Patricia Highsmith Popular Books

Patricia Highsmith Biography & Facts

Patricia Highsmith (born Mary Patricia Plangman; January 19, 1921 – February 4, 1995) was an American novelist and short story writer widely known for her psychological thrillers, including her series of five novels featuring the character Tom Ripley. She wrote 22 novels and numerous short stories throughout her career spanning nearly five decades, and her work has led to more than two dozen film adaptations. Her writing derived influence from existentialist literature, and questioned notions of identity and popular morality. She was dubbed "the poet of apprehension" by novelist Graham Greene.Her first novel, Strangers on a Train (1950), has been adapted for stage and screen, the best known being the 1951 film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Her 1955 novel The Talented Mr. Ripley has been adapted for film multiple times. Writing under the pseudonym Claire Morgan, Highsmith published The Price of Salt in 1952, the first lesbian novel with a "happy ending"; it was republished 38 years later as Carol under her own name and later adapted into a 2015 film. Early life Highsmith was born Mary Patricia Plangman in Fort Worth, Texas. She was the only child of artists Jay Bernard Plangman (1889–1975), who was of German descent, and Mary Plangman (née Coates; September 13, 1895 – March 12, 1991). The couple divorced ten days before their daughter's birth.In 1927, Highsmith, her mother and her adoptive stepfather, artist Stanley Highsmith, whom her mother had married in 1924, moved to New York City. When she was 12 years old, Highsmith was sent to Fort Worth and lived with her maternal grandmother for a year. She called this the "saddest year" of her life and felt "abandoned" by her mother. She returned to New York to continue living with her mother and stepfather, primarily in Manhattan, but also in Astoria, Queens. According to Highsmith, her mother once told her that she had tried to abort her by drinking turpentine, although a biography of Highsmith indicates Jay Plangman tried to persuade his wife to have the abortion but she refused. Highsmith never resolved this love–hate relationship, which reportedly haunted her for the rest of her life, and which she fictionalized in "The Terrapin", her short story about a young boy who stabs his mother to death. Highsmith's mother predeceased her by only four years, dying at the age of 95.Highsmith's grandmother taught her to read at an early age, and she made good use of her grandmother's extensive library. At the age of nine, she found a resemblance to her own imaginative life in the case histories of The Human Mind by Karl Menninger, a popularizer of Freudian analysis.Many of Highsmith's 22 novels were set in Greenwich Village. In 1942, Highsmith graduated from Barnard College, where she studied English composition, playwriting, and short story prose. After graduating from college, and despite endorsements from "highly placed professionals," she applied without success for a job at publications such as Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, Mademoiselle, Good Housekeeping, Time, Fortune, and The New Yorker.Based on the recommendation from Truman Capote, Highsmith was accepted by the Yaddo artist's retreat during the summer of 1948, where she worked on her first novel, Strangers on a Train. Personal life Highsmith endured cycles of depression, some of them deep, throughout her life. Despite literary success, she wrote in her diary of January 1970: "[I] am now cynical, fairly rich ... lonely, depressed, and totally pessimistic." Over the years, Highsmith had female hormone deficiency, anorexia nervosa, chronic anemia, Buerger's disease, and lung cancer. According to her biographer, Andrew Wilson, Highsmith's personal life was a "troubled one". She was an alcoholic who, allegedly, never had an intimate relationship that lasted for more than a few years, and she was seen by some of her contemporaries and acquaintances as misanthropic and hostile. Her chronic alcoholism intensified as she grew older.She famously preferred the company of animals to that of people and stated in a 1991 interview, "I choose to live alone because my imagination functions better when I don't have to speak with people."Otto Penzler, her U.S. publisher through his Penzler Books imprint, had met Highsmith in 1983, and four years later witnessed some of her theatrics intended to create havoc at dinner tables and shipwreck an evening. He said after her death that "[Highsmith] was a mean, cruel, hard, unlovable, unloving human being ... I could never penetrate how any human being could be that relentlessly ugly. ... But her books? Brilliant."Other friends, publishers, and acquaintances held different views of Highsmith. Editor Gary Fisketjon, who published her later novels through Knopf, said that "She was very rough, very difficult ... But she was also plainspoken, dryly funny, and great fun to be around." Composer David Diamond met Highsmith in 1943 and described her as being "quite a depressed person—and I think people explain her by pulling out traits like cold and reserved, when in fact it all came from depression." J. G. Ballard said of Highsmith, "The author of Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley was every bit as deviant and quirky as her mischievous heroes, and didn't seem to mind if everyone knew it." Screenwriter Phyllis Nagy, who adapted The Price of Salt into the 2015 film Carol, met Highsmith in 1987 and the two remained friends for the rest of Highsmith's life. Nagy said that Highsmith was "very sweet" and "encouraging" to her as a young writer, as well as "wonderfully funny."She was considered by some as "a lesbian with a misogynist streak."Highsmith loved cats, and she bred about three hundred snails in her garden at home in Suffolk, England. Highsmith once attended a London cocktail party with a "gigantic handbag" that "contained a head of lettuce and a hundred snails" which she said were her "companions for the evening."She loved woodworking tools and made several pieces of furniture. Highsmith worked without stopping. In later life, she became stooped, with an osteoporotic hump. Though the 22 novels and 8 books of short stories she wrote were highly acclaimed, especially outside of the United States, Highsmith preferred her personal life to remain private.A lifelong diarist, Highsmith left behind eight thousand pages of handwritten notebooks and diaries. Sexuality As an adult, Patricia Highsmith's sexual relationships were predominantly with women. She occasionally engaged in sex with men without physical desire for them, and wrote in her diary: "The male face doesn't attract me, isn't beautiful to me." She told writer Marijane Meaker in the late 1950s that she had "tried to like men. I like most men better than I like women, but not in bed." In a 1970 letter to her stepfather Stanley, Highsmith described sexual encounters with men as "steel wool in the face, a sensation of being raped in the wrong place—leading to a sensation of having to have.... Discover the Patricia Highsmith popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Patricia Highsmith books.

