BY THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY, CAROL AND STRANGERS ON A TRAIN
‘No one has created psychological suspense more densely and deliciously satisfying’ VOGUE
‘There’s no one like Patricia Highsmith’ TIME
‘Master storyteller Highsmith offers an eerily up-to-date collection of modern horror tales’ PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Patricia Highsmith, an American who lived most of her life in Europe, was the author of such bestselling crime novels as Strangers on a Train, and The Talented Mr Ripley.
The stories collected here are classic Highsmith – eerie, prescient and chilling, catastrophes caused by human error and dark motives. Whether evoking the White House under siege by the homeless or a one-hundred and ninety-year-old woman perpetually near death and dimly glowing, each tale refuses to release you from its tense grip. The ten eerily up-to-date stories chronicle a world gone slightly mad; environmental degradation, apocalyptic disaster, political chaos, and religious conservatism are captured in incisive prose that leaves us haunted.
‘No one has created psychological suspense more densely and deliciously satisfying’ VOGUE
‘There’s no one like Patricia Highsmith’ TIME
‘Master storyteller Highsmith offers an eerily up-to-date collection of modern horror tales’ PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Patricia Highsmith, an American who lived most of her life in Europe, was the author of such bestselling crime novels as Strangers on a Train, and The Talented Mr Ripley.
The stories collected here are classic Highsmith – eerie, prescient and chilling, catastrophes caused by human error and dark motives. Whether evoking the White House under siege by the homeless or a one-hundred and ninety-year-old woman perpetually near death and dimly glowing, each tale refuses to release you from its tense grip. The ten eerily up-to-date stories chronicle a world gone slightly mad; environmental degradation, apocalyptic disaster, political chaos, and religious conservatism are captured in incisive prose that leaves us haunted.
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Reviews
For eliciting the menace that lurks in familiar surroundings, there's no one like Patricia Highsmith
No one has created psychological suspense more densely and deliciously satisfying
Whereas we read Stephen King or Ruth Rendell to relish the thrills that come from carefully controlled verbal terror, Highsmith is not to be taken so lightly. She conveys a firm, unshakable belief in the existence of evil--personal, psychological, and political . . . The genius of Tales and all of Highsmith's writing is that it is at once deeply disturbing and exhilarating
One of the truly brilliant short-story writers of the 20th century
Master storyteller Highsmith offers an eerily up-to-date collection of modern horror tales
Flush with satire, mischief, and menace. Hers is a world consumed by self-destruction, driven by stupidity, greed and self-interest--a place where the human race cannibalizes its own . . . [Her stories] unsettle the soul and dampen the palms
Highsmith is the poet of apprehension rather than fear . . . In her short stories Highsmith naturally has to adopt a different method. She is after the quick kill rather than the slow encirclement of the reader, and how admirably and with what field-craft she hunts us down
You could swear she's writing fact wrapped up in very sly fiction . . . definitely worth reading
