Barbara Vine is a pseudonym for the British author Ruth Rendell. Under this name, she explores psychological crime novels that delve into complex family dynamics and the repercussions of secrets and crimes. Her writing is distinguished by elegant prose and sharp insights into the human mind. Vine masterfully crafts compelling plots and characters, reflecting social changes over the last four decades, including issues of domestic violence and the evolving status of women.
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. Ten years later, the bodies of a woman and a child are discovered in the Hall's animal cemetery.
When Sandor snatched little Joe from the path of a London Tube train, he was quick to make clear the terms of the rescue. 'I saved your life,' he told the homeless youngster, 'so your life belongs to me now'. Sandor began to tell him a fairy-tale: an ageing prince, a kidnapped princess chained by one ankle, a missed rendezvous.
Jarvis lives in a crumbling house with a view of the Jubilee Line: he loves the tube with all its secrets - its hidden tunnels, its mysterious "ghost" stations, its incidents and accidents, which he records. He lives in a house which was once a school, but now he lets out rooms.
It’s late spring of 1990 and a love affair is flourishing: between Ivor Tesham, a thirty-three year old rising star of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government, and Hebe Furnal, a stunning North London housewife stuck in a dull marriage. What excitement Hebe lacks at home, however, is amply compensated for by the well-bred and intensely attractive Tesham – an ardent womanizer and ambitious politican. On the eve of her twenty-eighth birthday, Tesham decides to give Hebe a present to remember: something far more memorable than, say, the costly string of pearls he’s already lavished upon her. Involving a fashionable new practice known as ‘adventure sex’, a man arranges for his unsuspecting but otherwise willing girlfriend to be snatched from the street, bound and gagged, and delivered to him at a mutually agreed venue ... Set amidst an age of IRA bombings, the first Gulf War, and sleazy politics, The Birthday Present is the gripping story of a fall from grace, and of a man who carries within him all the hypocrisy, greed and self-obsession of a troubled era.
Kerstin Kvist enters crumbling Lydstep Old Hall to live with the Cosways, and to act as nurse to John: a grown man fed drugs by his family to control his lunatic episodes. Kerstin is determined to help John, however there are others in the family who are equally as determined that John remain isolated.
From “the most brilliant mystery writer of our time" (Patricia Cornwell), The Child’s Child is a thriller, set in London, about a brother and sister involved with the same man.When 30-something Grace and her brother Andrew inherit their grandmother's house in London they decide to move in together. They’ve always gotten on well and the house is large enough to split down the middle. Yet when Andrew's partner James moves in, the balance is altered – with almost fatal consequences.A master of psychological suspense, Barbara Vine takes us where violence and social taboos collide. She shows how society's treatment of those it once considered undesirable has changed – and how sometimes it hasn't.
Gone with the Wind is a great romantic story of love and war and one of the best-selling books of all time. In Part 2, the American Civil War has destroyed Scarlett O’Hara’s comfortable world. Will she lose her home too? Or can she save it and rebuild her life?
Sie waren Papas ein und alles, aber sie hatten keine Ahnung, wer Papa in Wirklichkeit war. Die älteste Tochter Sarah beginnt, die Lebensgeschichte des verstorbenen Vaters zu schreiben. Sarah taucht ein in die Untiefen eines Lebens, das wie das Meer an der Küste von Devonshire, an der der Familiensitz liegt, morsche Bruchstücke freigibt. Zum Vorschein kommen beängstigende Details eines Doppellebens.
