Ruth Rendell

Desde hace nueve años, Ismay tiene un sueño recurrente: sube las escaleras tras los pasos de su hermana menor, Heather, cuyo vestido se encuentra empapado. Al llegar al cuarto de baño del piso de arriba su madre le grita que no mire, pero ella ya ha visto el cuerpo de Guy, su padrastro, que yace ahogado en la bañera.Desgraciadamente para los Sealand, la escena fue real antes de convertirse en sueño. Ahora, tras nueve años de secretos y silencio, tanto Ismay como Heather tienen novio. El de Ismay se parece sospechosamente al difunto Guy. El de Heather vive con una madre extremadamente posesiva. Dos situaciones conflictivas que hacen que Ismay no le quite el ojo de encima a su hermana...A medio camino entre el thriller y la comedia negra, El agua esta esplendida es una nueva muestra de la capacidad de Ruth Rendell para conducir al lector por los mas reconditos y oscuros laberintos de la mente humana.Comparable con P. D. James en la historia de la novela negra britanica, Rendell es la autora de la novela en que se baso el filme de Almodovar Carne tremula."Una sintesis perfecta de Patricia Highsmith y Georges Simenon". El periodico"Solvente e impecable."The New York Times Book Review

Desde hace nueve años, Ismay tiene un sueño recurrente: sube las escaleras tras los pasos de su hermana menor, Heather, cuyo vestido se encuentra empapado. Al llegar al cuarto de baño del piso de arriba su madre le grita que no mire, pero ella ya ha visto el cuerpo de Guy, su padrastro, que yace ahogado en la bañera.Desgraciadamente para los Sealand, la escena fue real antes de convertirse en sueño. Ahora, tras nueve años de secretos y silencio, tanto Ismay como Heather tienen novio. El de Ismay se parece sospechosamente al difunto Guy. El de Heather vive con una madre extremadamente posesiva. Dos situaciones conflictivas que hacen que Ismay no le quite el ojo de encima a su hermana...A medio camino entre el thriller y la comedia negra, El agua esta esplendida es una nueva muestra de la capacidad de Ruth Rendell para conducir al lector por los mas reconditos y oscuros laberintos de la mente humana.Comparable con P. D. James en la historia de la novela negra britanica, Rendell es la autora de la novela en que se baso el filme de Almodovar Carne tremula."Una sintesis perfecta de Patricia Highsmith y Georges Simenon". -El periodico."Solvente e impecable."-The New York Times Book Review

This collection comprises "The New Girl Friend, The Copper Peacock, Blood Lines" and "Piranha To Scurfy" in a trade paperback omnibus edition.

Ruth Rendell has won many awards, including the Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger for 1976s best crime novel with A Demon in My View; a second Edgar in 1984 from the Mystery Writers of America for the best short story, 'The New Girl Friend and a Gold Dagger award for Live Flesh in 1986. She was also the winner of the 1990 Sunday Times Literary award, as well as the Crime Writers Association Cartier Diamond Dagger. In 1996 she was awarded the CBE and in 1997 became a Life Peer.

The Portobello area of West London has a rich personality - vibrant, brilliant in colour, noisy, with graffiti that approach art, bizarre and splendid. An indefinable edge to it adds a spice of danger. Eugene Wren inherited an art gallery from his father near an arcade that now sells cashmere, handmade soaps and children''s clothes. El barrio de Portobello, situada en el oeste de Londres, tiene una personalidad muy rica y distintiva: vibrante, colorida, ruidosa, llena de graffitis que podrian figurar en catalogos de arte, estrafalaria y esplendida Y posee un indefinible toque que le añade una pizca de picante peligro a todo ello...

Weeks went by when Ismay never thought of it at all. Then something would bring it back or it would return in a dream. The dream began in the same way. She and her mother would be climbing the stairs, following Heather's lead through the bedroom to what was on the other side, not a bathroom in the dream but a chamber floored and walled in marble. In the middle of it was a glassy lake. The white thing in the water floated towards her, its face submerged, and her mother said, absurdly, "Don't look!"' The dead man was Ismay's stepfather, Guy. Now, nine years on, she and her sister, Heather, still lived in the same house in Clapham. But it had been divided into two self-contained flats. Their mother lived upstairs with her sister, Pamela. And the bathroom, where Guy had drowned, had disappeared. Ismay worked in public relations, and Heather in catering. They got on well. They always had. They never discussed the changes to the house, still less what had happened that August day... But even lives as private as these, where secrets hang in the air like dust, intertwine with other worlds and other individuals. And, with painful inevitability, the truth will emerge.

