Nanny Penny Keeling knows working for strong-but-silent Santo De Luca will be a challenge, but she's determined to do it for his little girl's sake. And she's equally determined not to fall for her dangerously attractive boss--she's been burned before.... Penny is pretty, charming and utterly beddable--and under the fiery Italian sun Santo seduces her.... It was meant to be only an affair. Now Penny has announced she's pregnant.... View More...
Minty's boyfriend, Jock, was killed in the disastrous train wreck at Paddington, shortly after he borrowed all her savings. Now he has come back to haunt her. Zillah lost her estranged husband, Jerry, in that same accident. She is not convinced he is actually dead, but for reasons of her own decides not to pursue the matter. Fiona's fianc , Jeff, has simply disappeared-quite inexplicably since she was supporting him in style. In her ingeniously unnerving new novel, Ruth Rendell deftly traces the connections among these women-and between them a series of vicious stabbings terrifying London. Ada... View More...
"A spectacularly creepy and macabre tale" (Entertainment Weekly) 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 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 col... View More...
In End in Tears, Edgar Award winning author Ruth Rendell's Inspector Wexford has his work cut out for him: When Mavis Ambrose is killed by a falling chunk of concrete, the police have no reason to suspect mischief. However, the bludgeoning of the young and gorgeous Amber Marshalson that follows is clearly murder. In the midst of the hottest summer on record, Inspector Wexford is called in to investigate. He discovers the two cases may be linked, and that Amber was at the scene of Mavis's death. When a third body is found, the case takes a disturbing and unexpected turn. The deeper Wexford digs... View More...
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. A female vicar named Sarah Hussein is discovered strangled in her Kingsmarkham vicarage. A single mother to a teenage girl, Hussein was working in a male-dominated profession. Moreover, she was of mixed race and wanted to modernize the church. Could racism or sexism have played a factor in her murder? Maxine, the gossipy... View More...
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. Walking to the shops one day, fifty-year-old Eugene Wren discovers an envelope on the street bulging with cash. A man plagued by a shameful addiction--and his own good intentions--Wren hatches a plan to find the money's rightful ow... View More...
In the quiet Sussex country town of Kingsmarkham, the daughter of Nigerian physician Raymond Akande is missing. It's probably nothing, says Dr. Akande to his friend and client Chief Inspector Wexford, whose help he enlists. But the days that follow prove the doctor dreadfully wrong. A young woman is found murdered not Melanie, but the last person to have seen and spoken to her. A second woman's body is discovered, again not Melanie's, but like her, young and black. A third woman turns up beaten and unconscious; like the others, she is of Nigerian origin. As Inspector Wexford's investigation st... View More...
In the quiet Sussex country town of Kingsmarkham, the daughter of Nigerian physician Raymond Akande is missing. It's probably nothing, says Dr. Akande to his friend and client Chief Inspector Wexford, whose help he enlists. But the days that follow prove the doctor dreadfully wrong. A young woman is found murdered not Melanie, but the last person to have seen and spoken to her. A second woman's body is discovered, again not Melanie's, but like her, young and black. A third woman turns up beaten and unconscious; like the others, she is of Nigerian origin. As Inspector Wexford's investigation st... View More...
INCLUDES AN EXCERPT OF RENDELL'S FINAL NOVEL, DARK CORNERS In this psychologically explosive story from "one of the most remarkable novelists of her generation" (People), the discovery of bones in a tin box sends shockwaves across a group of long-time friends. In the waning months of the second World War, a group of children discover an earthen tunnel in their neighborhood outside London. Throughout the summer of 1944--until one father forbids it--the subterranean space becomes their "secret garden," where the friends play games and tell stories. Six decades later, beneath a house on the same ... View More...
The Monster in the Box is the latest addition to Ruth Rendell's "masterful" (Los Angeles Times) Inspector Wexford series. In this enthralling new book, Rendell, "the best mystery writer in the English-speaking world" (Time), takes Inspector Wexford back to his first murder case--a woman found strangled in her bedroom. Outside the crime scene, Wexford noticed a short, muscular man wearing a scarf and walking a dog. The man gave Wexford an unnerving stare. Without any solid evidence, Wexford began to suspect that this man--Eric Targo--was the killer. Over the years there are more unsolved, appar... View More...
INCLUDES AN EXCERPT OF RENDELL'S FINAL NOVEL, DARK CORNERS Diamond Dagger Award-winning Ruth Rendell has written a psychologically thrilling novel about the eccentric inhabitants of a London terrace, the secrets they keep, and what they will do to hide them. Is it dangerous to know too much about your neighbors? When Stuart Font decides to throw a housewarming party in his new flat, he invites all the people in his building--three flippant young girls, a lonely spinster, a man with a passion for classical history, and a woman determined to drink herself to death. After some deliberation, he e... View More...