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Reading lists

Comforting books to read if you’re heartbroken

Assane Diop, played by Omar Sy, in the Netflix show, Lupin.

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What to read after watching Netflix’s Lupin

A flatlay of some of Patricia Highsmith's most notable works. 

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Where to start with Patricia Highsmith

Strangers on a Train

A writer who created a world of her own - a world claustrophobic and irrational which we enter each time with a sense of personal danger

A true original in crime fiction and a superb writer

Her writing is clean, exact, polished to a hard glint; she combines an acute emotional perceptiveness with a disturbing readiness to torture her characters and, by extension, her audience

Patricia Highsmith was born in Fort Worth, Texas in 1921 but moved to New York when she was six. In her senior year she edited the college magazine, having decided to become a writer at the age of sixteen. Her first novel Strangers on a Train was made into a famous film by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951. Patricia Highsmith died in Locarno, Switzerland in 1995. Her last novel Small g: A Summer Idyll was published posthumously just over a month later

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY PAULA HAWKINS, AUTHOR OF GIRL ON A TRAIN 
 
"Hey! Cheeses, what an idea! I kill your wife and you kill my father! We meet on a train, see, and nobody knows we know each other! Perfect alibis! Catch?" 
 
From this moment, almost against his conscious will, Guy Haines is trapped in a nightmare of shared guilt and an insidious merging of personalities. The psychologists would call it folie a deux... 
 
Strangers on a Train was Patricia Highsmith's first novel, and adapted into a classic film by Alfred Hitchcock. 
 
'A true original in crime fiction' The Times

Ripley Under Ground

Patricia Highsmith was born in Fort Worth, Texas in 1921 but moved to New York when she was six. In her senior year she edited the college magazine, having decided to become a writer at the age of sixteen. Her first novel Strangers on a Train was made into a famous film by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951. Patricia Highsmith died in Locarno, Switzerland in 1995. Her last novel Small g: A Summer Idyll was published posthumously just over a month later.

"You're always good on ideas, Tom..." 
 
An American art collector is claiming that the expensive masterpiece he bought is a fake. He wants to meet with the artist - but Tom Ripley knows that artist no longer exits. 
 
Ripley needs to hide his role in the fraud, and keep his colleague's mouth shut. But not everyone's nerves are as steady as his, especially when it comes to murder. 
 
The second in Highsmith's Ripley series, Ripley Under Ground is set six years after the events of The Talented Mr Ripley. 
 
'Patricia Highsmith is unrivalled' Daily Telegraph

Ripley's Game

To call Patricia Highsmith a thriller writer is true but not the whole truth: her books have stylistic texture, psychological depth, mesmeric readability

Highsmith has done it again. It seems to me she has reached a point where because she knows exactly what she is about she cannot miss

It's hard to imagine anyone interested in modern fiction who has not read the Ripley novels

Patricia Highsmith was born in Fort Worth, Texas in 1921 but moved to New York when she was six. In her senior year she edited the college magazine, having decided to become a writer at the age of sixteen. Her first novel Strangers on a Train, was made into a famous film by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951. Patricia Highsmith died in Locarno, Switzerland in 1995. Her last novel Small g: A Summer Idyll was published posthumously just over a month later.

'Marvellously, insanely readable... Highsmith has done it again' The Times 
 
"There's no such thing as a perfect murder... That's just a parlor game, trying to dream one up." 
 
Tom Ripley is enjoying his wealthy lifestyle in France, until an associate asks him to kill someone again. But Ripley detests murder, unless it is absolutely necessary. Someone else should do the dirty work for them - yes, someone with no criminal record could earn a very generous fee for doing a couple of simple murders. 
 
Ripley's Game is the third book in Highsmith's Ripley series, and was made into a film starring John Malkovich.

Ripley

Charm is the perfect disguise 
 
Tom Ripley is drifting through life in 1950s New York, a young man with quick wits, no prospects and a talent for imitation. When he’s sent to Italy to persuade a wealthy heir, Dickie Greenleaf, to return home, the trip feels like deliverance: sunlit villas, boats on the bay, and friendship with the kind of people who barely notice men like him. 
 
But fascination becomes fixation. As Tom sinks further into Dickie’s world, he begins to see another version of himself reflected there: richer, freer, adored. Ripley soon discovers just how easy it is to erase one life and step into another. 
 
‘The No. 1 Greatest Crime Writer’ The Times 
‘Ripley … is a genuinely original creation’ Daily Telegraph

Ripley, amoral, hedonistic and charming, is a genuinely original creation

As haunting and harrowing a study of a schizophrenic murder as paper will bear. A glittering addition to the meagre ranks of people who make books that you really can't put down

Precisely plotted, stylishly written and kept alert by an icy wit. Streets ahead of the conventional thriller: a cool little classic of its kind

An outstanding thriller which has deservedly become a classic

Patricia Highsmith was born in Fort Worth, Texas in 1921 but moved to new York when she was six. In her senior year she edited the college magazine, having decided to become a writer at the age of sixteen. Her first novel Strangers on a Train, was made into a famous film by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951. Patricia Highsmith died in Locarno, Switzerland in 1995. Her last novel Small g: A Summer Idyll was published posthumously just over a month later.

NOW A MAJOR NEW NETFLIX SERIES 
 
Tom Ripley wants money, success, and the good life - and he's willing to kill for it. 
 
