Barbara Vine

grasshopper

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A Dark-adapted Eye

The Child's Child

No Night is Too Long

The Minotaur

The Chimney Sweeper's Boy

A Dark-Adapted Eye

Asta's Book

A Fatal Inversion

King Solomon's Carpet

The Birthday Present

The Brimstone Wedding

The Blood Doctor

The House of Stairs

Gallowglass

Grasshopper

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Blamed by her parents for the tragic death of a friend, Clodagh has been banished from their home in the countryside to a dingy basement flat in the city. Her life is transformed when she meets the inhabitants on the top floor of 15 Russia Road. An exotic range of young people who explore a London of roofs, eaves and ledges, thrilling in the freedom and danger. Clodagh, haunted still by the accident, finds that running the roofs brings her back to life, but it seems that tragedy and misfortune may not be done with her yet. Barbara Vine's 10th novel, GRASSHOPPER is an enthralling, chilling novel that mirrors Vine's acclaimed London Underground novel KING SOLOMON'S CARPET.

Grasshopper is an enthralling, chilling novel by the bestselling queen of crime Barbara Vine 
 
'They have sent me here because of what happened on the pylon' 
 
When Clodagh Brown writes these words at the age of nineteen, she believes that she is leaving behind the traumatic events of her youth. But Clodagh soon learns that you can never entirely escape your past. 
 
In the aftermath of the incident on the pylon - a gargantuan electrified grasshopper - Clodagh goes off to university, moves into a basement flat arranged by her unsympathetic family, and finds freedom trekking across London's rooftops with a gang of neighborhood misfits. As she begins a thrilling relationship with a fellow climber, however, both Clodagh and the reader are haunted by the memory of the pylon and of the terrible thing that happened there - and by the eerie sense that another tragedy is just a footfall away. 
 
Grasshopper is a modern crime masterpiece that will have 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. 
 
'The Rendell/ Vine partnership has for years been producing consistently better work than most Booker winners put together' Ian Rankin 
 
'A superb and original writer' Amanda Craig, Express 
 
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.

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.

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