Bedelia

“You must read Bedelia”—the seductive black-widow thriller by the author of the classic film noir Laura (The New York Times).

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?

“Vera Caspary wrote thrillers—but not like any other author of her time, male or female. Her specialty was a specific type that she pioneered—the psycho thriller” (Huffington Post) and this “sinister entertainment” (The New Yorker), is Caspary at her most chilling. Adapted in 1946 into a film starring Margaret Lockwood, Bedelia is “a tour de force of psychological suspense . . . Desperate Housewives meets Double Indemnity” (Liahna Armstrong, President Emeritus, Popular Culture Association).