Patricia Highsmith books

Akashic Noir Reading Order

Anthologies

Non-Fiction

Ripley Reading Order

Short Story Collections

Standalone Novels

Patricia Highsmith wrote some of the most unsettling crime fiction of the twentieth century. Her debut novel, Strangers on a Train (1950), was adapted by Alfred Hitchcock, and The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955) introduced one of literature’s most memorable antiheroes. Over a career spanning more than four decades, she published seventeen standalone novels, five Ripley books, and eleven short story collections.

Highsmith’s work stands apart from typical crime fiction because of her focus on psychology over plot mechanics. Her protagonists are often morally compromised or outright criminal, and she was more interested in the interior experience of guilt, obsession, and manipulation than in the puzzle of whodunit. Her short stories, collected in volumes like Little Tales of Misogyny and The Animal-Lover’s Book of Beastly Murder, are as sharp and disturbing as her novels. She also wrote The Price of Salt (1952), later republished as Carol, a groundbreaking novel about a lesbian relationship that has gained a wide new readership in recent decades.