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RUTH RENDELL - PSYCHOLOGICAL MYSTERIES
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YEAR
 TITLE
1965
TO FEAR A PAINTED DEVIL: 'The whole thing was so funny really. Patrick just dying like that - from a few wasp stings. I expect you all think I've got a very suspicious mind, but I can't help thinking it was .. .' She paused for effect and sipped her gin. 'Well, it was fishy. Wasn't it?' Almost everyone in Linchester had hated Patrick Selby, including his wife - and all with good cause. There was almost no one who had been at that fateful party who wouldn't have been happy to see Patrick Selby dead. But was that enough to assume murder? And if so, which of all the people Patrick Selby had caused to suffer was the person desperate enough to go one step further than just wishing him dead? O-R81 RR89 RR09/12
1965
VANITY DIES HARD (aka IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH): Who would have believed that Alice Whittaker's life could change? She was thirty-seven, rich but dowdy, with no career. Her life a lonely failure, she had got by with the one thing she did have: money. Then, suddenly, Alice meets and marries the handsome Andrew Fielding, years younger than herself - and not even the whispered gossip of friends can destroy her happiness. Or so she thinks. But just as duddenly as Andrew comes into Alice's life, her beautiful friend Nesta vanishes from it. Nesta leaves behind a broken trail of questions and confused clues that lead Alice from the safe surface of the everyday and into the darker world below, where nothing is as it seems and where anything can be done by anyone - even murder. O-R86 RR89
1968
THE SECRET HOUSE OF DEATH: It was his third visit to the gloomy house on Orchard Drive. Each time he parked in the same place, each time he carried a briefcase, and each time Louise North greeted him at the door. Susan Townsend was the only resident with no interest in the affair going on next door or the neighbourhood gossip about it. Yet it was Susan who found the bodies of the lovers, locked not in passion but in death. And Susan whose own life would be imperilled by a monstrous crime far beyond the imaginings of the vilest tongues. O-R88 RR89 RR96
1971
ONE ACROSS, TWO DOWN: There are only two things in life that interest Stanley: solving crossword puzzles, and getting his hands on his mother-in-law's money. For twenty years, nearly all his adult life, the puzzles have been his only pleasure; his mother-in-law's money his only dream. And in all those years it has never once occurred to Stanley that she would try to outsmart him and the money might never be his. Until now. It is only now that Stanley, so clever at misleading double-meanings and devious clues, decides to construct a puzzle of his own - and so give death a helping hand.
O-R80 RR92 RR03 RR09/12 RR03/24
1974
THE FACE OF TRESPASS: Two years ago he had been a promising young novelist. Now he survived - you could hardly call it living - in a near-derelict cottage with only an unhooked telephone and his own obsessive thoughts for company. Two years of loving Drusilla - the bored, rich, unstable girl with everything she needed, and a husband she wanted dead. The affair was over. But the long slide into deception and violence had just begun .O-R81 RR89 RR98 RR10/12
1976
A DEMON IN MY VIEW: Her white face, beautiful, unmarked by any flaw of skin or feature, stared blankly back at him. He fancied that she had cringed, her slim body pressing further into the wall behind her. He didn't speak. He had never known how to talk to women. There was only one thing he had ever been able to do to women and, advancing now, smiling, he did it. Then, when it was all over, he straightened her against the wall so that she would be ready to die for him again. It was the best thing in his life, just knowing she was there, waiting until the next time. But one day she wasn't waiting, wasn't there .O-R78 RR86 RR9? RR10/12 RR05/13
1976
THE FALLEN CURTAIN and Other Stories: A collection of Ruth Rendell mysteries. A wife plots her husband's psychological destruction - then his murder; a son is ruined by his mother's obsession; a man marries the woman he rescues from suicide, only to become the victim of her obsessiveness; and a family feud brings unimaginable horror. THE FALLEN CURTAIN; PEOPLE DON’T DO SUCH THINGS; A BAD HEART; YOU CAN’T BE TOO CAREFUL; THE DOUBLE; THE VENUS FLY TRAP; THE CLINGING WOMAN; THE VINEGAR MOTHER; THE FALL OF A COIN; ALMOST HUMAN; DIVIDED WE STAND. R82
1977
A JUDGEMENT IN STONE: Four members of the Coverdale family - George, Jacqueline, Melinda and Giles - died in the space of fifteen minutes on the 14th February, St. Valentine's Day. Eunice Parchman, the housekeeper, shot them down on a Sunday evening while they were watching opera on television. Two weeks later she was arrested for the crime. But the tragedy neither began nor ended there. O-R80 RR09/12 RR03/24
