Manhattan...