false 47687 83422 0452270642 9780452270640 24 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171044778m/83422.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171044778s/83422.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/83422.A_Dark_Adapted_Eye 4.01 332 47687 3.74 2847 349 10890 3.58 10918 1117 1986 104507 1416531939 9781416531937 39 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171512898m/104507.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171512898s/104507.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/104507.The_Chimney_Sweeper_s_Boy 3.82 288 The Chimney Sweeper's Boy, Vine proves herself the equal of her alter ego and a master of the psychological thriller--as well as the police procedural--in this riveting novel. Why bestselling novelist Gerald Candless assumed a new identity years before his marriage and the birth of his two daughters isn't revealed until the penultimate chapter of the book, but the effect of his deception on his family drives Vine's deft character studies. In Gerald's wife, Ursula, and his daughters, Hope and Sarah, Vine has created three complex women in the thrall of an equally complicated and compelling man. As Sarah unravels the mystery of her father's deception, Gerald gradually becomes a more sympathetic figure. But Ursula, whose strange marital bargain with Gerald and whose distant relationship with her daughters tug at the heart, stays with the reader long after this distinguished, literary mystery is finished. --Jane Adams]]> 47687 3.74 2847 349 10890 3.58 10918 1117 1998 308621 0307237605 9780307237606 48 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173612924m/308621.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173612924s/308621.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/308621.The_Minotaur_A_Novel 3.56 253
Weeks go by at Lydstep with little to mark the passage of time beyond John’s daily walks and the amusingly provincial happenings that engross the Cosway women, and Kerstin occupies her many free hours at the Hall reading or making entries into her diary. Meanwhile, bitter wrangling among Julia Cosway and her four grown daughters becomes increasingly evident. But this is just the most obvious of the tensions that charge the old remote estate, with its sealed rooms full of mystery. Soon Kerstin will find herself in possession of knowledge she will wish she’d never attained, secrets that will propel the occupants of Lydstep Old Hall headlong into sexual obsession, betrayal, and, finally, murder.


Also available in a Random House Large Print edition and as an eBook]]> 47687 3.74 2847 349 10890 3.58 10918 1117 2006 831231 0451405498 9780451405494 25 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1178745663m/831231.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1178745663s/831231.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/831231.Anna_s_Book 3.86 220 47687 3.74 2847 349 10890 3.58 10918 1117 1993 420967 0140158618 9780140158618 9 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174590115m/420967.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174590115s/420967.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/420967.A_Fatal_Inversion 3.95 187 47687 3.74 2847 349 10890 3.58 10918 1117 1987 454539 0140252800 9780140252804 16 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174920095m/454539.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174920095s/454539.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/454539.The_Brimstone_Wedding 3.72 177 47687 3.74 2847 349 10890 3.58 10918 1117 1996 468664 0140114467 9780140114461 16 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175021893m/468664.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175021893s/468664.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/468664.The_House_of_Stairs 3.75 171 47687 3.74 2847 349 10890 3.58 10918 1117 1989 508915 1400045045 9781400045044 17 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/508915.The_Blood_Doctor 3.59 154
As his research deepens, Martin begins to uncover hints that his great-grandfather’s fascination with blood may have had its darker side. The murder of Henry’s fiancée, the death of his young son, the remarkable number of relatives and friends who died mysteriously—could all these have been mere coincidence? Martin scours England and America for relatives whose attics or memories might hold clues, until finally the tragic truth stands revealed.

Drawing from the dark themes of obsession and murder that drive so many of Barbara Vine’s extraordinary novels, The Blood Doctor is also enriched by domestic intimacies familiar to readers of Ruth Rendell’s beloved Inspector Wexford novels and by details of Dame Rendell’s own experience as a Life Peer in the House of Lords. Once again we have a masterful work from a storyteller of the highest order.]]> 47687 3.74 2847 349 10890 3.58 10918 1117 2002 4762404 0307451984 9780307451989 59 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4762404.The_Birthday_Present_A_Novel 3.27 184
It’s the dress-up and role-play that inspire Ivor to create a surprise birthday present for his beloved that involves a curbside kidnapping. It’s all intended as mock-dangerous foreplay, but then things take a dark turn.

After things go horribly wrong, Ivor begins to receive anonymous letters that reveal astonishingly specific details about the affair and its aftermath. Somehow he must keep his role from being uncovered–and his political future from being destroyed by scandal.

Like a heretic on the inquisitor’s rack, Ivor is not to be spared the exquisitely slow and tortuous unfolding of events, as hints, nuances, and small revelations lay his darkest secrets hideously bare for all the world to see.