1978
THE NEW GIRLFRIEND and Other Stories: Murder, perversion, corruption, blackmail, secret terrors that lead to unspeakable acts, hidden fears that erupt in irrational violence. All these, of course, are part of someone else's world.They happen out there, far from the ordinary streets and ordinary people who live in your town, your neighbourhood. They have nothing to do with the everyday lives of people like you. Or do they? THE NEW GIRLFRIEND; A DARK BLUE PERFUME; THE ORCHARD WALLS; HARE’S HOUSE; BRIBERY AND CORRUPTION; THE WHISTLER; THE CONVOLVULUS CLOCK; LOOPY; FEN HALL; FATHER’S DAY; THE GREEN ROAD TO QUEPHANDA.  O-R87 RR?
1979
MAKE DEATH LOVE ME: Alan Groombridge had a fantasy. Husband to a woman he didn't like, father of two children he had never wanted, and manager of the second smallest branch in the country of the Anglian-Victoria bank, Alan was doomed to a life of domestic boredom and tedious routine. All that saved him was that one fantasy: stealing enough of the bank's money to allow him just one year of freedom - one year in which to live a different sort of life. But one day the Anglian-Victoria bank was robbed and both manager and cashier disappeared. In place of dull and dreary repetition there came a brutal, chilling nightmare that might never, never end. O-R81 RR82 RR09/12
1980
THE LAKE OF DARKNESS: Martin Urban is a quiet bachelor with a comfortable life, free of worry and distractions. When he unexpectedly comes into a small fortune, he decides to use his newfound wealth to help out those in need. Finn also leads a quiet life, and comes into a little money of his own. Normally, their paths would never have crossed. But Martin's ideas about who should benefit from his charitable impulses yield some unexpected results, and soon the good intentions of the one become fatally entangled with the mercenary nature of the other. O-R80 RR82 RR10/12
1982
MASTER OF THE MOOR: The bleak expanse of Vangmoor was a dark, forbidding place. One victim had been found there, blonde, her face disfigured, her head shorn close to the scalp - killed without motive or mercy. Then a second woman went missing on the moor, and a sense of utter dread gripped the fifty local men who searched for her. Someone watched them in that treacherous place. Was he a killer? Or was he merely angry that a killer had usurped him? For he, and only he, was Master of the Moor.O-R82 RR88
1982
THE FEVER TREE and Other Stories: In this collection of eleven stories, murder is committed for reasons of fear, jealously, cupidity, and out of sheer compulsion, while the settings include an African game park, a sinister ruined cemetery, an East Anglian seaside resort, and the gloomy purlieus of Epping Forest. THE FEVER TREE; THE DREADFUL DAY OF JUDGEMENT; A GLOWING FUTURE; AN OUTSIDE INTEREST; A CASE OF COINCIDENCE; THORNAPPLE; MAY AND JUNE; A NEEDLE FOR THE DEVIL; FRONT SEAT; PAINTBOX PLACE. R83
1984
THE TREE OF HANDS: Once when Benet was about fourteen they had been alone in a train carriage together - and Mopsa had tried to stab her with a carving knife. It was now some time since Benet had seen her mad mother. So when Mopsa arrived at the airport looking drab and colourless in a dowdy grey suit, Benet tried not to hate her. But then the tragic death of a child begins a chain of deception, kidnap and murder .O-R85 RR02
1984
THE KILLING DOLL: No one would ever have described Manningtree Grove as fashionable. Few would have found it especially interesting. But it was not an unpleasant place to live: the old railway line lay in a valley, and the gardens looked down onto it through an almost rural scene of grass and trees. It was the kind of place where nothing ever happened. And yet it was here that Peter Yearman first sold his soul to the devil. He wasn't quite sure what he was going to get in exchange. For the time being, all he asked for was to be happy, and to grow a bit taller. Even though she was older than Pup, Dolly was always in awe of her brother. More and more, she wanted to believe that he had occult powers and could do anything. Magic could remove the birthmark from her face and make her normal. Magic could kill their wicked stepmother, Myra. Pup laughs when Dolly shows him an effigy of Myra: a rag doll, about fifteen inches high, with knitted nylon skin and rust-coloured wool hair. Dolly sticks it full of pins. Myra dies. O-R84 RR09/12
1986
LIVE FLESH: Why? Why did he do it? Why had it happened? What sort of fiend was he? Why should he, Victor Jenner, the child of happily married, middle-class parents, succumb to such violent rages? Why should he have needed to make motiveless attacks on women? Victor didn't know. But Victor did know that the last ten years - the years in prison - had been a mistake. He had never intended to rape the girl. He had never intended to harm anyone. It had all been an accident. In fact, his life had been a series of accidents, one mistake leading to the next. Now, out of prison at last, Victor still isn't free. The past holds him so he can't go forward. So Victor goes back - and begins a new chain of accidents, a new string of tragic mistakes. O-R87 RR89 RR01 RR04/14
