She can make a scene between two women sitting in a café as violent as anything you’ve seen between a couple of guys with baseball bats

Wonderful at exploring the dark corners of the human mind, and the way private fantasies can clash and explode into terrifying violence

Ruth Rendell gets into the mind not only of the hero but into the mind of the villain

Rendell’s eerier capacity to comprehend disturbed criminal minds continues to astonish

Once her characters start twisting on every-tightening tracks, their fates are brilliantly sealed, and it’s never obvouis who’ll be the victim or the culprit. Rendell’s greatest trick is making an unforeseen outcome feel predestined

A serious, moving, funny, dark collection

KNOCKEMSTIFF by Donald Ray Pollock is the best book I have ever read. This is the America they don't let you see on television. This is real literature. It will be read for centuries

It's as if you put David Lynch, Denis Johnson, and a drunk speed freak body builder into a blender. The result are some of the darkest, wildest, most messed up, hilarious stories I've ever read. Knockemstiff is really something

This short story collection gives those new to her oeuvre a chance to delve into gems from her past...precociously vibrant