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NOW A MAJOR NEW NETFLIX SERIES
Tom Ripley wants money, success, and the good life - and he's willing
to kill for it.
Struggling to stay one step ahead of his creditors (and the law),
Ripley leaps at the chance to start afresh on a free trip to Europe.
But when his new-found happiness is threatened, his response is as
swift as it is shocking.
Now a major new Netflix series, The Talented Mr Ripley is the first in
Highsmith’s classic series featuring the character of Tom Ripley –
fiction’s most terrifying con-man.
Patricia Highsmith, author of Strangers On a Train, The Talented Mr.Ripley, Found In The Street, and many other books, is known as one of the finest suspense novelists. In this book, she analyzes the key elements of suspense fiction, drawing upon her own experience in four decades as a working writer. She talks about, among other topics; how to develop a complete story from an idea; what makes a plot gripping; the use (and abuse) of coincidence; characterization and the "likeable criminal"; going from first draft to final draft; and writing the suspense short story. Throughout the book, Highsmith illustrates her points with plentiful examples from her own work, and by discussing her own inspirations, false starts, dead ends, successes, and failures, she presents a lively and highly readable picture of the novelist at work. Anyone who wishes to write crime and suspense fiction, or who enjoys reading it, will find this book an insightful guide to the craft and art of a modern master.
'My secrets-the secrets that everyone has-are here, in black and
white.' Patricia Highsmith's diaries and notebooks offer an
unparalleled, unforgettable insight into the life and mind of one
of the 20th century's most talented, complex and fascinating
writers. Posthumously discovered in Highsmith's linen cupboard and
edited down from 56 thick spiral notebooks by her devoted editor,
Anna Von Planta, this one-volume assemblage of her diaries and
notebooks traces Highsmith's mesmerising double life. The diaries
show Highsmith's unwavering literary ambitions - coming often at
huge personal sacrifice. We see her writing the books that would
make her name, including the Ripley novels which mark the
apotheosis of the psychological thriller, and The Price of Salt
(later adapted into the 2015 film Carol), one of the first
mainstream novels to depict two women in love. In these pages, we
see Highsmith reflecting on good and evil, loneliness and intimacy,
sexuality and sacrifice, love and murder. We see her tumultuous
romantic relationships play out alongside her acquaintances with
other writers. Written in her inimitable and dazzling prose and
offering all the pleasures of Highsmith's novels, these are one of
the most compulsively readable literary diaries to be published in
generations - and yield, at last an unparalleled, unfiltered,
unforgettable picture of this enigmatic, iconic, trailblazing
author's true self.
It's here, in the first volume of Patricia Highsmith's five-book
Ripley series, that we are introduced to the suave Tom Ripley, a
young striver seeking to leave behind his past as an orphan bullied
for being a "sissy." Newly arrived in the heady world of Manhattan,
Ripley meets a wealthy industrialist who hires him to bring his
playboy son, Dickie Greenleaf, back from gallivanting in Italy.
Soon Ripley's fascination with Dickie's debonair lifestyle turns
obsessive as he finds himself enraged by Dickie's ambivalent
affections for Marge, a charming American dilettante, and Ripley
begins a deadly game. "Sinister and strangely alluring" (Mark
Harris, Entertainment Weekly) The Talented Mr. Ripley serves as an
unforgettable introduction to this smooth confidence man, whose
talent for self-invention is as unnerving-and unnervingly revealing
of the American psyche-as ever.
WITH A NEW FOREWORD BY VAL McDERMID Therese is just an ordinary
sales assistant working in a New York department store when a
beautiful, alluring woman in her thirties walks up to her counter.
Standing there, Therese is wholly unprepared for the first shock of
love. Therese 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 realizes 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.
Pearson English Readers bring language learning to life through the
joy of reading. Well-written stories entertain us, make us think,
and keep our interest page after page. Pearson English Readers
offer teenage and adult learners a huge range of titles, all
featuring carefully graded language to make them accessible to
learners of all abilities. Through the imagination of some of the
world's greatest authors, the English language comes to life in
pages of our Readers. Students have the pleasure and satisfaction
of reading these stories in English, and at the same time develop a
broader vocabulary, greater comprehension and reading fluency,
improved grammar, and greater confidence and ability to express
themselves. Find out more at english.com/readers
In a cruel twist of irony, Texas-born Patricia Highsmith
(1921-1995) is being recognized only after her death for her
inestimable genius in her native land. With the savage humor of
Waugh and the macabre sensibility of Poe, she brought a distinctly
contemporary acuteness to her prolific body of noir fiction.
Including over 60 short stories written throughout her career,
collected together for the first time, The Selected Stories reveals
the stunning versatility and terrifying power of Highsmith's work.
