Little Tales of Misogyny

Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995) was born in Fort Worth, Texas. Her first novel, Strangers on a Train, was made into a classic film by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951. The Talented Mr Ripley, published in 1955, introduced the fascinating anti-hero Tom Ripley, and was made into an Oscar-winning film in 1999 by Anthony Minghella. Graham Greene called Patricia Highsmith 'the poet of apprehension', saying that she 'created a world of her own - a world claustrophobic and irrational which we enter each time with a sense of personal danger'. Patricia Highsmith died in Locarno, Switzerland, in February 1995. Her last novel, Small g: A Summer Idyll, was published posthumously, the same year.

These little tales are tremendous fun, glorious hand grenades lobbed at the reader by a gleeful, cackling Patricia Highsmith -- Dan Rhodes For eliciting the menace that lurks in familiar surroundings, there's no one like Patricia Highsmith Time These are extraordinary stories ... etched in acid and unforgettable ... Highsmith is a mistress of a fine and dangerous art. Let the reader beware Financial Times It's not just the men who come off badly in this short, sharp shock of a collection... Each story is more appalling than the next, deadpan in tone and dripping with black humour. The Independent Very wicked, very funny and - this being Highsmith's mission in life, as far as one can tell - very unsettling Guardian