Pip Mc Cabe, 30, likes to say she doesn't need a man & she doesn't need money. However, her friends & her sisters Cat & Fen (the heroines of North's previous two bestsellers) think she would probably benefit from a little more of each. This might prove difficult. Stripy tights, starched pigtails, a bright red nose & an ability to juggle whilst doing the splits only just about pay the bills & seldom lead to romance or romps. Pip, though, takes her clowning very seriously, whether at spoilt kids' partiesor on the wards of children's hospitals. She simply doesn't have time for a man, she claims. & her bank balance hovers just above the red, so that's OK.

At 34, Zac Holmes has a successful, high-powered career, a fabulous flat & an adored 6-year-old son from a previous relationship. Popular, charming & affluent, Zac feels that no-strings flings suit his lifestyle as much as the pleasing bonuses he earns at work.

When Zac & Pip first meet, it is far from love or lust at first sight. What can a clown & an accountant possibly have in common? Against a lively backdrop of parties & parks, hospitals & hotels, they attempt to find out...



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Piper is a gentle dog, courageous & anxious to please. It's very unfortunate that he is bought by a grim man who tells him to 'take care of the rabbits'. Piper babysits them beautifully, which is not what his new owner meant at all, & loses him his dinner. He runs away to the big city, & saves an old lady from being run over, but he hurts his leg doing it, & the old lady is still taken to hospital. It takes persistent passers-by to find him, & take him to the vet, & all is well in the end. ...

The long title story is about a man whose life, in a sense, is a book. There are shelves in every room, packed with titles which Ambrose Ribbon has checked pedantically for mistakes of grammar & fact. Life for Ribbon, without his mother now, is lonely & obsessive. He still keeps her dressing table exactly as she had left it, the wardrobe door always so that her clothes can be seen inside, & her pink silk nightdress on the bed. There is one book too that he associates particularly with her
- volume VIII of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Piranha to Scurfy. It marked a very significant moment in their relationship. In the other stories, Ruth Rendell deals with a variety of themes, some macabre, some vengeful, some mysterious, all precisely observed. The second novella, High Mysterious Union, explores a strange, erotic universe in a dream-like corner of rural Engl&, & illustrates very atmospherically what range Ruth Rendell has as a writer.
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The long title story is about a man whose life, in a sense, is a book. There are shelves in every room, packed with titles which Ambrose Ribbon has checked pedantically for mistakes of grammar & fact. Life for Ribbon, without his mother now, is lonely & obsessive. He still keeps her dressing table exactly as she had left it, the wardrobe door always so that her clothes can be seen inside, & her pink silk nightdress on the bed. There is one book too that he associates particularly with her
- volume VIII of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Piranha to Scurfy. It marked a very significant moment in their relationship. In the other stories, Ruth Rendell deals with a variety of themes, some macabre, some vengeful, some mysterious, all precisely observed. The second novella, High Mysterious Union, explores a strange, erotic universe in a dream-like corner of rural Engl&, & illustrates very atmospherically what range Ruth Rendell has as a writer. ' If the crime short story is an endangered species, Ruth Rendell is one of the few courageous environmentalists fighting for its survival. She presents irrefutable evidence that the genre deserves not merely to survive but to flourish.' The Times
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Pirates of Barbary is an extraordinary record of the European renegades & Islamic sea-rovers who terrorised the Mediterranean ...