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    Tigerlily's Orchids: A Novel
    Tigerlily's Orchids: A Novel
    Tigerlily's Orchids: A Novel
    Audiobook7 hours

    Tigerlily's Orchids: A Novel

    Written by Ruth Rendell

    Narrated by Nickolas Grace

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    INCLUDES AN EXCERPT OF RENDELL’S FINAL NOVEL, DARK CORNERS

    Diamond Dagger Award–winning Ruth Rendell has written a psychologically thrilling novel about the eccentric inhabitants of a London terrace, the secrets they keep, and what they will do to hide them.

    Is it dangerous to know too much about your neighbors?

    When Stuart Font decides to throw a housewarming party in his new flat, he invites all the people in his building—three flippant young girls, a lonely spinster, a man with a passion for classical history, and a woman determined to drink herself to death. After some deliberation, he even includes the unpleasant caretaker and his wife. He considered inviting a few other friends, but he definitely does not want his girlfriend, Claudia, in attendance, as he would also have to invite her lawyer husband.

    As it turns out, the party will be one everyone remembers.

    Living in a townhouse opposite Stuart’s building, in reclusive isolation, is a young, beautiful Asian woman known as Tigerlily. As though from some strange urban fairytale, she emerges infrequently to exert a terrible spell.

    And Stuart’s parents, always worried about their handsome, hopelessly naive, and undermotivated son, have even more cause for concern.

    Darkly humorous, piercingly insightful about human behavior, Ruth Rendell, whom People magazine calls “one of the most remarkable novelists of her generation,” has created an extraordinarily compelling story of our lives and crimes.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateJun 14, 2011
    ISBN9781442341890
    Author

    Ruth Rendell

    Ruth Rendell (1930–2015) won three Edgar Awards, the highest accolade from Mystery Writers of America, as well as four Gold Daggers and a Diamond Dagger for outstanding contribution to the genre from England’s prestigious Crime Writ­ers’ Association. Her remarkable career spanned a half century, with more than sixty books published. A member of the House of Lords, she was one of the great literary figures of our time.

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    Reviews for Tigerlily's Orchids

    3.5/5

    131 ratings7 reviews

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    • 5/5
      A mystery with a great many characters some nice some not so nice. Just like the people you meet in real life.
    • 3/5
      More about the people living in a small apartment building in London than about the crime that's committed, Tigerlily's Orchids was not a typical mystery. It's the first book by Ruth Rendell that I've read, so I might be describing all of her books and not know it.

      In any case, I enjoyed it.
    • 1/5
      I really did not enjoy this book. The description of the book is misleading. It seemed to me that by the description there would be a supernatural element to the story, but there was nothing of the sort. The structure of the novel overall seemed off. There was no clear flow to the story; things just seemed to happen spontaneously. Also, the author's style did not agree with me. The way that information was passed to the reader seemed forced and amateur. The characters did not seem very realistic to me and I couldn't connect to them. I finished the book so that I could see if bad things happened to the characters I didn't like. Unsurprisingly, they did. But even when those characters got what was coming to them, it was written in such a way to be very unsatisfying. I've noticed that other reviews have mentioned that they expected better from this author. This is my first read of this author and I would be wary of picking up another one of her books.
    • 4/5
      This is the story of the inhabitants of Lichfield House, an apartment building in a London suburb where everyone has a secret. The novel has a touch of Rear Window; a neighbor across the street spies on Lichfield House and makes up stories about its denizens. The plot was a little too violent for me, and there was a shortage of likable characters, but Rendell is a good writer.
    • 3/5
      Definitely a character driven novel. It was difficult in the beginning to keep them all in my head, but Rendell's plot thread quickly wove them all into a whole cloth. It wasn't my favorite of hers, but I did enjoy it.
    • 4/5
      This book was not quite as good as I've come to expect from all her other books, but any Ruth Rendell book is head and shoulders over a lot of other authors that write in her genre. Ms. Rendell has a unique writing style that pulls the reader in, quite seductively, into a world of unimaginable horror. I found this book did not have the same menace as most of her other books, and the sense of danger just wasn't there as much. But her characters are wonderfully drawn and realistic. Her setting is described perfectly, so the reader feels that they are right there. She has an uncanny knack of turning simple, everyday things into something threatening and frightening. I will not miss any of her books.
    • 4/5
      This is not a classic mystery; the first body appears in the second half of the book and there is no detective. This novel weaves together psychological portraits of several people, all neighbours in a London suburb: a young, non-practising doctor who writes poorly researched medical articles, a reclusive woman who is determined to drink herself to death, an apartment caretaker who spends his free time near schoolyards, a narcissistic "pretty boy" carrying on an adulterous affair, two former hippies, three semi-serious university students, an elderly widower living in an overly warm house, a beautiful Oriental girl. Relationships among these characters and events in the neighbourhood are observed from the points of view of various residents.A major theme is that people tend to make assumptions and form conclusions based on incomplete information. People often feel they know others well when, in fact, they don't, and don't have a complete understanding of events around them.Readers of Ruth Rendell (and Barbara Vine) will enjoy this book.