The Child's Child

The Child's Child is the new crime novel by bestselling, prize-winning author Barbara Vine, pen-name for the late bestselling author Ruth Rendell 
 
What sort of betrayal would drive a brother and sister apart? 
 
When Grace and her brother Andrew inherit their grandmother's house in Hampstead, they decide to move in together. It seems the obvious thing to do: they've always got on well, the house is large enough to split down the middle, and neither of them likes partying or loud music. There's one thing they've forgotten though: what if one of them wants to bring a lover into the house? When Andrew's partner James moves in, it alters the balance - with almost fatal consequences. 
 
Barbara Vine's is the pen-name of Ruth Rendell, and The Child's Child is the first book she has published under that name since The Birthday Present in 2008. It's an intriguing examination of betrayal in families, and of those two once-unmentionable subjects, illegitimacy and homosexuality. 
 
A taut, thrilling read, it will be enjoyed by readers of P.D. James and Ian Rankin. 
 
'Cracking stuff. The Vine continues to flourish . . . (A) miracle of storytelling with her customary aplomb and cool composure' Express on The Child's Child 
 
'The Rendell/Vine partnership has for years been producing consistently better work than most Booker winners put together' Ian Rankin 
 
 
Ruth rendall has published fourteen novels under the Vine name, two of which, Fatal Inversion and King Solomon's Carpet, won the prestigious Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger Award. Also available in Penguin by Barbara Vine: The Minotaur, The Blood Doctor, Grasshopper, The Chimney Sweeper's Boy, The Brimstone Wedding, No Night is Too Long, Asta's Book, King Solomon's Carpet, Gallowglass, The House of Stairs, A Dark-Adapted Eye.

Probably the greatest living crime writer in the world

Cracking stuff. The Vine continues to flourish . . . (A) miracle of storytelling with her customary aplomb and cool composure

Vine is not afraid to walk down the mean streets of the mind and can build up an almost tangible atmosphere of menace and unease

Barbara Vine was the pen-name of Ruth Rendell, and Viking published all of her books under that name. 
 
Rendell was an exceptional crime writer, with worldwide sales of approximately 20 million copies, and regular Sunday Times bestsellers. 
 
Rendell won numerous awards, including the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger for 1976's best crime novel with A Demon in My View, a Gold Dagger award for Live Flesh in 1986, and the Sunday Times Literary Award in 1990. In 2013 she was awarded the Crime Writers' Association Cartier Diamond Dagger for sustained excellence in crime writing. In 1996 she was awarded the CBE and in 1997 became a Life Peer. 
 
Ruth Rendell died in May 2015.

When Grace and her brother Andrew inherit their grandmother's house in Hampstead, they decide to move in together. It seems the obvious thing to do: they've always got on well, the house is large enough to split down the middle, and neither of them likes partying or loud music. There's one thing they've forgotten though: what if one of them wants to bring a lover into the house? When Andrew's partner James moves in, it alters the balance - with almost fatal consequences. 
 
The Child's Child is an intriguing examination of betrayal in a family, and of those two once-unmentionable subjects, illegitimacy and homosexuality.

No Night is Too Long

No Night is Too Long is a classic crime novel by bestselling, prize-winning author Barbara Vine 
 
Tim Cornish thought he'd gotten away with murder. For months after he'd killed his lover off the Alaskan coast, there hadn't been a word. But then the letters started to arrive. It seems that someone knows what Tim has done . . . 
 
This compelling thriller delivers such a dark picture of romantic love that murder seems its natural mate. Frightening, suspenseful, and deeply unsettling, No Night is Too Long is a modern crime masterpiece and will be enjoyed by readers of P.D. James and Ian Rankin. 
 
