The Child's Child is the new crime novel by bestselling, prize-winning author Barbara Vine, pen-name for the late bestselling author Ruth Rendell

What sort of betrayal would drive a brother and sister apart?

When Grace and her brother Andrew inherit their grandmother's house, they surprise few people by deciding to move in together. But they've always got on well and the London house is large enough to split down the middle.

There's just one thing they've not taken into account though. What if one of them wants to bring a lover to the house? When Andrew's partner James moves in, and immediately picks a fight about the treatment of gay men, the balance is altered - with almost fatal consequences.

Barbara Vine's is the pen-name of Ruth Rendell, and The Child's Child is the first book she has published under that name since The Birthday Present in 2008. It's an intriguing examination of betrayal in families, and of those two once-unmentionable subjects, illegitimacy and homosexuality. A taut, thrilling read, it will be enjoyed by readers of P.D. James and Ian Rankin.

'The Rendell/Vine partnership has for years been producing consistently better work than most Booker winners put together' Ian Rankin

'She deploys her peerless skills in blending the mundane, commonplace aspects of life with the murky impulses of desire and greed.

Ruth rendall has published fourteen novels under the Vine name, two of which, Fatal Inversion and King Solomon's Carpet, won the prestigious Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger Award. Also available in Penguin by Barbara Vine: The Minotaur, The Blood Doctor, Grasshopper, The Chimney Sweeper's Boy, The Brimstone Wedding, No Night is Too Long, Asta's Book, King Solomon's Carpet, Gallowglass, The House of Stairs, A Dark-Adapted Eye.