1987
 TALKING TO STRANGE MEN: The messages were coming in thick and fast. Coded messages that John Creevey should never have seen. Was it a major spy ring? A drugs gang? A protection racket? Whatever, to John Creevey the messages were a lifeline, a means of getting back his wife and perhaps a way to harm the man who had seduced her away from him. O-R88 RR93
1987
HEARTSTONES: In a college town two schoolgirls live with their widowed father Luke, who is a gentle well- educated man, meticulous and orderly. Elvira and Spinny are watchful however. For Luke plans to remarry - and has chosen Mary Leonard, another academic, who threatens to supplant the girls in their father's affections. The girls are impressionable: Elvira reads Gothic tales and is much taken with Edgar Allan Poe; while Spinny fears ghosts, and even encounters them in the corridors of the house. But soon the threat to their world is removed - when scaffolding rises up the west front of the cathedral, Mary Leonard falls to her death. Hardly an accident, but just who is to blame? O-R88 RR90
1989
THE BRIDESMAID: Violent death fascinates people. It upset Philip. He had a phobia about it. Left to himself, he would have taken no interest in the disappearance of Rebecca Neave. But his sister, Fee, knew her at school. Murder was suspected. But no body had been found . When Fee got married, it was Philip who gave her away, Their father was dead. He had been an inveterate gambler who left little behind to be remembered by - except perhaps a curious copy of a Renaissance statue, known as the Farnese Flora. He had acquired it after losing a bet to his wife on their honeymoon in Italy. Senta Pelham was one of Fee's five bridesmaids. She was slender, pale, with almost colourless eyes. But, for Philip, the most remarkable thing about her, the most exciting thing, was her uncanny resemblance to Flora. That Senta should be attracted to him came initially as a delicious surprise to Philip. But soon the erotic intensity of their relationship threatened to engulf him utterly. She was like no one he had ever known. Senta tantalised and unsettled him. He didn't know what to believe - about her past, her present, even her avowed love. He only knew that he had entered into a relationship which required a murder to prove that it was real. O-R89
1990
GOING WRONG: She always had lunch with him on Saturdays. This always happened, it was an absolute, unless one of them was away. Guy still believed that Leonora loved him, as she had when she was a young girl, when he led a street gang round the grubby streets of London's Notting Hill Gate. They were brilliant shoplifters then, and inveterate smokers of marijuana. Guy Curran's family lived in a block of council flats. Leonora's had a mews house in Holland Park. Her mother in particular did not care for Leonora's dark, good-looking boyfriend, especially when she found out how he made his money. If anything, Guy's obsession with Leonora increased as the years passed, and as they grew apart. He always believed she would come back to him. But this was a romantic fantasy. She told him so. Life was not like a fairy story. But Guy could not, would not accept the truth. It created in him a murderous madness . O-R90 RR92
1991
 THE COPPER PEACOCK and Other Stories: Bernard untied the ribbon and took off the paper. Inside the box, on a piece of cotton wool, lay a metal object about six inches long and an inch wide. Its shaft was flat like the blade of a knife and, attached to a hook on the top which curved backwards in a U-shape, was a facsimile of a peacock with tail spread fan-wise, the whole executed in beaten copper and a mosaic of blue, green and purple glass chips. To Bernard it looked at first like some piece of cheap jewellery, a woman's hair ornament or clip. He registered its tawdry ugliness, felt at a loss for words. What was it? He looked up at her. "It's a bookmark, isn't it?" She spoke with intense earnestness. "You put it in your book to show where you've got to. " Bernard has borrowed a friend's flat to finish writing his latest biography. At home with Ann and the two children life was chaotic. But here he could spread himself around. And then there was Judy. She came to clean three times a week. She was scrupulously tidy. Bernard looked forward to her presence. It came as something of a shock, on his thirty-fifth birthday, when she gave him the copper peacock. Had she offered herself, perhaps he might have been able to help, to save her life. A PAIR OF YELLOW LILIES; PAPERWORK; MOTHER'S HELP; LONG LIVE THE QUEEN; DYING HAPPY; THE COPPER PEACOCK; WEEDS; THE FISH SITTER; AN UNWANTED WOMAN (DCI Wexford). O-R91