Struggling to stay one step ahead of his creditors (and the law), Ripley leaps at the chance to start afresh on a free trip to Europe. But when his new-found happiness is threatened, his response is as swift as it is shocking. 
 
Now a major new Netflix series, The Talented Mr Ripley is the first in Highsmith’s classic series featuring the character of Tom Ripley – fiction’s most terrifying con-man. 
 
'The No.1 Greatest Crime Writer' The Times 
 
'Ripley, amoral, hedonistic and charming, is a genuinely original creation' Daily Telegraph

The Cry of the Owl

Reissued to mark the centenary of Patricia Highsmith and the upcoming BBC adaption, Ripley, these beautiful new editions mark Highsmith's entry into Vintage Classics

Every watcher becomes the watched 
When Robert becomes fixated on a woman he glimpses through her window, he imagines he’s found peace - until she notices him, and their lives entwine in a spiral of suspicion and death.Highsmith’s The Cry of the Owl is a study in paranoia and fate, told with chilling precision. Desire, guilt and moral decay blur into one another until innocence itself feels like a crime.‘Extraordinary … one of her finest novels’ Guardian‘A superb portrait of obsession and its fallout’ Sunday Times

Patricia Highsmith has an extraordinary talent for the sinister, and this is well revealed in The Cry of the Owl, one of her finest novels

Patricia Highsmith is a craftsman who has made the suspense novel her own domain

The basic nightmare situation - to be accused of a crime you did not commit and be unable to prove your innocence- is the subject of The Cry of the Owl... It's Kafka with a vengeance... compulsive

A rare talent, a remarkable novelist... her books are written in elegant and lucid prose

Patricia Highsmith was born in Fort Worth, Texas in 1921. Her parents moved to New York when she was six, and she attended the Julia Richmond High School and Barnard College. In her senior year she edited the college magazine, having decided to become a writer at the age of sixteen. Her first novel, Strangers on a Train, was made into a famous film by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951. The Talented Mr Ripley, published in 1955, was awarded the Edgar Allen Poe Scroll by the Mystery Writers of America. Patricia Highsmith died in Locarno, Switzerland in 1995. Her last novel Small g: A Summer Idyll was published posthumously just over a month later.

The Talented Mr. Ripley, Ripley Under Ground, Ripley's Game

Three classic crime novels by a master of the macabre – The Talented Mr. Ripley, Ripley Under Ground, and Ripley's Game – appear here together in hardcover for the first time. Suave, agreeable, and completely amoral, Patricia Highsmith’s hero, the inimitable Tom Ripley, stops at nothing – not even murder – to accomplish his goals. In achieving the opulent life that he was denied as a child, Ripley shows himself to be a master of illusion and manipulation and a disturbingly sympathetic combination of genius and psychopath. Sent on a mission to Italy to coax an irresponsible young playboy back to his wealthy father in America, Ripley finds himself so fond of the young man that he sets out to be like him – exactly like him. The precarious charade that ensues is the first step to a life of elegance and ease – and perpetual danger. As she leads us through the mesmerizing tangle of Ripley’s deadly and sinister games, Highsmith turns the mystery genre inside out and takes us into the mind of a man utterly indifferent to evil.

Patricia Highsmith

Highsmith writes without judgement, letting the reader slowly piece together their own discomfort by observing his actions and responses. It’s a perfect example of showing rather than telling

**AS SEEN ON WRITE AROUND THE WORLD WITH RICHARD E GRANT** 
 
'The No.1 Greatest Crime Writer' The Times 
 
'Ripley, amoral, hedonistic and charming, is a genuinely original creation' Daily Telegraph 
 
'He is using you for what you are worth' 
 
Tom Ripley wants money, success, and the good life - and he's willing to kill for it. Struggling to stay one step ahead of his creditors, and the law, Ripley leaps at the chance to start afresh on a free trip to Europe. But when his new-found happiness is threatened, his response is as swift as it is shocking. 
 
This is the first in Highsmith's classic series featuring the character of Tom Ripley. The Talented Mr Ripley also inspired the Academy Award-winning film starring Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow and Jude Law. 
 
One of the BBC's 100 Novels That Shaped Our World.

Patricia Highsmith

Praise for The Talented Mr Ripley

Ripley, amoral, hedonistic and charming, is a genuinely original creation

As haunting and harrowing a study of a schizophrenic murder as paper will bear. A glittering addition to the meagre ranks of people who make books that you really can't put down

Precisely plotted, stylishly written and kept alert by an icy wit. Streets ahead of the conventional thriller: a cool little classic of its kind

Ripley, amoral, hedonistic and charming, is a genuinely original creation

As haunting and harrowing a study of a schizophrenic murder as paper will bear. A glittering addition to the meagre ranks of people who make books that you really can't put down

Precisely plotted, stylishly written and kept alert by an icy wit. Streets ahead of the conventional thriller: a cool little classic of its kind

Ripley, amoral, hedonistic and charming, is a genuinely original creation

As haunting and harrowing a study of a schizophrenic murder as paper will bear. A glittering addition to the meagre ranks of people who make books that you really can't put down

Precisely plotted, stylishly written and kept alert by an icy wit. Streets ahead of the conventional thriller: a cool little classic of its kind

Books by Patricia Highsmith

Series by Patricia Highsmith

A Ripley Novel

Articles featuring Patricia Highsmith

Comforting books to read if you’re heartbroken

What to read after watching Netflix’s Lupin

Where to start with Patricia Highsmith

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