Barbara Vine Book order (chronological)

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.

Kirstin Kvist is 24 wanneer ze Zweden verlaat om in Engeland te gaan werken. Via haar vriend komt ze terecht op Lydstep Old Hall, een oud, verwaarloosd landhuis in Essex. Daar gaat ze zorgen voor John, een veertigjarige schizofrene man. Al bij aankomst beseft Kirstin dat ze in een ongewone familie is beland. Johns familieleden gunnen elkaar het licht in de ogen niet. Het enige wat hen bij elkaar houdt, is zijn geld. Wanneer een van zijn zussen een relatie krijgt met een kunstschilder uit het dorp, is dat de aanzet tot een reeks gruwelijke gebeurtenissen. Het noodlot lijkt onafwendbaar…

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.

'In a masterly and hypnotic synthesis of past, present and terrifying future, Vine casts a stone into her dark pond and lets the ripples spread . . . she has created a work that is both compelling and disturbing'. Sunday Times. 'This is the third psychological thriller by Ruth Rendell writing as Barbara Vine and when I say it surpasses the first two that's really saying something . . . Vine has not only produced a quietly smouldering suspense novel but also presents an accurately atmospheric portrayal of London in the heady 60's. Literally unputdownable'. Time Out.