Best Seller Patricia Highsmith Books of 2024

  • Unraveling Oliver synopsis, comments

    Unraveling Oliver

    Liz Nugent

    “Searing, searching, finally scorching. Think Making a Murderer via Patricia Highsmith: an elegant kaleidoscope novel that refines and combines multiple perspectives until its subj...

  • The Drowner synopsis, comments

    The Drowner

    John D. MacDonald

    Lucille Hanson had rid herself of the wrong man her rich husband who lived casually and loved carelessly. Then she found another man she hoped would be right. She was putting toge...

  • Area of Suspicion synopsis, comments

    Area of Suspicion

    John D. MacDonald

    Four years ago Gevan Dean found his fiancée Niki Webb in his brother Ken's arms and fled his hometown for a peaceful life in the Florida sun. But now Ken is dead murdered by a thi...

  • Death Trap synopsis, comments

    Death Trap

    John D. MacDonald

    In life, Jane Ann never had much use for a halo, but in her violent death she finally earned one. When they found a suspect, everyone relaxed except Hugh MacReedy.Maybe he should h...

  • Fatal Inheritance synopsis, comments

    Fatal Inheritance

    Rachel Rhys

    Get swept away to the enchanting South of France with this “exquisite and shimmering” (Lisa Jewell, New York Times bestselling author of Then She Was Gone) suspenseful historical n...

  • April in Spain synopsis, comments

    April in Spain

    John Banville

    NATIONAL BESTSELLERBooker Prize winner John Banville returns with a dark and evocative new mystery set on the Spanish coastDon't disturb the dead…On the idyllic coast of San Sebast...

  • The Only Girl in the Game synopsis, comments

    The Only Girl in the Game

    John D. MacDonald

    Her employers are the high priests of Las Vegas and she is their handmaiden. Her job is to lead the lambs to the sacrifice, to keep them happy at the tables, where her partners sla...

  • Deadly Welcome synopsis, comments

    Deadly Welcome

    John D. MacDonald

    Alex Doyle is a tough man on a tough assignment in Ramona Beach, Florida the kind of place that doesn't trust strangers and is policed by a sheriff who echoes the locals' sentimen...

  • A Key to the Suite synopsis, comments

    A Key to the Suite

    John D. MacDonald

    Corporate hatchetman Hubbard is on his way to an industry convention to carry out a termination a fancy way of saying he's about to toss a man and his family out in the street. Bu...

