The stories in 'The Black House' mine classic Highsmith terrain as they sketch the lives of suburban dwellers that appear quite normal at first but unravel to reveal their proximity to the macabre. Originally published: London: Heinemann, 1981

Some neighbours are playing Scrabble one evening when their cat drags into the house not a bird, or some other catch, but human fingers. A guest arrives at a dinner party where he is not welcome, and his hosts conspire to find and attack his Achilles heel. The crew of the Emma C rescue a beautiful girl floating unconscious in the sea and tension explodes between the men on board. A childless thirtysomething couple decide to invite two elderly folk to live with them, but have they been too generous? In this collection of Patricia Highsmith's wonderfully unsettling short stories, people's motives are frequently twisted and no occurrence is without a sinister underlying meaning.