The Waters Lovely Ruth Rendell by Ruth Rendell 9780307388018, 0307388018 instant download after payment.

The award-winning author of The Babes in the Wood and The Rottweiler brings us another terrifically paced, richly drawn novel of suspense and psychological intrigue.

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 always 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 live in the same house in Clapham. But it has been divided into two self-contained flats. Their mother had 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.

From the Hardcover edition.

Starred Review. Three-time Edgar Award–winner Rendell (13 Steps Down) often creates fragile characters, trembling on the edge of losing a lover, child, job, solvency or sanity. Slashing through their world is a wild card, an obsessive or a sociopath too focused on personal gain to be concerned with damage to others. The vulnerable people at the heart of this taut and enticing stand-alone are the Sealand family, particularly Heather, who's assumed to have drowned her unsavory stepfather, Guy, in the bath while he was weak with illness. A veritable pack of wild cards—including Marion Melville, who cozies up to the lonely and aged in hopes of inheriting their estates after she's poisoned them, and Marion's Dumpster-diving brother, Fowler—keeps everyone off guard. Rendell enlivens the tale with subplots involving various romances—ardent and desperate—and a killer who lurks in London's parks, as well as with pithy comments about class, technology, generational conflict, food and aesthetics. The plot twists in this electrifying read reach all the way to the last page. (July)
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In The Water's Lovely, three-time Edgar winner Ruth Rendell has written a subtle and darkly comic psychological thriller. The prolific Baroness, who also writes under the pseudonym Barbara Vine, is best known for her Inspector Wexworth series (starting with 1964's From Doon With Death), but she has also produced many excellent stand-alone novels. Most reviewers wholeheartedly praised the book, describing it as "virtuosic" (Entertainment Weekly), suspenseful, and "gleefully energetic" (New York Times), with a "head-spinning finale" (Christian Science Monitor). Even the critics who felt it was not her strongest work had positive things to say about Rendell's deft observations and dry wit. Fans of the genre will not be disappointed.
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.