  • The Brass Cupcake synopsis, comments

    The Brass Cupcake

    John D. MacDonald

    In Flower City, a sleepy resort town on Florida's Gulf Coast, wealthy Elizabeth Stegman is murdered in a jewel heist gone bad her missing jewels insured for £750,000.It falls to h...

  • One More Sunday synopsis, comments

    One More Sunday

    John D. MacDonald

    Welcome to the Eternal Church of the Believer, where devout workers operate stateoftheart computer equipment to process the thousands of dollars that pour in daily and where hundre...

  • Cover Her Face synopsis, comments

    Cover Her Face

    P. D. James

    The first in the series of scintillating mysteries to feature cunning Scotland Yard detective, Adam Dalgliesh from P.D. James, the bestselling author hailed by People magazine as “...

  • Mouth to Mouth synopsis, comments

    Mouth to Mouth

    Antoine Wilson

    ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2022 An NPR and Time Best Book of the Year Longlisted for the 2022 Scotiabank Giller Prize (Canada) Finalist for CALIBA’s 2022 Golden Pop...

  • Lying in Wait synopsis, comments

    Lying in Wait

    Liz Nugent

    From the #1 internationally bestselling author of Strange Sally Diamond and Unraveling Olivera brilliantly plotted, utterly immersive novel lauded by A.J. Finn#1 New York Times bes...

  • The Neon Jungle synopsis, comments

    The Neon Jungle

    John D. MacDonald

    The Varaki family run the local grocery store, but tragedy hits the family hard. The sudden death of the matriarch of the clan is followed by the favourite son's death in Korea. Th...

  • Perdida synopsis, comments

    Perdida

    Gillian Flynn

    No pierdas el tren. Perdida es tu próxima parada.El libro que se ha convertido en un referente del thriller psicológico contemporáneo.En un caluroso día de verano, Amy y Nick se di...

  • Cancel All Our Vows synopsis, comments

    Cancel All Our Vows

    John D. MacDonald

    Fletcher Wyant and his wife Jane had been married for fifteen years. They had built the perfect marriage two wonderful kids, a warm beautiful home, and their own private neverendi...

  • Hurricane synopsis, comments

    Hurricane

    John D. MacDonald

    A hurricane of terrifying intensity is looming over Florida. Along a state highway, a handful of foolhardy souls trying to outrun the storm are forced to seek shelter in an abandon...

  • Shadow of the Titanic synopsis, comments

    Shadow of the Titanic

    Andrew Wilson

    IN the early morning hours of April 15, 1912, the icy waters of the North Atlantic reverberated with the desperate screams of more than 1,500 men, women, and childrenpassengers of ...

  • Eight Perfect Murders synopsis, comments

    Eight Perfect Murders

    Peter Swanson

    New York Times bestseller“Swanson rips us from one startling plot twist to the next… A true tour de force.” Lisa Gardner“[A] multilayered mystery that brims with duplicity, betraya...

  • The Last One Left synopsis, comments

    The Last One Left

    John D. MacDonald

    When a yacht explodes in the Bahamas, apparently killing six people, Sam Boyleston, an attorney from Texas and the brother of one of the victims, is compelled to investigate the ci...

  • The Deceivers synopsis, comments

    The Deceivers

    John D. MacDonald

    Her name was Cindy, and she was his neighbour's wife the woman next door in the kind of suburbia that didn't make headlines. These were real people, nice people like Cindy and Car...

  • Dangerous Crossing synopsis, comments

    Dangerous Crossing

    Rachel Rhys

    In this “thrilling, seductive, and utterly absorbing” (Paula Hawkins, #1 New York Times bestselling author) historical suspense novel in the tradition of Agatha Christie’s Death on...

  • Cry Hard, Cry Fast synopsis, comments

    Cry Hard, Cry Fast

    John D. MacDonald

    A gunman on the run, a seventeenyearold girl on a family vacation, a jaded working girl, a guiltstricken widower, an abandoned mistress. All heading fast down a route to sudden dea...

  • On the Run synopsis, comments

    On the Run

    John D. MacDonald

    Sid Shanley couldn't stay in one place very long. He had to keep on the run, changing towns, changing jobs, changing women. He worked out the perfect setup no attachments, no trai...

  • Eileen synopsis, comments

    Eileen

    Ottessa Moshfegh

    Soon to be a major motion picture, starring Anne HathawayShortlisted for the Man Booker Prize So here we are. My name was Eileen Dunlop. Now you know me. I was twentyfour year...