1993
THE CROCODILE BIRD: 'The world began to fall apart at nine in the evening. Not at five when it happened, nor at half-past six when the policemen came and Eve said to go into the little castle and not show herself, but at nine when all was quiet and it was dark outside.' When her mother, Eve, tells Liza that she must leave their remote home, the gatehouse of a country mansion, Liza is terrified. Although seventeen years of age, she has never been on a bus or a train, has never even played with a child of her own age. She has almost no knowledge of the world - a world described by her mother as evil and destructive. But their strange, enclosed life together is over. Because Eve has killed a man, and he is not the first. With £100 in cash, Liza is cast adrift. However, she is not alone. There is one particular secret that she has kept from her mother - her love affair with a young man who worked as a gardener in the big house. And with him, gradually, Liza learns about the world, about herself, and must come to terms with the possibility that the murderous violence of her mother may be present in her. O-R93 RR06/11
1995
BLOOD LINES and other stories: Behind the quiet patterns of everyday life, lie the frailties and desires, the deceptions and guilty secrets of ordinary men and women. In this powerful new collection of long and short stories Ruth Rendell probes their lives with unerring and disturbing insight.  LIZZIE'S LOVER; SHREDS AND SLIVERS; BURNING END; THE MAN WHO WAS THE GOD OF LOVE; THE CARER; EXPECTATIONS; CLOTHES; UNACCEPTABLE LEVELS; IN ALL HONESTY; THE STRAWBERRY TREE; BLOOD LINES (DCI Wexford). O-R97
1996
THE KEYS TO THE STREET: Mary Jago had donated her own bone marrow to save the life of someone she didn't know. And this generous act led directly to the bitter break-up of her affair with Alistair. For him, it was as though her beauty had been plundered. But the man whose life she had saved would change Mary's life in a way she could never have imagined. Located in the area around Regent's Park, Ruth Rendell creates an atmospherically charged universe, where a young woman's life is in danger both from the middle class world she knows and another world of the dispossessed and deranged. O-R96, RR08/12
1998
THORNAPPLE: Originally published in the collection THE FEVER TREE and Other Stories. Twelve-year-old James lives with his parents and sister. He has a scientific mind and a load of jars, all containing poisons which he has manufactured from plants in the garden - his favourite being Thornapple. When cousin Mirabel and her baby come to stay, James is captivated by Mirabel, who has been rejected by her boyfriend. Mirabel's aunt June, who had also rejected her, suddenly puts her into her good books again, but when June dies, supposedly of gastric complications and leaving Mirabel a large sum of money, James has his doubts as to the true cause of death. R82
1998
A SIGHT FOR SORE EYES: 'Lying in bed he thought about Francine as she had been, seated in front of his mirror, swathed in stiff silk, her reflected face looking gravely back at her real face. She must easily be the most beautiful girl in the world. A sight for sore eyes. Alfred Chance had once used that expression and it had stuck in his mind. About an object, though, not a person. It meant that looking at beauty took away pain and hurt and made you better. Francine made him better and his eyes were sore when they couldn't feast on her.' Neither his mother nor his father took much notice of Teddy Brex. No one ever cuddled him, or played with him or talked to him. The only person he could vaguely relate to was Alfred Chance, who lived next door, and made beautiful things in his workshop. People, Teddy suspected, were uniformly vile and rotten, vastly inferior to things. Objects never let you down. When Francine Hill was discovered by her father, sitting by the body of her mother, her skirt red with blood, she was mute. Not until nine months after the murder did she manage to speak, but she could not tell the police or her father anything to help track down the killer. Damaged children grow up in different ways. Some can shuffle off the horrors of the past, others perhaps cannot change who they are, or will never know how. Teddy Brex became a handsome young man, Francine was beautiful. But it was death that brought them together. O-R99 RR04 RR08/11 RR08/23
2000
