"I have long had a theory that Nabokov knew The Price of Salt and modeled the climactic cross-country car chase in Lolita on Therese and Carol's frenzied bid for freedom," writes Terry Castle in The New Republic about this novel, arguably Patricia Highsmith's finest, first published in 1952 under the pseudonym Clare Morgan. Soon to be a new film, The Price of Salt tells the riveting story of Therese Belivet, a stage designer trapped in a department-store day job, whose salvation arrives one day in the form of Carol Aird, an alluring suburban housewife in the throes of a divorce. They fall in love and set out across the United States, pursued by a private investigator who eventually blackmails Carol into a choice between her daughter and her lover. With this reissue, The Price of Salt may finally be recognized as a major twentieth-century American novel.

The release of the excellent film The Talented Mr. Ripley appears to have brought Highsmith many readers who may have heard of her but had never read her books. In spite of the fame of Strangers on a Train, published when she was still in her 20s, Highsmith never enjoyed commercial success in the United States (though she was a huge bestseller in Germany and Austria).

Now, six years after her death at the age of 74, Norton is reissuing her novels and has compiled this giant collection of her short fiction, incorporating the complete text of five previously published collections. This volume also includes an introduction by Graham Greene, somewhat truncated from its original (and uncredited) publication in The Snail-Watcher and Other Stories (1970). It is abbreviated because, oddly, none of the stories from that excellent collection are included in the present omnibus, and Greene makes reference to what is perhaps Highsmith's most famous story, "The Snail- Watcher."

Even lacking this masterpiece and the equally unsettling "The Terrapin," there are many distinguished tales of horror and, as Greene accurately defines them, apprehension.

In "The Hand," the first story in the collection originally published as Little Tales of Misogyny, a young man asks the father of his beloved for her hand and is given it--in a box. Equally unappealing events befall the women (and, indeed, the men) skewered in the other stories in this aptly titled volume, most of which are so short that they are mere vignettes, each startling in the terse clarity of the prose and the matter-of-factness of the fates meted out to the protagonists.

"The Dancer" is strangled in quiet rage by her partner, who walks away from her lifeless body as an audience cheers the performance. "The Coquette" is murdered by the two lovers she had set against each other, and they are let off by a judge who had also been tortured by her coquetry. He forgave their infatuation with her, "a state that inspired his pity, since he had become sixty years old," as Highsmith cruelly explains.

"The Black House," the title story of another collection, introduces a pleasant, happy, and charming young man who is, of course, doomed. He tests his courage by entering a dark house, reputedly haunted and the scene of young lovers' trysts as well as the vicious murder of a boy, and finds it empty and unthreatening. When he describes his adventure to his friends at the local pub, he is killed for a transgression that remains unknown to him.

This important book may not be for everyone, but if you don't mind a sense of unrelenting doom and are willing to risk nightmares of dread, you will find the prose dazzling and the fiction memorable. --Otto Penzler

This volume spans almost fifty years of Highsmith's career and establishes her as a permanent member of our American literary canon, as attested by recent publication of two of these stories in The New Yorker and Harper's. The stories assembled in Nothing That Meets the Eye, written between 1938 and 1982, are vintage Highsmith: a gigolo-like psychopath preys on unfulfilled career women; a lonely spinster's fragile hold on reality is tethered to the bottle; an estranged postal worker invents homicidal fantasies about his coworkers. While some stories anticipate the diabolical narratives of the Ripley novels, others possess a Capra-like sweetness that forces us to see the author in a new light. From this new collection, a remarkable portrait of the American psyche at mid-century emerges, unforgettably distilled by the inimitable eye of Patricia Highsmith. A New York Times Notable Book and a Washington Post Rave of 2002.

In This Sweet Sickness, David Kelsey has an unyielding conviction that life will turn out all right for him; he just has to fix The Situation: he is in love with a married woman. Obsessed with Annabelle and the life he has imagined for them, David prepares to win her over, whatever it takes.

