Publication Order of Ripley Books
| The Talented Mr. Ripley | 1955 |
| Ripley Under Ground | 1970 |
| Ripley’s Game | 1974 |
| The Boy Who Followed Ripley | 1980 |
| Ripley Under Water | 1991 |
Publication Order of Standalone Novels
| Strangers on a Train | 1950 |
| The Price of Salt / Carol | 1952 |
| The Blunderer | 1954 |
| Deep Water | 1957 |
| A Game for the Living | 1958 |
| This Sweet Sickness | 1960 |
| The Cry of the Owl | 1962 |
| The Two Faces of January | 1964 |
| The Glass Cell | 1964 |
| A Suspension of Mercy / The Story-Teller | 1965 |
| Those Who Walk Away | 1967 |
| The Tremor of Forgery | 1969 |
| A Dog’s Ransom | 1972 |
| Edith’s Diary | 1977 |
| People Who Knock on the Door | 1983 |
| Found in the Street | 1986 |
| Small g: A Summer Idyll | 1995 |
Publication Order of Short Story Collections
| Eleven / The Snail-Watcher and Other Stories | 1970 |
| The Animal-Lover’s Book of Beastly Murder | 1975 |
| Little Tales of Misogyny | 1975 |
| Slowly, Slowly in the Wind | 1979 |
| The Black House | 1981 |
| Mermaids on the Golf Course | 1985 |
| Tales of Natural and Unnatural Catastrophes | 1987 |
| Nothing That Meets the Eye: The Uncollected Stories | 2002 |
Publication Order of Children’s Books
| Miranda the Panda Is on the Veranda (With: Doris Sanders) | 1958 |
Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books
| Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction | 1966 |
| Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks, 1941-1995 | 2021 |
About Patricia Highsmith
Patricia Highsmith (born 1921, died 1995) was an American novelist and short story writer known for her psychological thrillers, including “Strangers on a Train” and the five novels featuring Tom Ripley. She wrote 22 novels and numerous short stories over nearly five decades, and her work has led to more than two dozen film adaptations.
She was born Mary Patricia Plangman in Fort Worth, Texas, on 19 January 1921, and was raised in her early years mostly by her maternal grandmother. At six she was taken to New York City to live with her mother and stepfather. After graduating from Barnard College in 1942 she wrote for comic books while working on her own stories and novels in her spare time.
Her breakthrough was her first novel, “Strangers on a Train” (1950), which Alfred Hitchcock filmed the following year. Her second, “The Price of Salt” (1952), appeared under the pseudonym Claire Morgan and was unusual for its time in giving a lesbian relationship an optimistic ending. It was reissued under her own name as “Carol” in 1990 and filmed by Todd Haynes in 2015 with Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara.
“The Talented Mr. Ripley” (1955) won a special Edgar Allan Poe Scroll from the Mystery Writers of America and the Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere. Highsmith returned to Tom Ripley in four more novels, ending with “Ripley Under Water” (1991). The books have been filmed several times: as “Plein Soleil” (1960) with Alain Delon, as Wim Wenders’s “The American Friend” (1977), and by Anthony Minghella in 1999 with Matt Damon. The Netflix series “Ripley” (2024) stars Andrew Scott.
Highsmith moved to England in 1963, to France in 1967 and to Switzerland in 1982, and by then her books sold better in Europe than in the United States. “The Two Faces of January” (1964) won the Crime Writers’ Association Silver Dagger, and Graham Greene called her “the poet of apprehension”. She died in Locarno on 4 February 1995. Her final novel, “Small g: A Summer Idyll”, was published in Britain a month later, and her diaries and notebooks followed in 2021.
Photo: Open Media Ltd, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped).