The Minotaur

by Barbara Vine (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2006

  $3.25

  Kerstin Kvist enters crumbling Lydstep Old Hall to live with the Cosways, and to act as nurse to John: a grown man fed drugs by his family to control his lunatic episodes. But John's strangeness is grotesquely mirrored in that of his four sisters who roam the dark, mazy Essex country house under the strict gaze of eighty-year-old Mrs Cosway. Despite being treated as an outsider, Kerstin is nevertheless determined to help John. But, she soon discovers that there are others in the family who are equally as determined that John remain isolated, for sinister reasons of their own.

• Used

  Paperback
  2009

  $3.25

  The Minotaur - a thrilling novel from the bestselling queen of crime Barbara Vine. Kerstin Kvist enters crumbling Lydstep Old Hall to live with the Cosways and to act as nurse to John: a grown man fed drugs by his family to control his lunatic episodes. But John's strangeness is grotesquely mirrored in that of his four sisters who roam the dark, mazy Essex country house under the strict gaze of eighty-year-old Mrs Cosway. Despite being treated as an outsider, Kerstin is nevertheless determined to help John. But she soon discovers that there are others in the family who are equally as determined that John remain isolated, for sinister reasons of their own... The reader is kept in suspense throughout ...vintage wine from the Rendell vine . ( Independent ). The Cosway family is a mesmerizing creation...I rushed through the last pages . (Penelope Lively, Sunday Times ). Stealthy, credible, ingenious and addictive . ( Literary Review ). The Rendell/ Vine partnership has for years been producing consistently better work than most Booker winners put together . (Ian Rankin). The Minotaur is a modern masterpiece of the crime genre and will leave you gripped from the first page to the last. If you enjoy the novels of P.D. James, Ian Rankin and Scott Turow, you will love this book. Barbara Vine is the pen-name of Ruth Rendell. She has written fifteen novels using this pseudonym, including A Fatal Inversion and King Solomon's Carpet which both won the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger Award. Her other books include: A Dark Adapted Eye ; The House of Stairs ; Gallowglass ; Asta's Book ; No Night Is Too Long ; In the Time of His Prosperity ; The Brimstone Wedding ; The Chimney Sweeper's Boy ; Grasshopper ; The Blood Doctor ; The Minotaur ; The Birthday Present and The Child's Child .

• Used

  Hardcover
  2005

  $3.25

  Kerstin Kvist didn't quite know what to expect when she took up a job with the Cosway family at their odd, almost grand home, Lydstep Old Hall, deep in the Essex countryside. The family turned out to be even odder than the house: the widowed Mrs Cosway lived with her three unmarried daughters, in thrall to the old lady. A mysterious fourth daughter - a widow herself and apparently quite rich - came and went, with ill-disguised contempt for the others. More puzzling still was Mrs Cosway's son, John, a sad, self-absorbed figure in his thirties who haunted the house. There's madness in the family' offered one of the daughters by way of explanation, but Kerstin had trained as a nurse and knew it wasn't right to be administering such powerful drugs to a vulnerable figure like John. Barbara Vine's new book, her twelfth, is compelling in its depiction of the sex, lies and secrets within an apparently respectable family, at a time when the sixties revolution hadn't quite reached rural England.