Stories from The Animal-Lover's Book of Beastly Murder portray, with incisive humor, the murderously competitive desires of our most trusted companions. In this satirical reprise of Kafka, cats, dogs, and the occasional cockroach are no longer benign elements of a happy home but actually have the power to destroy it.

Rife with overtones of Dostoyevsky, The Glass Cell, first published forty years ago, combines a quintessential Highsmith mystery with a penetrating critique of the psychological devastation wrought by the prison system. Falsely convicted of fraud, the easygoing but naïve Philip Carter is sentenced to six lonely, drug-ravaged years in prison. Upon his release, Carter is a more suspicious and violent man. For those around him, earning back his trust can mean the difference between life and death. The Glass Cell's bleak and compelling portrait of daily prison life—and the consequences for those who live it—is, sadly, as relevant today as it was when the book was first published in 1964.

Completed just months before Patricia Highsmith's death in 1995, Small g explores the labyrinthine intricacies of love, sexuality, and jealousy in a style and form few knew were part of her range. The story opens in Zurich with the brutal murder of Petey Ritter. We then jump six months ahead to Jakob's, a louche bar known for its mixture of gay, straight, and bisexual clientele, where Petey's lover Rickie is recovering slowly, spending time at the bar with his dancing dog, Lulu. They share Jakob's with the club- footed Renate, a possessive seamstress, and her beautiful apprentice Luisa. Then the impressionable and beautiful Teddie Stevenson arrives. Luisa and Rickie both fall in love with him—but Renate and her henchman Willi conspire to break Teddie's spell by force. Renate in turn becomes the subject of a counterconspiracy hatched by Rickie and Luisa, with hilarious and unexpected results.

With Norton's publication of The Black House, Patricia Highsmith's entire body of work is now back in print. First published in 1981, this volume is one of Highsmith's most nuanced and psychologically suspenseful works. The stories in and The Black House mine classic Highsmith terrain as they sketch the lives of suburban dwellers that appear quite normal at first but unravel to reveal their proximity to the macabre. This collection is a perfect example of Highsmith's view of human nature and a fitting capstone to the reintroduction of one of the twentieth century's greatest writers.

With Norton's publication of Slowly, Slowly in the Wind, Patricia Highsmith's entire body of work is now back in print. First published in 1979, this volume is one of Highsmith's most nuanced and psychologically suspenseful works. Slowly, Slowly in the Wind gathers stories that explore the hypocrisies of the Catholic Church, the writing life, Poe-like horror fantasies, and more. This collection is a perfect example of Highsmith's view of human nature and a fitting capstone to the reintroduction of one of the twentieth century's greatest writers.

Ein Beispiel: "Das große Kartenhaus", geschrieben 1949, erste und einzige Veröffentlichung 1963 in einer englischsprachigen Zeitschrift. Geschildert wird eine -- paradigmatische -- Episode aus dem Leben des Kunstsammlers Lucien Montlehuc. Montlehuc ist ein blasierter Stutzer mit einem liebenswerten Tick -- er sammelt Fälschungen. Sein Kunstverstand gilt als unfehlbar, und so fühlt er sich bis in die Grundfesten seines Selbstverständnisses erschüttert, als er eines Tages aus Versehen ein echtes Bild kauft. Mit sicherer Hand zergliedert Patricia Highsmith ihren Helden, um ihm am Ende der Geschichte auf überraschende Weise sein Selbstbewusstsein zurückzugeben.

14 Erzählungen sind in Die stille Mitte der Welt versammelt, und es ist keine dabei, die nicht ihren ganz eigenen Reiz hätte. Dabei ist der Blick der Autorin auf ihre Figuren meist überraschend liebevoll -- das zumindest wird sich später ändern. Wer Patricia Highsmith kennt und schätzt, sollte sich dieses Buch nicht entgehen lassen. Für den Einstieg ist beispielsweise Das Zittern des Fälschers besser geeignet. --Hannes Riffel