Nowhere is Patricia Highsmith more edgy than in these mordantly hilarious sketches that make up Little Tales of Misogyny. Here you'll meet the following characters, seemingly familiar women with the power to destroy both themselves and the men around them:

Mildred, "The Mobile Bed-Object": There are lots of girls like Mildred, homeless, yet never without a roof - most of the time the ceiling of a hotel room, sometimes that of a bachelor digs, of a yacht's cabin if they're lucky, a tent or a caravan. Such girls are bed-objects...

Yvonne,"the Coquette": Yvonne attempted to poison him by means of arsenic in cups of chocolate at her house, but he recovered and thought this a greater and more charming proof of her fear of losing her virginity with him...

Oona, "The Jolly Cave Woman": she was a bit hairy, one front tooth missing, but her sex appeal was apparent at a distance of two hundred yards or more, like an odor, which perhaps it was.

In these stories Highsmith is at her most scathing as she draws out the mystery and menace of her once ordinary subject.