PIRANHA TO SCURFY and Other Stories: The long title story is about a man whose life, in a sense, is a book. There are shelves in every room, packed with titles which Ambrose Ribbon has checked pedantically for mistakes of grammar and fact. Life for Ribbon, without his mother now, is lonely and obsessive. He still keeps her dressing table exactly as she had left it, the wardrobe door always open so that her clothes can be seen inside, and her pink silk nightdress folded on the bed . There is one book too that he associates particularly with her - volume VIII of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Piranha to Scurfy. It marked a very significant moment in their relationship. In the other stories, Ruth Rendell deals with a variety of themes, some macabre, some vengeful, some mysterious, all precisely observed. High Mysterious Union, explores a strange, erotic universe in a dream- like corner of rural England, and illustrates very atmospherically what range Ruth Rendell has as a writer. PIRANHA TO SCURFY; COMPUTER SÉANCE; FAIR EXCHANGE; THE WINK; CATAMOUNT; WALTER’S LEG; THE PROFESSIONAL; THE BEACH BUTLER; THE ASTRONOMICAL SCARF; HIGH MYSTERIOUS UNION; MYTH. O-R00
2001
ADAM AND EVE AND PINCH ME: 'Ghosts in stories are grey, like the people in black and white television, or else see- through, but this one had short dark hair and a brown neck and a black leather jacket. Minty didn't have to see its face to know it was her late fiancé, Jock.' Jock Lewis was supposed to have died in the Paddington train crash. Minty had received a letter from Great Western. But, curiously, the police hadn't been in touch. And Jock had gone off with all her savings. Then there was Zillah. She had been married to a man called Jerry Leach. She had also received a letter from the railway company that said her husband was dead. She didn't really believe the story, but chose not to mention her doubts to James Melcombe-Smith, an up-and- coming Conservative MP, who was proposing a marriage of convenience. Fiona was a successful banker. Jeff Leigh had appeared on the scene before that terrible rail crash in August. Although he never seemed to be in work and borrowed money from her, she loved him. There were other women too, unknown to each other, who had relationships with a dark-haired man, who, after a little while, would disappear completely from their lives. Jock's ghost reappeared to Minty at home, at work, in the cinema. He even touched her. Minty started to carry a knife. If he wasn't made of shadows, would he bleed? O-R01 RR11/12  RR09/23
2003
THE ROTTWEILER: The first girl had a bite mark on her neck, but the police traced the DNA to her boyfriend. Nevertheless, when the tabloids got hold of the story, they called the killer 'The Rottweiler', and the name stuck. The latest body was discovered very near Inez Ferry's antique shop in Marylebone. Someone spotted a shadowy figure running away past the station, but couldn't say for sure if it was a man or a woman. There were only two other clues. The murderer seemed to have a preference for strangling his victims and then removing something personal - like a cigarette lighter or a necklace . Since her actor husband died, too early into their marriage, Inez supplemented her modest income by taking in tenants above the shop. The unpredictably obsessive activities of 'The Rottweiler' would exert a profound influence on this heterogeneous little community, especially when the suspicion began to emerge that one of them might be a homicidal maniac. O-R03 RR06/11
2004
THIRTEEN STEPS DOWN: Mix Cellini (which he pronounces with an 'S' rather than a 'C') is superstitious about the number thirteen and has always felt dogged by ill-luck. In St Blaise House where he lives, there are thirteen steps down to the landing below his rooms, which he keeps spick and span in marked contrast to the rest of the place. His landlady, Gwendolen Chawcer, was born there, and lives her life almost exclusively through her library, blind to the neglect and decay around her. The Notting Hill neighbourhood has changed radically over the last fifty years, and 10 Rillington Place, where the notorious John Christie committed a series of foul murders, has been torn down. Mix is obsessed with the life of Christie and his small library is composed entirely of books on the subject. He has also developed a passion for a beautiful model who lives nearby - a woman who would not look at him twice. Both landlady and lodger inhabit weird worlds of their own. But when reality intrudes into Mix's life, a long pent-up violence explodes. O-R04 RR08/12
2006
THE WATER'S LOVELY: '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 dreams 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. Nine years on, she and her sister, Heather, still live in the same house in Clapham. But it has been divided into two self-contained flats. Their mother lives upstairs with her sister, Pamela. And the bathroom, where Guy drowned, has disappeared. Ismay works in public relations, and Heather in catering. They get on well. They always have. They never discuss the changes to the house, still less what 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. O-R06