'The Rendell/Vine partnership has for years been producing consistently better work than most Booker winners put together' Ian Rankin 
 
'She deploys her peerless skills in blending the mundane, commonplace aspects of life with the murky impulses of desire and greed' Sunday Times 
 
Barbara Vine is the pen-name of Ruth Rendell. Ruth has published fourteen novels under the Vine name, two of which, Fatal Inversion and King Solomon's Carpet, won the prestigious Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger Award. Also available in Penguin by Barbara Vine: The Minotaur, The Blood Doctor, Grasshopper, The Chimney Sweeper's Boy, The Brimstone Wedding, No Night is Too Long, Asta's Book, King Solomon's Carpet, Gallowglass, The House of Stairs, A Dark-Adapted Eye.

Tim Cornish thought he'd gotten away with murder. For months after he'd killed his lover off the Alaskan coast, there hadn't been a word. But then the letters started to arrive. It seems that someone knows what Tim has done . . . 
 
This compelling thriller delivers such a dark picture of romantic love that murder seems its natural mate. Frightening, suspenseful, and deeply unsettling, No Night is Too Long is a modern crime masterpiece and will be enjoyed by readers of P.D. James and Ian Rankin. 
 
'The Rendell/Vine partnership has for years been producing consistently better work than most Booker winners put together' Ian Rankin 
 
'She deploys her peerless skills in blending the mundane, commonplace aspects of life with the murky impulses of desire and greed' Sunday Times

The Chimney Sweeper's Boy

The Chimney Sweeper's Boy - a classic crime novel by bestselling, prize-winning author Barbara Vine 
 
'Gripping, almost impossible to put down' Guardian 
 
'One of the most frightening novels I have ever read ... Gerald Candless, the monster at the heart of the maze, is a marvellous creation' Amanda Craig, Express on Sunday 
 
When successful author Gerald Candless dies of a sudden heart attack, his eldest, adoring daughter Sarah embarks on a memoir of him and soon discovers that her perfect father was not all he appeared to be. That in fact he wasn't Gerald Candless at all. But then, who was he? And what terrible secret had driven him to live a lie for all those years? 
 
'So ingeniously constructed, its truth and falsehoods are so deftly and convincingly interwoven, that its solution ... is as jolting as a flash of lightning' Sunday Times 
 
'About the power of taboos, transgressions, guilts, deceptions, horrors, atonements, upsets and upheavals ... gripping' Independent 
 
If you enjoy the crime novels of P.D. James, Ian Rankin and Scott Turow, you will love The Chimney Sweeper's Boy. 
 
 Barbara Vine is the pen-name of Ruth Rendell. She has written fifteen novels using this pseudonym, including A Fatal Inversion and King Solomon's Carpet which both won the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger Award. Her other books include: A Dark Adapted Eye; The House of Stairs; Gallowglass; Asta's Book; No Night Is Too Long; In the Time of His Prosperity; The Brimstone Wedding; The Chimney Sweeper's Boy; Grasshopper; The Blood Doctor; The Minotaur; The Birthday Present and The Child's Child.

When successful author Gerald Candless dies of a sudden heart attack, his eldest, adoring daughter Sarah embarks on a memoir of him and soon discovers that her perfect father was not all he appeared to be. That, in fact, he wasn't Gerald Candless at all. But then, who was he? And what terrible secret had driven him to live a lie for all those years?

King Solomon's Carpet

King Solomon's Carpet is a prize-winning crime classic from bestselling author Barbara Vine 
 
Winner of the Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger Award 
 
'The tension grows ... an overwhelming sense of foreboding ... when the unravelling takes place, it is brilliantly unexpected and original' The Times 
 
Jarvis Stringer lives in a crumbling schoolhouse overlooking a tube line, compiling his obsessive, secret history of London's Underground. His presence and his strange house draw a band of misfits into his orbit: young Alice, who has run away from her husband and baby; Tom, the busker who rescues her; truant Jasper who gets his kicks on the tube; and mysterious Axel, whose dark secret later casts a shadow over all of their lives. 
 