These stories highlight the remarkable range of Highsmith's powers
her unique ability to quickly, almost imperceptibly, draw out the
mystery and strangeness of her subject, which appears achingly
ordinary to our naked eye. Whether writing about jaded wives or
household pets, Highsmith continually upsets our expectations and
presents a world frighteningly familiar to our own, where danger
lurks around every turn. Stories from The Animal-Lovers Book of
Beastly Murders portray, with incisive humor, the murderously
competitive desires of our most trusted companions. In this
viciously satirical reprise of Kafka, cats, dogs, and cockroaches
are no longer necessary aspects of a happy home but actually have
the power to destroy it. In the short sketches that make up the
Little Tales of Misogyny, Highsmith rediscovers predictable female
characters "The Dancer," "The Female Novelist," "The Prude" and,
through scathing humor, invests them with uniquely destructive
powers. As a writer, Highsmith was all too well aware of the stolid
patriarchal conventions that ruled her day her publisher rejected
her second book out of hand because of its homosexual content. She
is not a polemicist, but, as stories like "Oona the Jolly Cave
Woman" and "The Mobile Bed-Object" reveal, her bizarre, haunting
fiction continually betrays the inadequacy of our conventional
understanding of female character. Highsmith eventually moved away
from these coolly satiric, darkly comic exercises, and in her later
collections, The Black House, Slowly, Slowly in the Wind, and
Mermaids on the Golf Course, she uses the warm familiarities of
middle-class life the manicured lawns, the cozy uptown apartments,
the local pubs as the backbone for her chilling portrayals. "The
Black House," for instance, explores the small-town male
camaraderie and the destructive secret it masks: in this world, the
fact that everyone knows your name is more likely a curse than a
blessing. In the title story of the final collection presented
here, "Mermaids on a Golf-Course," a man's extraordinary brush with
death endows his everyday desires with fantastically devastating
consequences. In her later work, Highsmith adds a dimension of
penetrating psychological insight, evoked most vividly in stories
like "A Curious Suicide" and "The Stuff of Madness," where the
precarious line between fantasy and reality is blurred and we
experience the terrifying possibility of slipping between them.
Great writers view the world askew, and in their art they reflect
our world back to us, slightly distorted. The Selected Stories
reveals Highsmith's deft and exacting style, her incisive satirical
intelligence, and her faultless eye for depicting the inner
tremblings of human character. Her world remains all the more
frightening because we recognize it as our own.
Tom Ripley is quietly living a life of luxury at his chateau at
Villeperce, and, as ever, is keeping one step ahead of the law - he
has, after all, a past that would not bear too much close
scrutiny...The fifth novel featuring the protagonist Tom Ripley
finds the sophisticated and amoral American expatriate being
harassed by David Pritchard, a fellow American whose boorishness
marks him as something of Ripley's alter-ego. Inexplicably familiar
with all the incriminating details of Ripley's past, Pritchard is
determined to expose him. He shadows Ripley's every move, first
spying on him at home in France and then following him to Morocco.
Tensions build on the return to Villeperce as Pritchard sets out to
locate a body Ripley would prefer remain hidden in a nearby river.
**AS SEEN ON WRITE AROUND THE WORLD WITH RICHARD E GRANT** 'The
No.1 Greatest Crime Writer' The Times 'Ripley, amoral, hedonistic
and charming, is a genuinely original creation' Daily Telegraph 'He
is using you for what you are worth' Tom Ripley wants money,
success, and the good life - and he's willing to kill for it.
Struggling to stay one step ahead of his creditors, and the law,
Ripley leaps at the chance to start afresh on a free trip to
Europe. But when his new-found happiness is threatened, his
response is as swift as it is shocking. This is the first in
Highsmith's classic series featuring the character of Tom Ripley.
The Talented Mr Ripley also inspired the Academy Award-winning film
starring Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow and Jude Law. One of the BBC's
100 Novels That Shaped Our World.
Now part of American film and literary lore, Tom Ripley, "a
bisexual psychopath and art forger who murders without remorse when
his comforts are threatened" (New York Times Book Review), was
Patricia Highsmith's favorite creation. In these volumes, we find
Ripley ensconced on a French estate with a wealthy wife, a
world-class art collection, and a past to hide. In Ripley Under
Ground (1970), an art forgery goes awry and Ripley is threatened
with exposure; in The Boy Who Followed Ripley (1980), Highsmith
explores Ripley's bizarrely paternal relationship with a troubled
young runaway, whose abduction draws them into Berlin's seamy
underworld; and in Ripley Under Water (1991), Ripley is confronted
by a snooping American couple obsessed with the disappearance of an
art collector who visited Ripley years before. More than any other
American literary character, Ripley provides "a lens to peer into
the sinister machinations of human behavior" (John Freeman,
Pittsburgh Gazette).