2006
THE THIEF: Stealing things from people who had upset her was something Polly did quite a lot. There was her Aunt Pauline; a girl at school; a boyfriend who left her. And there was the man on the plane . Humiliated and scared, by a total stranger, Polly does what she always does. She steals something. But she never could have imagined that her desire for revenge would have such terrifying results. O-R06
2008
PORTOBELLO: 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. There is nothing safe about Portobello. Eugene Wren inherited an art gallery from his father near an arcade that now sells cashmere, handmade soaps and children's clothes. But he decided to move to a more upmarket site in Kensington Church Street. Eugene was fifty, with prematurely white hair. He was, perhaps, too secretive for his own good. He also had an addictive personality. But he had cut back radically on his alcohol consumption and had given up cigarettes. Which was just as well, considering he was going out with a doctor. For all his good intentions, though, there was something he didn't want her to know about. On a shopping trip one day, Eugene, quite by chance, came across an envelope containing money. He picked it up. For some reason, rather than report the matter to the police, he wrote a note and stuck it up on a lamp post near his house: 'Found in Chepstow Villas, a sum of money between eighty and a hundred and sixty pounds. Anyone who has lost such a sum should apply to the phone number below.' This note would link the lives of a number of very different people - each with their obsessions, problems, dreams and despairs. And through it all the hectic life of Portobello would bustle on. O-R08 RR07/18
2010
TIGERLILY'S ORCHIDS: When Stuart Font decides to throw a house-warming party in his new flat, he invites all the people in his building. After some deliberation, he even includes the unpleasant caretaker and his wife. There are a few other genuine friends on the list, but he definitely does not want to extend the invitation to his girlfriend, Claudia, as that might involve asking her husband. The party will be one that everyone remembers. But not for the right reasons. All the occupants of Lichfield House are about to experience a dramatic change in their lives . Living opposite, in reclusive isolation, is a young, beautiful Asian woman, christened Tigerlily by Stuart. As though from some strange urban fairytale, she emerges to exert a terrible spell. And Mr and Mrs Font, Stuart's worried parents, will have even more cause for concern about their handsome but hopelessly naive son. O-R10
2012
THE SAINT ZITA SOCIETY: Dex works as a gardener for Dr Jefferson at his home on Hexam Place in Pimlico: an exclusive street of white-painted stucco Georgian houses inhabited by the rich, and serviced by the not so rich. The hired help, a motley assortment of au pairs, drivers and cleaners, decide to form the St Zita Society (Zita was the patron saint of domestic servants) as an excuse to meet at the local pub and air their grievances. When Dex is invited to attend one of these meetings, the others find that he is a strange man, seemingly ill at ease with human beings. These first impressions are compounded when they discover he has recently been released from a hospital for the criminally insane, where he was incarcerated for attempting to kill his own mother. Dex's most meaningful relationship seems to be with his mobile phone service provider, Peach, and he interprets the text notifications and messages he receives from the company as a reassuring sign that there is some kind of god who will protect him. And give him instructions about ridding the world of evil spirits . . . Accidental death and pathological madness cohabit above and below stairs in Hexam Place. O-R07/12 RR05/17
2014
THE GIRL NEXT DOOR: Before the advent of the Second World War, beneath the green meadows of Loughton, Essex, a dark network of tunnels has been dug. A group of children discover them. They play there. It becomes their secret place. Seventy years on, the world has changed. Developers have altered the rural landscape. Friends from a half-remembered world have married, died, grown sick, moved on or disappeared.When the bones of two severed hands are discovered in a box, an investigation into a long buried crime of passion begins. And a group of friends, who played together as children, begin to question their past. O-R08/14
2015
DARK CORNERS: When Carl sells a packet of slimming pills to his close friend, Stacey, inadvertently causing her death, he sets in train a sequence of catastrophic events which begins with subterfuge, extends to lies, and culminates in murder. In Rendell’s dark and atmospheric tale of psychological suspense, we encounter mistaken identity, kidnap, blackmail, and a cast of characters who are so real that we come to know them better than we know ourselves. Infused with her distinctive blend of wry humour, acute observation and deep humanity, this is Rendell at her most memorable and best. O-R10/15
2017
A SPOT OF FOLLY: (TEN TALES OF MAYHEM AND MURDER): In these new and uncollected tales of murder, mischief, magic and madness, a businessman boasts about cheating on his wife, only to find the tables turned. A beautiful country rectory reverberates to the echo of a historical murder. A compulsive liar acts on impulse, only to be lead inexorably to disaster. And a wealthy man finds there is more to his wife's kidnapping than meets the eye. O-Kindle - R11/23