Dispossessed and outcast, those who come to inhabit Jarvis's schoolhouse are gradually brought closer together in violent and unforeseen ways by London's forbidding and dangerous Undergound . . . 
 
'I longed to know what would happen next. Towards the end the tension fairly gets you by the throat' Sunday Express 
 
'Vine arouses a genuine fear that all that is normal is in danger of being lost' Sunday Times 
 
King Solomon's Carpet is a modern masterpiece of the crime genre and will leave you gripped from the first page to the last. If you enjoy the novels of P.D. James, Ian Rankin and Scott Turow, you will love this book. 
 
Barbara Vine is the pen-name of Ruth Rendell. She has written fifteen novels using this pseudonym, including A Fatal Inversion and King Solomon's Carpet which both won the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger Award. Her other books include: A Dark Adapted Eye; The House of Stairs; Gallowglass; Asta's Book; No Night Is Too Long; In the Time of His Prosperity; The Brimstone Wedding; The Chimney Sweeper's Boy; Grasshopper; The Blood Doctor; The Minotaur; The Birthday Present and The Child's Child.

Jarvis Stringer lives in a crumbling schoolhouse overlooking a tube line, compiling his obsessive, secret history of London's Underground. His presence and his strange house draw a band of misfits into his orbit: young Alice, who has run away from her husband and baby; Tom, the busker who rescues her; truant Jasper who gets his kicks on the tube; and mysterious Axel, whose dark secret later casts a shadow over all of their lives. 
 
Dispossessed and outcast, those who come to inhabit Jarvis's schoolhouse are gradually brought closer together in violent and unforeseen ways by London's forbidding and dangerous Underground...

Asta's Book

Asta's Book is a classic double-detective story by crime master Barbara Vine 
 
For a good, absorbing, well-told story, you could hardly better the unveiling of Asta's secret' Sunday Times 
 
It is 1905. Asta and her husband Rasmus have come to East London from Denmark with their two little boys. With Rasmus constantly away on business, Asta keeps loneliness and isolation at bay by writing a diary. These diaries, published over seventy years later, reveal themselves to be more than a mere journal. For they seem to hold the key to an unsolved murder and to the mystery of a missing child. It falls to Asta's granddaughter Ann to unearth the buried secrets of nearly a century before. 
 
'A dazzling domestic thriller' Guardian 
 
'Obsessively readable' Sunday Telegraph 
 
'Engrossing . . . a mixture of biography, true crime and romance people with vivid minor players and red with herrings' Independent on Sunday 
 
'Absolutely enthralling ... the best yet from the Vine/Rendell bureau. Essential reading' Literary Review 
 
'Simply put, Vine is one of the greatest writers ever' Scott Turow 
 
Asta's Bookis a modern crime masterpiece and will be enjoyed by readers of P.D. James, Ian Rankin and Scott Turow. 
 
Barbara Vine is the pen-name of Ruth Rendell. She has written fifteen novels using this pseudonym, including A Fatal Inversion and King Solomon's Carpet which both won the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger Award. Her other books include: A Dark Adapted Eye; The House of Stairs; Gallowglass; Asta's Book; No Night Is Too Long; In the Time of His Prosperity; The Brimstone Wedding; The Chimney Sweeper's Boy; Grasshopper; The Blood Doctor; The Minotaur; The Birthday Present and The Child's Child.

Simply put, Vine is one of the greatest writers ever

It is 1905. Asta and her husband Rasmus have come to East London from Denmark with their two little boys. With Rasmus constantly away on business, Asta keep loneliness and isolation at bay by writing a diary. These diaries, published over seventy years later, reveal themselves to be more than a mere journal. For they seem to hold they key to an unsolved murder and to the mystery of a missing child. It falls to Asta's granddaughter Ann to unearth the buried secrets of nearly a century before.

A Fatal Inversion

A classic of the crime genre, A Fatal Inversion plunges you into the darker side of humanity with a plot that will keep you guessing throughout! 
 