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Carol (Paperback)
Patricia Highsmith
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WITH A NEW FOREWORD BY VAL McDERMID Therese is just an ordinary
sales assistant working in a New York department store when a
beautiful, alluring woman in her thirties walks up to her counter.
Standing there, Therese is wholly unprepared for the first shock of
love. Therese 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 realizes 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.
Three classic crime novels by a master of the macabre appear here together in hardcover for the first time.
Suave, agreeable, and completely amoral, Patricia Highsmith's hero, the inimitable Tom Ripley, stops at nothing--not even murder-- to accomplish his goals. In achieving for himself the opulent life that he was denied as a child, Ripley shows himself to be a master of illusion and manipulation and a disturbingly sympathetic combination of genius and psychopath. As Highsmith navigates the mesmerizing tangle of Ripley's deadly and sinister games, she turns the mystery genre inside out and takes us into the mind of a man utterly indifferent to evil.
The Talented Mr. Ripley In a chilling literary hall of mirrors, Patricia Highsmith introduces Tom Ripley. Like a hero in a latter-day Henry James novel, is sent to Italy with a commission to coax a prodigal young American back to his wealthy father. But Ripley finds himself very fond of Dickie Greenleaf. He wants to be like him--exactly like him. Suave, agreeable, and utterly amoral, Ripley stops at nothing--certainly not only one murder--to accomplish his goal. Turning the mystery form inside out, Highsmith shows the terrifying abilities afforded to a man unhindered by the concept of evil.
Ripley Under Ground In this harrowing illumination of the psychotic mind, the enviable Tom Ripley has a lovely house in the French countryside, a beautiful and very rich wife, and an art collection worthy of a connoisseur. But such a gracious life has not come easily. One inopportune inquiry, one inconvenient friend, and Ripley's world will come tumbling down--unless he takes decisive steps. In a mesmerizing novel that coolly subverts all traditional notions of literary justice, Ripley enthralls us even as we watch him perform acts of pure and unspeakable evil.
Ripley's Game Connoisseur of art, harpsichord aficionado, gardener extraordinaire, and genius of improvisational murder, the inimitable Tom Ripley finds his complacency shaken when he is scorned at a posh gala. While an ordinary psychopath might repay the insult with some mild act of retribution, what Ripley has in mind is far more subtle, and infinitely more sinister. A social slight doesn't warrant murder of course-- just a chain of events that may lead to it.
Penguin Readers is an ELT graded reader series for learners of
English as a foreign language. With carefully adapted text, new
illustrations and language learning exercises, the print edition
also includes instructions to access supporting material online.
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 website
Exclusively with the print edition, readers can unlock online
resources including a digital book, audio edition, lesson plans and
answer keys.
Just in time for the centennial celebration of groundbreaking noir
fiction writer Patricia Highsmith comes a reissue of her
propulsive, engrossing debut, Strangers on a Train, with a new
introduction by best-selling author Paula Hawkins. Guy Haines and
Charles Anthony Bruno are passengers on the same train. Haines is a
successful architect in the midst of a divorce, Bruno a mysterious
smooth-talker with a sadistic proposal: he'll murder Haines's wife
if Haines will murder Bruno's father. As Bruno carries out his
twisted plan, Guy finds himself trapped in Highsmith's perilous
world, where, under the right circumstances, ordinary people are
capable of extraordinary crimes. The inspiration for Alfred
Hitchcock's classic 1951 film, Strangers on a Train launched
Highsmith's prolific career, proving her a master at depicting the
unsettling forces that tremble beneath the surface of everyday
life.
"Fabulous, in all senses of that word . . . combining the best
features of the suspense genre with the best of existential
fiction--a thrilled reflection."--Paul Theroux Elsie Tyler turns
heads wherever she goes. After leaving her hometown upstate for
Greenwich Village, the charming young waitress soon finds herself
surrounded by admirers, including Jack and Natalia Sutherland, a
married couple who invite Elsie into their bohemian inner circle
and help her launch a career as a model. Meanwhile, Ralph
Linderman, a middle-aged security guard with a dog named God, is
nursing his own obsession with Elsie. He sets out to protect her
from the "bad company" she attracts, but his uninvited affections
are overbearing, possibly even pathological. When Ralph finds
Jack's wallet on a morning stroll through the Village, and returns
it, he is entirely unprepared for the complex maze of sexual
obsession and disturbing psychological intrigue he is about to be
drawn into. Originally published in 1986, Found in the Street is
classic Highsmith--an engrossing, unsettling thriller that explores
the bleakest alleyways of human desire, and a kaleidoscopic
portrait of 1980s New York City. Patricia Highsmith, author of
Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley, has been called
"one of the finest crime novelists" by the New York Times and is
now considered one of the most original voices in twentieth-century
American fiction.
