This OPAC will be unavailable for a few hours beginning 6PM on Saturday, April 20, 2024 for planned upgrades. The OPAC should be back up to regular operation Sunday, April 21, 2024.
In The Crocodile Bird, Ruth Rendell weaves a mesmerizing story of the obsessive love between a mother and a daughter and its connection to a series of deaths near a remote English manor, magnificent in its hilltop isolation. Liza lived in the gatekeeper's cottage at Shrove House until the day the police took her mother away forever. Liza, who has grown up completely sheltered from the outside world, finds refuge with a young drifter. Each night she tells him a little more about her life: her mother's obsession with Shrove House and her mysterious claim to it, her mother's aversion to the modern world and her fierce desire to shelter Liza from its depredations. And, finally, Liza tells him of the men who came to Shrove House and never left alive.