'An absolute winner . . . a gripping read from start to end' Daily Mail 
 
'Brilliant. Vine has the kind of near-Victorian narrative drive' Sunday Times 
 
'I defy anyone to guess the conclusion' Daily Telegraph 
 
***** 
In the long hot summer of 1976, a group of young adults camp in Wyvis Hall, a beautiful Suffolk country house, after one of them unexpectedly inherits it. Revelling in their self-indulgent, irresponsible paradise, they scavenge, steal and sell heirlooms - to entertain and simply exist. 
 
Ten years later, when the current owner buries their beloved dog in the Hall's animal cemetery, the bodies of a woman and child are discovered. But which woman? And whose child? As the facts slowly emerge, their past begins to catch up with them . . . 
 
Written under Ruth Rendell's pen name, Barbara Vine, if you enjoy the novels of P.D. James, Ian Rankin and Ann Cleeves, you will love this book. 
 
***** 
 
'One of the best Barbara Vine novels' Goodreads Review 
 
'Not an ordinary mystery . . . it is compelling and certainly thought-provoking' Goodreads Review 
 
'Vine is expert at the slow disclosure of facts and feelings' Goodreads Review

In the long hot summer of 1976, a group of young people are camping in Wyvis Hall. Adam, Rufus, Shiva, Vivien and Zosie hardly ask why they are there, what they are doing or how they are to live; they scavenge, steal and sell the family heirlooms.In short, they exist. Ten years later, the bodies of a woman and a child are discovered in the Hall's animal cemetery. Which woman? Whose child?

Barbara Vine

Compulsively readable ... a carefully devised plot unfolded with the most cunning art. Wilkie Collins and Dickens would have admired it

Brilliantly plotted. Vine is not afraid to walk down the mean streets of the mind and can build up an almost tangible atmosphere of menace and unease

Will linger in your memory long after you have closed the book. A first-rate novel

[Vine has a] dizzying ability to lock on to minds in chaos and snare us in their whorls of dread and doubt

'A rich, complex and beautifully crafted novel' P.D. James 
 
Vera Hillyard. My aunt, and murderess. 
 
Faith Severn's life has long been overshadowed by the scandal of her aunt's execution for murder. For nearly 25 years she has tried to forget the woman she once spent her holidays with, who seemed such a perfect mother and caring sister. 
 
Now the time has come to piece together the mystery. 
 
What secret caused two devoted sisters to turn from love to bitter hatred? 
Was Vera born a killer...or was she driven to it? 
And can anyone ever really know the truth? 
 
 
Written in 1986, and set against the morally and politically tumultous backdrop of 1940s England, Ruth Rendell's first novel writing as Barbara Vine is a psychological masterpiece, a study in the dangers of a society in thrall to ideas of female respectability. 
 
This newly packaged 30 year anniversary edition comes with a foreword by the acclaimed writer Val McDermid.

Barbara Vine

Praise for A Dark-adapted Eye

Compulsively readable ... a carefully devised plot unfolded with the most cunning art. Wilkie Collins and Dickens would have admired it

Brilliantly plotted. Vine is not afraid to walk down the mean streets of the mind and can build up an almost tangible atmosphere of menace and unease

Will linger in your memory long after you have closed the book. A first-rate novel

Compulsively readable ... a carefully devised plot unfolded with the most cunning art. Wilkie Collins and Dickens would have admired it

Brilliantly plotted. Vine is not afraid to walk down the mean streets of the mind and can build up an almost tangible atmosphere of menace and unease

Will linger in your memory long after you have closed the book. A first-rate novel

Compulsively readable ... a carefully devised plot unfolded with the most cunning art. Wilkie Collins and Dickens would have admired it

Brilliantly plotted. Vine is not afraid to walk down the mean streets of the mind and can build up an almost tangible atmosphere of menace and unease

Will linger in your memory long after you have closed the book. A first-rate novel

Books by Barbara Vine

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