Nobody does North London squalor better than Ruth Rendell. Describing in vivid detail the cultural sewer in which a monster named Teddy Brex grows up, she uses hideous furniture, slovenly housekeeping habits, even his mother's diet while pregnant to root us in the setting's hopeless ugliness. In contrast, Rendell introduces people and places of stunning beauty: Francine, a mentally fragile girl who became mute after witnessing her mother's murder; and Orcadia Cottage, scene of a famous painting that is at the center of much of the story's anguish. "It was far and away the most beautiful place he had ever seen," Rendell writes when Teddy--a gifted woodcrafter--first views the cottage. "The proportions of this hall, this room... the windows, the walls, the carpets, the flowers, the furniture, the paintings, all of it dazzled him."

Teddy is another of Rendell's frightening moral cripples, a seemingly ordinary person capable of the vilest crimes. When he becomes obsessed with Francine after meeting her at art school, we know to expect murder--we just aren't sure when, or who will be the victim. Equally vile is Julia, Francine's stepmother, a psychologist of such immense and malevolent ineptness that we would swear she couldn't possibly exist if real life hadn't taught us otherwise. Other important characters are Harriet, a faded beauty who connects the past to the present; Teddy's uncle Keith, who first recognizes the boy's madness; and a bright red, lovingly restored Edsel, which becomes a hearse.

Like all of her books, Rendell's latest is really about the secret acts of insanity that occur behind closed doors. Among her best books available in paperback are From Doon with Death, A Guilty Thing Surprised, The Keys to the Street, and, from the excellent Inspector Wexford series, Kissing the Gunner's Daughter, Road Rage, and Simisola. --Dick Adler

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Store Description

Since its opening in 1991 within the premises of a small model factory at Alnwick Station, Barter Books has grown well beyond original expectations. Starting off in what was the ticket and parcel office of the original Station, the bookshop has expanded down the platforms and through the waiting rooms, until it now covers over one-quarter of the whole Station site. This translates into an area exceeding 8000 square feet and containing over 350,000 books on more than three miles of shelving. Now houses the Famous Writers Mural - 40 feet long by 18 feet high. The bookshop also sells secondhand DVDs, videos and music (CDs, LPs, cassettes, sheet music), as well as a small but growing section of artists' prints. And then there are the shop's many extra features! These include an open fire in the winter, coffee and cookies, a model railway running above the book columns, a mini-cybercafe, generous seating and browsing areas, a children's room, and dozens of glass cases containing many of the more interesting antiquarian books. A final note: during the enlargement process the owners took (and are taking!) particular pleasure in restoring, as they can, various features of the Station. This so far includes the original North Eastern Railway cast iron fireplaces, two of the Station clocks, a drinking fountain, and various waiting rooms. Most dramatic of all, however, was the restoration of part of the glass roof. That was when we all stood about watching as the sun came streaming in for the first time in many years to bring the wonderful old Station visually back to life. The very latest addition has been a forty foot mural celebrating the names of those who worked at Alnwick Station in its railway days - over 400 names plus the coats of arms of the three railway companies involved.

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Barter Books Ltd
Alnwick Station, Wagonway Road, Alnwick, NE66 2NP, United Kingdom

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