Ruth Rendell

Minty's fiance, Jock Lewis, was supposed to have died in the Paddington train crash. When his ghost appeared before Minty, and even touched her, she decided to protect herself from this shadow man and started to carry a knife!

After a weekend in Paris with her husband, Mrs Dade returns home to discover that her teenaged children, along with their teen-sitter, have disappeared. She is convinced that they drowned when the River Brede burst its banks. Wexford's investigation calls into question his assumptions about the way people behave.

The criminal impulse may be present in the most routine or intimate situation. Murder, passion, and lost innocence are all contained in these stories. Ruth Rendell probes behind the patterns of everyday life to pinpoint the frailties, desires, deceptions and guilty secrets of human beings.

These nine short stories indicate hidden depths in ordinary events and create a sense of unease.

Liza lives with her mother, Eve, in a secluded gatehouse, which she has never been allowed to leave. Intruders entered at their peril, only to mysteriously disappear. When the police arrive on their doorstep, Eve throws her daughter into the real world and Liza begins to see the logic behind her mother's gruesome crimes. Soon she must accept the possibility that she has inherited Eve's lust for murder...

A fatal accident on a quiet country road was caused by a concrete block being deliberately dropped from a bridge, but did the intended victim die? When other murders occur in King's Markham, Chief Inspector Wexford and his team discover a link between the accident and the other victims.

The trampled grass led to the body of Margaret Parsons. With no useful clues and a victim known only for her mundane life, Chief Inspector Wexford is baffled until he discovers Margaret's dark secret - a collection of rare books, each inscribed from a secret lover and signed only as 'Doon'. Who is Doon? And could the answer hold the key to Wexford solving his first case?

Good-looking Guy is from a council flat, Leonora has a mews house in Holland Park. Her mother doesn’t like Guy but, even when he and Leonora grow apart, his obsession with her grows. Contains some offensive language

In his latest case Wexford is forced to confront the issues of violence and prejudice which surround domestic crime, after the disappearance of several young girls in Kingsmarkham.

When a bank job goes wrong a Kingsmarkham detective sergeant is killed. Months later, the Flory family are slaughtered at home by an unknown assassin in what appears to be an unrelated crime. Chief Inspector Wexford feels there is a link and sets out to discover it.

When Victor is released from prison, having served time for attempted murder of a police officer and numerous rapes, he finds that he still cannot control the panics of violent anger which got him into trouble in the first place. He becomes involved in a strange and doomed triangular relationship with the police officer and his girlfriend.

An aging man who still lives with his mother, indifferent to his fiancée and bored with his 9 to 5 job, harbour’s a bizarre secret fetish. Following a performance with his local drama group, as the wolf in Red Riding Hood, he gradually becomes obsessed with his wolf alter-ego, spending more and more time in his wolf's costume.

Doomed to a life of boredom and tedious routine, bank manager Alan Groombridge dreamt of stealing enough money to live a different life for one year. But when the bank was robbed the tedious routine changed to an unending brutal nightmare.

A collection of sinister short stories, including 'The New Girl Friend's' murderous confusion of identities to 'The Convolvulus Clock' where each tick is the tick of guilt.

A collection of short stories and two novellas from an author who has truly mastered this genre.

After protestors arrive to oppose a proposed new road, a badly decomposed young woman's body is discovered.

Several young women have been strangled near the antique shop in Marylebone, belonging to Inez Ferry. Since the death of the first girl the tabloids have referred to the killer as 'The Rottweiler'. Very gradually the police start to suspect that 'The Rottweiler' is connected in some way to the antique shop.

Two damaged children: Teddy Brex, whom no-one loved, and so found it easier to relate to objects or things which never let him down; and Francine Hill, who was discovered sitting by the body of her mother, her skirt red with blood..... Children grow up in different ways. Teddy became a handsome young man, Francine was beautiful - a sight for sore eyes. But it was death that brought them together. Contains some graphic violence.

When the body of a brutally beaten girl is found in a quarry during a hippy festival near Kingsmarkham, Wexford is first on the scene. Who, in this atmosphere of peace and love, could be capable of such violence? Wexford uncovers a history of love and hate that began years earlier. In all his years of police work, he has never been faced with a crime of such desperate passion...

Mix Cellini is a loner, living in an apartment in a decaying house in Notting Hill. He is obsessed with the murders at 10, Rillington Place. He also fantasises about a beautiful model who lives nearby. When reality intrudes into Mix's life, a long pent-up violence explodes.

When Stuart Font decides to throw a house-warming party in his new flat, he invites all the people in his building. But he definitely does not want to include his girlfriend, Claudia, as that might involve asking her husband. For all the occupants of Lichfield House, the party will be one everyone remembers.

A chance meeting in a London street, with someone he had known briefly as a very young police constable, brings Wexford out of retirement. Tom Ede is now a Detective Superintendent, and is very keen to recruit Wexford as an advisor on a difficult case.

Four members of the Coverdale family died in the space of fifteen minutes on St Valentine's Day. Eunice Parchman, the illiterate housekeeper, shot them down while they were watching television. Two weeks later she was arrested for the crime. But the tragedy neither began nor ended there...

Years earlier, when Wexford was a young police officer, two young women had been found strangled, and every personal and professional instinct told Wexford that the killer was still at large. But he soon discovers that the past is a haunted place, with clues and passions that leave an indelible imprint on the here and now.

Ismay and Heather live in the same house where their father drowned. The house is divided into two with their mother and aunt living upstairs. The bathroom where their father died has been sealed off. Changes in the house or the happenings of that fatal day nine years ago are never mentioned.