The 12 (sic) stories are: NEVER SLEEP FACING A MIRROR; A SPOT OF FOLLY; THE PRICE OF JOY; THE IRONY OF HATE; DIGBY'S WIVES; THE HAUNTING OF SHAWLEY RECTORY; A DROP TOO MUCH; THE THIEF; THE LONG CORRIDOR; IN THE TIME OF PROSPERITY; TREBUCHET.

Details of the original publication of most of these tales are in the Addendum below. The Thief was also published as a novella in 2006 and is listed above in the main body of this page.
ADDENDUM
I am grateful to Marion Glazebrook for supplying  the following information about stories by Ruth Rendell (including one as Barbara Vine) which were published in various magazines and collections over the years. Items marked (*) were also published posthumously in the collection A Spot of Folly as listed above in the main body of this page :

*The Long Corridor of Time (1973) EQMM (Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine), February 1974.Ladies of the Gothic, ed. Manley & Lewis, Lorthrop, Lee & Shepard 1975 Ellery Queen’s Napoleons of Mystery, Gollancz 1980 EQMM, Galahad Books 1987 Haunting ghost story that deserves to be better known.

*A Spot of Folly (1974) EQMM, November 1974 Thriller set in Paris.

 

*A Drop Too Much (1975) Winter’s Crimes 7, ed. Hardinge, Macmillan 1975 EQMM, August 1976 (edited version). Murders for the Fireside, ed. Jacubowski, Pan 1992. Masters of Suspense, ed. Ellery Queen & Eleanor Sullivan, Galahad 1992. The only non-Wexford short story set in Kingsmarkham. 

*The Price of Joy (1977) EQMM, April 1977 Ellery Queen’s Crimes and Punishment, ed. Sullivan & Prince, 1984

 

*The Irony of Hate (1977) aka Born Victim Winter’s Crimes 9, ed. Hardinge, Macmillan 1977. EQMM, September 1978 (as Born Victim). Crime from the Mind of a Woman, ed. E. George, Hodder & Stoughton 2001. A Moment on the Edge, ed. Elizabeth George, HarperCollins 2004. Mammoth Book of Modern Crime Stories, Robinson 1987.

 

*The Haunting of Shawley Rectory (1979) EQMM, 17 December 1979 Haunted Houses: The Greatest Stories, ed. Greenberg, MJF Books 1997 The Mammoth Book of 20th Century Ghost Stories, ed. Haining, Robinson 1998. The Virago Book of Ghost Stories, ed. Dalby, Virago 2008. Tales from the Dead of Night: 13 Classic Ghost Stories, Profile Books 2013.           

*Trebuchet (1985) The Listener, 18 July 1985 (Vol 114, No 2918). Bleak story about a nuclear attack.

 

*In the Time of His Prosperity (1995) The Penguin Collection, Penguin Books 1995 EQMM, August 2005. The only short story RR wrote as Barbara Vine.

 

*Never Sleep in a Bed Facing a Mirror (1997) Daily Telegraph, 8 February 1997. Mini Sagas from the Daily Telegraph Competition, ed. Aldiss, Sutton Pub. 1997.
At exactly 50 words, a very short story indeed.

Death in the Square (1988) Telegraph Weekend Magazine, 24 December 1988. Round-robin story written by Roald Dahl, Ted Willis, Ruth Rendell and Peter Levi. 

The Martyr (2009) Midsummer Nights, ed. Winterson, Quercus 2009. ‘A selection of 10 stories by various authors commissioned to celebrate Glyndebourne’s 75th anniversary. 'The Martyr' by Ruth Rendell, a mystical tale based on Handel’s opera 'Theodora'.