  • Off Season synopsis, comments

    Off Season

    Jennifer Weiner

    #1 New York Times bestselling author of Big Summer and Mrs. Everything channels Shirley Jackson and Stephen King to bring us a chilling tale of an author willing to do anything to ...

  • The Echo Chamber synopsis, comments

    The Echo Chamber

    John Boyne

    'His relish is infectious' Times'The funniest book I've read in ages. Savage but compelling' Ian Rankin'Funny, rumbustious, unstinting and wonderfully Hogarthian' The Observer'Shar...

  • Soft Touch synopsis, comments

    Soft Touch

    John D. MacDonald

    Jerry Jamison wants out: out of a sloppy marriage, a dull job and the empty suburban rat race. Once Jerry had a beautiful bride and a good salary at her old man's successful busine...

  • A Man of Affairs synopsis, comments

    A Man of Affairs

    John D. MacDonald

    Sam Glidden owed all his success to the opportunities he'd received from Thomas McGann, president of the Harrison Corporation. But now McGann was dead, and Mike Dean, a wildly flam...

  • Murder for the Bride synopsis, comments

    Murder for the Bride

    John D. MacDonald

    Dillon Bryant, a successful engineer, is off on assignment after finishing his honeymoon. But news from home comes that his new bride, Laura, a beautiful woman whom he had met only...

  • Imperial Spain 1469-1716 synopsis, comments

    Imperial Spain 1469-1716

    J. H Elliott & NEIL PINCHES

    The story of Spain's rise to greatness from its humble beginnings as one of the poorest and most marginal of European countries is a remarkable and dramatic one. With the marriage ...

  • The Complete Ripley Novels Patricia Highsmith synopsis, comments

    The Complete Ripley Novels Patricia Highsmith

    Patricia Highsmith

    Collected here in this stunning, boxedset edition, The Complete Ripley Novels celebrates one of fiction’s most iconic literary characters. The Complete Ripley Novels, brilliantly d...

  • The End of the Night synopsis, comments

    The End of the Night

    John D. MacDonald

    Three men and a beautiful girl on a crosscountry terror spree a coast to coast rampage of stealing, kidnapping, rape and killing.Who were they? Where did they come from? Why did t...

  • The Talented Miss Highsmith synopsis, comments

    The Talented Miss Highsmith

    Joan Schenkar

    Patricia Highsmith's The Price of Salt is now a major motion picture (Carol) starring Cate Blanchett and Mia Wasikowska, directed by Todd HayesA 2010 New York Times Notable BookA ...

  • Please Write for Details synopsis, comments

    Please Write for Details

    John D. MacDonald

    American bachelor Miles Drummond, living in Cuernavaca, Mexico, and running out of money, halfheartedly places an ad in a few US newspapers announcing a summer art workshop. Much t...

  • The Price of Murder synopsis, comments

    The Price of Murder

    John D. MacDonald

    On the surface, they seem like three very different people: Danny Bronson, a cunning excon struggling to go straight; his brother, Lee, a former Gridiron star turned college profes...

  • The Crossroads synopsis, comments

    The Crossroads

    John D. MacDonald

    More than half a century ago, Papa Drovek opened his small grocery store at the junction of two country roads. As he bought more and more land, the roads became highways, and now t...

  • Shroud for a Nightingale synopsis, comments

    Shroud for a Nightingale

    P. D. James

    Hailed as “mystery at its best” by The New York Times, Shroud for a Nightingale is the fourth book in bestselling author P.D. James’s Adam Dalgliesh mystery series.The young women ...

  • A Demon in My View synopsis, comments

    A Demon in My View

    Ruth Rendell

    Arthur Johnson doesn't look like a murderous psychopath; he is a mildmannered man who has never known how to talk to women. Years of loneliness has warped his mind, turning his des...

  • Seven synopsis, comments

    Seven

    John D. MacDonald

    A choice collection of seven short stories by one of America's foremost storytellers and the author of the bestselling Travis McGee series.Featuring 'Dear Old Friend', 'The Annex',...

  • Bitter Orange synopsis, comments

    Bitter Orange

    Claire Fuller

    An NPR Best Book of the Year"Unsettling and eerie, Bitter Orange is an ideal chiller." Time Magazine From the author of Our Endless Numbered Days and Swimming L...