A Guilty Thing Surprised, by Ruth Rendell

This is an Inspector Wexford mystery. A woman (Elizabeth) takes a walk in the woods at the grounds of her & her husband's (Quentin) estate, and winds up murdered. Inspector Wexford and his partner, Inspector Burden, talk with the husband, Elizabeth's brother & his wife, the employees of the estate and a few others. It is initially thought that Elizabeth was possibly having an affair, meeting someone in the woods, and when caught, was killed by either her jealous husband, or the gardener, Sean, who obviously had a crush on her. It turns out a little bit different, a surprising twist at the end. The great writing of Ruth Rendell makes her books hard to put down.

Needful Things, by Stephen King

It's been over a month since I finished reading this one. It takes place in Castle Rock, Maine, where Alan Pangborn is the sheriff. He is also in some of the other Stephen King books. A man named Leland Gaunt opens a new store in town called Needful Things. He sells all different types of items, like an autographed baseball card, a photo of Elvis, a piece of petrified wood. These items don't seem all that rare, but they are powerful. When a person holds one of the items they feel transported to the place in which the item is from. For instance, the Elvis photo takes the woman who holds it onto the stage with him. The price to buy these items is not much in cash, but the buyer also has to agree to play a prank on someone else from Castle Rock. Pretty soon almost everyone in town is visiting Needful Things and then playing a prank on someone else in order to "pay" for their item. A boy throws rocks through the windows of one woman's house. She thinks it was done by another woman with whom she is already having a feud. Someone else kills the other woman's dog, but she blames it on the first woman. They end up meeting on a street corner with kitchen knives in hand. The results are horrifying, as the town is almost completely destroyed by it's residents, all of them getting back at one another. This was Leland Gaunt's plan from the start. It is an interesting book, but at 690 pages I was very glad to be finished with it.