"You're always good on ideas, Tom..." An American art collector is
claiming that the expensive masterpiece he bought is a fake. He
wants to meet with the artist - but Tom Ripley knows that artist no
longer exits. Ripley needs to hide his role in the fraud, and keep
his colleague's mouth shut. But not everyone's nerves are as steady
as his, especially when it comes to murder. The second in
Highsmith's Ripley series, Ripley Under Ground is set six years
after the events of The Talented Mr Ripley. 'Patricia Highsmith is
unrivalled' Daily Telegraph
By the bestselling author of The Talented Mr Ripley, Carol and
Strangers on a Train * 'By opening this book, you've given Patricia
Highsmith permission to follow you, catch you, take you apart. Get
ready to run' CARMEN MARIA MACHADO * 'Every story shimmers like a
dark gem as Highsmith turns her gimlet eye on domesticity, suburban
madness, toxic families and the loneliness of childhood. Often
mordantly funny and always psychologically acute, this collection
is not to be missed' MEGAN ABBOTT * 'The sheer macabre, amoral
brilliance of Patricia Highsmith surely makes her one of the finest
writers in the English language' RICHARD OSMAN INTRODUCED BY CARMEN
MARIA MACHADO Patricia Highsmith was one of the great
twentieth-century novelists, celebrated for classics The Talented
Mr Ripley, Carol and Strangers on a Train, but she was also a
masterful and prolific short-story writer. This definitive new
collection, featuring two stories that have never been published
before, confirms Highsmith as a genius of the genre. Peerlessly
disturbing, exhilarating and savagely funny, Highsmith's stories
still have the power to startle, presenting a world that is
frighteningly familiar and as relevant today as when they were
written. * Includes two newly discovered stories * This is the only
volume of Highsmith's stories to select from a lifetime of
short-story writing
Long out of print, this Highsmith classic resurfaces with a vengeance.
The great revival of interest in Patricia Highsmith continues with the publication of this legendary, cultish short story collection. With an eerie simplicity of style, Highsmith turns our next-door neighbors into sadistic psychopaths, lying in wait among white picket fences and manicured lawns. In the darkly satiric, often mordantly hilarious sketches that make up Little Tales of Misogyny, Highsmith upsets our conventional notions of female character, revealing the devastating power of these once familiar creatures—"The Dancer," "The Female Novelist," "The Prude"—who destroy both themselves and the men around them. This work attesets to Highsmith's reputation as "the poet of apprehension" (Graham Greene).
Now a major film starring Oscar-winner Ben Affleck and Golden
Globe-nominee Ana de Armas. 'If you read crime stories at all or
perhaps especially if you don't, you should read Deep Water' SUNDAY
TIMES 'If I really don't like somebody, I kill him . . . You
remember Malcolm McRae, don't you?' To everyone around them,
Melinda and Vic Van Allen are the perfect couple - young, wealthy
and attractive. But when their love sours, their mind games reach a
twisted, dangerous climax. '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.
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.
"Highsmith's novels are peerlessly disturbing...bad dreams that keep us thrashing for the rest of the night."—The New Yorker
With the savage humor of Evelyn Waugh and the macabre sensibility of Edgar Allan Poe, Patricia Highsmith brought a distinct twentieth-century acuteness to her prolific body of fiction. In her more than twenty novels, psychopaths lie in wait amid the milieu of the mundane, in the neighbor clipping the hedges or the spouse asleep next to you at night.
Now, Norton continues the revival of this noir genius with another of her lost masterpieces: The Blunderer, first published in 1953 and hailed as her finest novel, about the rise and fall of a faithful suburban husband who plots his wife's demise in fantasies gruesome and eerily serene.
Pearson English Readers bring language learning to life through the
joy of reading. Well-written stories entertain us, make us think,
and keep our interest page after page. Pearson English Readers
offer teenage and adult learners a huge range of titles, all
featuring carefully graded language to make them accessible to
learners of all abilities. Through the imagination of some of the
world's greatest authors, the English language comes to life in
pages of our Readers. Students have the pleasure and satisfaction
of reading these stories in English, and at the same time develop a
broader vocabulary, greater comprehension and reading fluency,
improved grammar, and greater confidence and ability to express
themselves. Find out more at english.com/readers
Named by The Times as the all-time number one crime writer,
Patricia Highsmith was an author who broke new ground and defied
genre cliches with novels such as The Talented Mr Ripley and
Strangers on a Train. In the classic creative writing guide
Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction, Highsmith reveals her
secrets for producing world-class crime and thrillers, from
imaginative tips for generating ideas to useful ways of turning
them into stunning stories.
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