Paperback Edition
ISBN: 9781558615076
Publication Date: 11-01-2005

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Afterword by A.B. Emrys

Charlie Horst has returned with his new bride Bedelia to his family home in Connecticut. Indulgently infatuated, Charlie is the luckiest man alive. What’s not to love about Bedelia? She’s gorgeous and complacent. She’s also a gracious and ideal party host—luscious and decorative in blue velvet. And in public, she plays the part of worshipful wife to perfection. In private, even more so.

Who can blame Charlie for overlooking her little deceptions? Or for not paying any mind to her contradictory claims about her past? When Charlie falls ill due to a freak poisoning, Charlie knows that Bedelia will be right his side, watching him closely. But who’s watching Bedelia?

"You must read Bedelia to see just how slick Miss Caspary's techique of soft-shoe terror can be—how frightening she can make the chatter at an innocent dinner party, the lure of a lady's deshabille, the glimpse of a black pearl in a dresser drawer." —New York Times

"A sinister entertainment 'especially for admirers of the psychological horror story.'" —The New Yorker

"Vera Caspary's gift was perhaps more subtle, and deadly than Jim Thompson, David Goodis, and Charles Willeford." —Robert Polito, author of Savage Art: A Biography of Jim Thompson

"A tour de force of psychological suspense, Desperate Housewives meets Double Indemnity in Caspary's Bedelia." —Liahna Armstrong, President Emeritus, Popular Culture Association