Patricia Highsmith

When a troubled young runaway arrives on Tom Ripley's French estate, he is drawn into a world he thought he'd left behind: a seedy underworld 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 definitive collection of dramatisations and readings of Patricia Highsmith's finest fiction - plus bonus material

A master of the psychological crime genre, Patricia Highsmith is most famous for her quintet of bestselling 'Ripley' novels, and her groundbreaking thriller Strangers on a Train (notably adapted as a classic film by Alfred Hitchcock). This extensive collection encompasses her best-known works, as well as selected short stories and three programmes about the author herself and her greatest creation, charismatic anti-hero Tom Ripley.

Included is a series of five plays charting Ripley's journey from smalltime conman to cool, calculated killer. Comprising The Talented Mr Ripley, Ripley Under Ground, Ripley's Game, The Boy Who Followed Ripley and Ripley Under Water, The Complete Ripley stars Ian Hart as Tom.

Also featured are dramatisations of Strangers on a Train (starring Anton Lesser, Michael Sheen, Saskia Reeves and Bill Nighy); Patricia Highsmith's compelling tale of obsession, The Cry of the Owl (starring John Sharian, Adrian Lester and Joanne McQuinn); and the dark, intriguing domestic noir A Suspension of Mercy (starring Stuart Milligan and Janet Maw).

Highsmith's tender, unsettling lesbian love story Carol is abridged and read in 10 parts by Zoe Wanamaker, and there are abridged readings of her short stories 'A Dangerous Hobby', 'Variations on a Game' (both read by Campbell Scott), and 'The Trouble with Mrs Blynn, the Trouble with the World' (read by Anna Massey). Five more unabridged stories, 'The Cries of Love', 'The Snail-Watcher', 'The Breeder', 'Notes from a Respectable Cockroach' and 'Goat Ride', are read by Helen Horton, John Webb, Garrick Hagon, William Hootkins and Crawford Logan.

In Looking for Ripley, crime writer Mark Billingham unravels the mystery behind our lasting fascination with Tom Ripley, while in A Passionate Affair, Marcel Berlins asks if his creator Patricia Highsmith also fell under his spell. And in Desert Island Discs, the author shares the soundtrack of her life with presenter Roy Plomley.

Tom Ripley detests murder - unless it is absolutely necessary. If possible he prefers someone else to do the dirty work; in this case, a victim of a fatal disease, with no criminal record, who will murder for a reward, in order to provide for his young widow and child.

A chance meeting on a train and a rash conversation can lead to all sorts of trouble... From the moment that he constructs a perfect alibi, Guy Haines is trapped in a nightmare of shared guilt and an insidious merging of his personality with that of his conspirator.

Tom Ripley is struggling to stay one step ahead of his creditors and the law when an unexpected acquaintance offers him the chance to start over. Ripley wants money, success, and the good life, and he's willing to kill for it. When his newfound happiness is threatened, his response is as swift as it is shocking.