Rhoda Comfrey's death seemed unremarkable; the real mystery was her life.In A Sleeping Life, master mystery writer Ruth Rendell unveils an elaborate web of lies and deception painstakingly maintained by a troubled soul. A wallet found...

The search for the body commenced. Then the victim walked into town.Behind the picture-postcard façade of Kingsmarkham lies a community rife with violence, betrayal, and a taste for vengeance. When sixteen-year-old Lizzie Cromwell re...

The 20th mystery in Ruth Rendell's Chief Inspector Wexford series focuses on the relationship between parent and child, and the odd iterations of modern family life. When an 18-year-old mother is brutally murdered and her pregnant fri...

The mysterious disappearance of two local teenagers and their baby-sitter draws Inspector Wexford into a baffling case involving dark family secrets, violence, a religious cult, adultery, and murder. Reprint. 25,000 first printing.

Vera, who lives with her invalid mother and idle husband, Stanley, struggles to find peace amid domestic strife, until Stanley, driven by hatred and ever-increasing conflict with his much disliked mother-in-law, decides to lend death ...

When Margaret Parsons disappears, Inspector Burden tries to reassure her frantic husband that she will be back by morning. Privately, though, he is certain Margaret has run off with another man. But then the missing woman's body is fo...

In her twenty-second book featuring Inspector Wexford, the diligent detective debuted in 1964Â's From Doon with Death, Ruth Rendell delivers a brilliant and fascinating tale that revolves around a man Wexford suspects to be a serial ...

Nobody does North London squalor better than Ruth Rendell. Describing in vivid detail the cultural sewer in which a monster named Teddy Brex grows up, she uses hideous furniture, slovenly housekeeping habits, even his mother's diet wh...

"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 o...

The first case for DCI Reg Wexford. When Margaret Parsons disappears, it's assumed that she's run off with another man. But then the missing woman's body is found and a startling discovery is made when Mr. Parsons lets the police into...

Is it dangerous to know too much about your neighbors? In Tigerlily's Orchids, Diamond Dagger Award–winning Ruth Rendell has written psychologically thrilling novel about the eccentric inhabitants of a London terrace—about the se...

Chief Inspector Wexford returns in a gripping new mystery from the author who Time magazine has called "the best mystery writer in the English-speaking world."After a truffle-hunting dog unearths a human hand instead of a pr...

Elizabeth Nightingale found peace and tranquility on her nightly walks through the rich, dense forests surrounding Myfleet Manor. But the peace she treasured was shattered one night when she found death waiting in the woods. Chief Ins...

Mild-mannerd Arthur Johnson's empty and solitary existence is suddenly threatened when a worldly young man, a scholar working on a thesis on psychopathic personalities, arrives at the Trinity Road Lodging House at which he lives and s...

Three London women all lose the men in their lives under curious circumstances. The men in question all have similar characteristics--dark hair, a penchant for cleaning out bank accounts, and names with the initials J. L. And when one...

In this psychological thriller by the acclaimed master of the subgenre, Ruth Rendell, two mentally unbalanced people--one of them psychotic--coexist uneasily in a decaying London mansion. Michael "Mix' Cellini, a working-class ma...

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 ye...

When a housekeeper carries out a modern 'Valentine's Day Massacre' on the family that employs her, Detective Chief Superintendent William Vetch investigates to uncover evidence of a personal tragedy that precipitated the crime. Reprin...

Rodney Williams's disappearance seems typical to Chief Inspector Wexford -- a simple case of a man running off with a woman other than his wife. But when another woman reports that her husband is missing, the case turns unpleasantly c...

Ruth Rendell "is in top form" (Booklist) in this sequel to A Sight for Sore Eyes—one of Rendell's most beloved novels—featuring the retired Inspector Wexford.In the stunning climax to Rendell's classic A Sight for Sore E...

It was better than a hotel, this anonymous room on a secluded side street of a small country town. No register to sign, no questions asked, and for five bucks a man could have three hours of undisturbed, illicit lovemaking.Then one ev...

Sir Manual Camargue had just announced his intention of taking a second wife, 50 years his junior. On the same cold winter's day, he died as a result of what was surely a tragic accident. But Wexford doubts that Camargue's death came ...

Mary Jago had donated her own bone marrow to save the life of someone she didn't know. And this generous act led directly to the bitter break-up of her affair with Alistair. For him, it was as though her beauty had been plundered. But...

INCLUDES AN EXCERPT OF RENDELL'S FINAL NOVEL, DARK CORNERSFrom crime legend Ruth Rendell, a psychologically intriguing novel about an old murder that sends shockwaves across a group of astonishingly carnal and appetiteful elderly frie...

This captivating novel about residents and servants on one block of a posh London street is a "sex comedy and a social satire, of the 'Upstairs Downstairs' variety, with a few murders mixed in for our added delight" (The Was...

A Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Special Edition of A Judgement in Stone by Ruth Rendell. Featuring an introduction by James Ellroy. On Valentine's Day, four members of the Coverdale family were murdered in the space of fifte...

Wexford had every reason to remember the Painter case—it was the first murder he'd ever handled on his own. There had been no doubts about the case, until now. Someone wants the case reopened, and they want Wexford proved wrong.

A spine-tingling anthology by the New York Times–bestselling author and master of "psychological insight . . . and, not infrequently, teeth-chattering terror" (The New York Times).  These never-before-collected stories ...

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...

With floods threatening both the town of Kingsmarkham and his own home and no end to the rain in sight, Chief Inspector Wexford already has his hands full when he learns that two local teenagers have gone missing along with their sitt...