The Birthday Present is a deft, insightful, and compulsively readable exploration of obsessive desire–and the dark twists of fate that can shake the lives of even those most insulated by privilege, sophistication, and power.]]> 47687 3.74 2847 349 2008 466705 0375726500 9780375726507 12 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175010465m/466705.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175010465s/466705.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/466705.Grasshopper 3.62 154 Clodagh Brown has always been frightened by enclosed spaces and loved climbing, a phobia and passion that resulted in the death of her high school sweetheart. As a college student living in the basement of a distant relative's home in Maida Vale, a slightly shabby London neighborhood, she encounters a group of peers who share both of these psychological quirks and introduce her to the steep rooftops of her new surroundings. Clodagh soon falls in love with Silver, a young man whose top-floor apartment across from her flat houses a diverse and fascinating group of people. Their youthful idealism and moral certainties are often at odds with conventional values and legal niceties. While Clodagh and Silver carry the story, their peers present ample opportunities for Vine to showcase her talent for imagining a multiplicity of lives and personas--from Liv, the Swedish au pair who can clamber over rooftops like a mountain goat but is terrified of what awaits her on level ground, to Jonny, whose pathological need to dominate the others, particularly Liv, leads to the shocking and tragic denouement. When the climbers chance upon a top-floor flat where a couple and their adopted mixed-race son are hiding from the authorities (who would remove the child from their care), Vine's ability to alter pace without sacrificing story or character really stands out. Grasshopper is an acutely drawn, immensely satisfying book. --Jane Adams

]]> 47687 3.74 2847 349 10890 3.58 10918 1117 2000 571075 0451406346 9780451406347 11 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175887449m/571075.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175887449s/571075.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/571075.No_Night_Is_Too_Long 3.85 140
Tim thought he'd gotten away with it. For months after the murder off the Alaskan coast he'd heard not a word. No policeman at his door asking questions. Nothing. And then the letters began. At first they seemed almost innocuous accounts of historical events. But a common theme emerged quickly. It was particularly germane to Tim, and it related directly to murder.

In No Night Is Too Long, Barbara Vine has written a tour de force, rich in characters and setting, a remarkable novel by an internationally celebrated master of her craft. To research the book, the author and her husband embarked on a boat trip from Seattle up the Alaskan coast. The stark beauty of that experience provides No Night Is Too Long with an extraordinarily vivid sense of place. The novel's exploration of sexual identity and guilt represents a departure for Vine. Its resolution -- as always -- is a stunning surprise.]]> 47687 3.74 2847 349 10890 3.58 10918 1117 1995 702468 0517088193 9780517088197 3 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1191856806m/702468.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1191856806s/702468.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/702468.Gallowglass 3.75 111 47687 3.74 2847 349 10890 3.58 10918 1117 1990 459421 0140156917 9780140156911 7 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174944484m/459421.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174944484s/459421.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/459421.King_Solomon_s_Carpet 3.61 101 A Fatal Inversion for this updating of Conrad's novel of terrorist conspiracy, The Secret Agent.

Tom Murray is a promising musician reduced to illegal busking in Underground stations and a sad little love affair with his accompanist Alice, who left her husband and newborn baby, taking only her violin. Together with Jasper Darne, another dropout from his family who likes to ride on the tops of Underground carriages, and Jed Lowrie, a Safeguard volunteer who's left behind his own family to live for his hunting hawk Abelard, they live in a failed schoolhouse -- whose bell tolled for the only time in memory when the headmaster hanged himself from its rope. The school's owned by the old man's grandson, Jarv Stringer, who now passes the time by writing a book on the Underground and taking in waifs and strays while his aunt Cecilia Darne, Jasper's grandmother, quietly declines around the corner under the variously watchful eyes of her relatives and her longtime companion Daphne Bleech-Palmer. The apple of discord in this extended, dysfunctional family is sinister Axel Jonas, who rides the trains with a dancing bear, actually a man named Ivan, until Jasper one day leads him to Jarvis's, where he takes up residence, seduces Alice, and begins to gather details about the operation of the Underground in preparation for a cataclysmic bombing.

It's no shame for Vine/Rendell to fall short of her peerless model: the air of foreboding is as expertly invoked as ever, but the story, following one misfit after another but never bringing them very much closer together even at the inevitable tolling of the schoolhouse bell, lacks the momentum of Conrad, or of such earlier triumphs as A Judgment in Stone. Richly textured but slow-moving: a thriller for readers who think it's better to travel hopelessly than to arrive. (Kirkus Reviews)]]> 47687 3.74 2847 349 10890 3.58 10918 1117 1992 1762357 0140138447 9780140138443 1 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1187882655m/1762357.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1187882655s/1762357.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1762357.Three_Novels_Dark_adapted_Eye_Fatal_Inversion_and_House_of_Stairs_ 4.00 7 47687 3.74 2847 349 10890 3.58 10918 1117 1990 2805169 0670889849 9780670889846 1 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2805169.Barbara_Vine_Omnibus_The_Chimney_Sweeper_s_Boy_No_Night_Is_Too_Long_the_Brimstone_Wedding 3.75 4 47687 3.74 2847 349 10890 3.58 10918 1117 1999 309373 1578155959 9781578155958 0 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173618561m/309373.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173618561s/309373.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/309373.No_Night_Is_Too_Long_Dark_Adapted_Eye 4.50 2 47687 3.74 2847 349 10890 3.58 10918 1117 2003 7280759 0307451992 9780307451996 0 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7280759-the-birthday-present 0.0 0 47687 3.74 2847 349 2009