Three classic Ruth Rendell stories: MEANS OF EVIL, THE FALLEN CURTAIN and THE FEVER TREE.Ruth Rendell is unequalled in her ability to weave stories that challenge our preconceptions and prejudices. From Wexford and Burden's investigation of a wife's apparent suicide, with all the evidence pointing to the husband in MEANS OF EVIL to the unsettling psychology behind a man's friendship with a boy in THE FALLEN CURTAIN and the paranoia that plagues two people out of love, terrified of being rejected in THE FEVER TREE.

Susan Townsend hat sich nie richtig in dem Londoner Vorort eingelebt, in dem die Frauen scheinbar keine andere Beschäftigung haben, als Klatsch zu verbreiten. Aber auch ihr kommt der Besucher ihrer Nachbarin Louise North verdächtig vor. Doch dann bittet Louise sie um ihre Hilfe, und Susan wird in Ereignisse hineingezogen, die ihr Leben schlagartig verändern...01Ruth Rendell, auch unter dem Pseudonym Barbara Vine bekannt, ist mit ihren zahlreichen Romanen eine der ganz großen englischen Autorinnen. Dreimal schon erhielt sie den "Edgar-Allen-Poe-Preis" und zweimal den "Golden Dagger Award" für den besten Kriminalroman des Jahres. 1997 wurde sie mit dem Grand Masters Award der Crime Writers Association of America, dem renommiertesten Krimipreis überhaupt, ausgezeichnet und darüber hinaus von Königin Elizabeth in den Adelsstand erhoben. Ruth Rendell wurde 1930 in einem Londoner Vorort geboren. Sie arbeitete zunächst als Journalistin, bis sie sich 1964 ganz auf den Schriftstellerberuf konzentrierte. Heute lebt sie in einem Haus aus dem 16. Jahrhundert in Suffolk.

Searching for truffles in a wood, a man and his dog unearth something less savoury - a human hand. The body, as Chief Inspector Wexford is informed later, has lain buried for ten years or so, wrapped in a purple cotton sheet. The post mortem can not reveal the precise cause of death. The only clue is a crack in one of the dead man''s ribs. Although it covers a relatively short period of time, the police computer stores a long list of missing persons. Men, women and children disappear at an alarming rate, something like 500 every day nationwide. So Wexford knows he is going to have a job on his hands to identify the corpse. And then, only about twenty yards away from the woodland burial site, in the cellar of a disused cottage, another body is found. The detection skills of Wexford, Burden and the other investigating officers of the Kingsmarkham Police Force are tested to the utmost to discover whether the murders are connected and to track down whoever is responsible.

Ismay et Heather vivent dans la maison où est mort leur beau-père, neuf ans auparavant. Depuis, la demeure a été divisée en deux appartements : leur mère occupe celui du haut, Ismay et Heather se partagent l'autre. Si ces dernières s'entendent très bien, jamais elles n'évoquent les changements intervenus dans la maison, ni ce terrible jour d'août. Mais les mensonges cachés risquent de ressurgir...

''He had never told anyone. The strange relationship, if it could be called that, had gone on for years, decades, and he had never breathed a word about it. He had kept silent because he knew no one would believe him. None of it could be proved, not the stalking, not the stares or the conspiratorial smiles, not the killings, not any of the signs Targo had made because he knew Wexford knew and could do nothing about it''. Wexford had almost made up his mind that he would never again set eyes on Eric Targo''s short, muscular figure. And yet there he was, back in Kingsmarkham, still with that cocky, strutting walk. Years earlier, when Wexford was a young police officer, a woman called Elsie Carroll had been found strangled in her bedroom. Although many still had their suspicions that her husband was guilty, no one was convicted. Another woman was strangled shortly afterwards, and every personal and professional instinct told Wexford that the killer was still at large. And it was Eric Targo. A psychopath who would kill again...As the Chief Inspector investigates a new case, Ruth Rendell looks back to the beginning of Wexford''s career, even to his courtship of the woman who would become his wife. The past is a haunted place, with clues and passions that leave an indelible imprint on the here and now.

Gwendolen Chawcer es una solterona octogenaria que vive entregada a la lectura y a la fantasía de un viejo amor, pero tan melancólica y plácida existencia se ve alterada cuando decide alquilar la planta de arriba de la mansion familiar en el barrio de Notting Hill. Su nuevo arrendatario, Mix Cellini, es un mecanico de maquinas de fitness con una fijacion: los crimenes cometidos sesenta años antes por el tristemente celebre John Christie. Gwendolen no tarda en descubrir tan siniestra obsesion, pero ignora que esta adquirira tintes cada vez mas macabros cuando Mix se enamore perdidamente de la modelo Nerissa Nash.Con Trece escalones, Ruth Rendell presenta un retrato perturbador de dos personajes dispares pero hermanados por sus neurosis romanticas. De paso, la gran dama de la novela de suspense psicologico incide en temas tan espinosos como el culto al crimen o las ansias de celebridad en nuestra sociedad.