Patricia Highsmith: The Price of Salt (USA 2015)

From the Publisher:
"A great American writer... Highsmith's writing is wicked... it puts a spell on you." -- Entertainment Weekly
Patricia Highsmith's story of romantic obsession may be one of the most important, but still largely unrecognized, novels of the twentieth century. First published in 1952 and touted as "the novel of a love that society forbids," the book soon became a cult classic.

Based on a true story plucked from Highsmith's own life, The Price of Salt (or Carol) tells the riveting drama of Therese Belivet, a stage designer trapped in a department-store day job, whose routine is forever shattered by a gorgeous epiphany -- the appearance of Carol Aird, a customer who comes in to buy her daughter a Christmas toy. Therese begins to gravitate toward the alluring suburban housewife, who is trapped in a marriage as stultifying as Therese's job. They fall in love and set out across the United States, ensnared by society's confines and the imminent disapproval of others, yet propelled by their infatuation. The Price of Salt is a brilliantly written story that may surprise Highsmith fans and will delight those discovering her work.

Patricia Highsmith: The Price of Salt. W. W. Norton, ISBN: 9780393352689 (November, 2015), 292 p., $14.95.

Patricia Highsmith: Carol (UK 2015)

From the Publisher:
WITH A NEW FOREWORD BY VAL McDERMID
Therese is just an ordinary sales assistant working in a New York department store when a beautiful, alluring woman in her thirties walks up to her counter. Standing there, Therese is wholly unprepared for the first shock of love. Therese is an awkward nineteen-year-old with a job she hates and a boyfriend she doesn't love; Carol is a sophisticated, bored suburban housewife in the throes of a divorce and a custody battle for her only daughter. As Therese becomes irresistibly drawn into Carol's world, she soon realizes how much they both stand to lose...

First published pseudonymously in 1952 as The Price of Salt, Carol is a hauntingly atmospheric love story set against the backdrop of fifties' New York.

Patricia Highsmith: Carol. Bloomsbury, ISBN: 9781408865675 (November, 2015), 320 p., £8.99.

Patricia Highsmith: Carol (UK 2010)

From the Publisher:
WITH A NEW FOREWORD BY VAL McDERMID
Therese is just an ordinary sales assistant working in a New York department store when a beautiful, alluring woman in her thirties walks up to her counter. Standing there, Therese is wholly unprepared for the first shock of love. Therese is an awkward nineteen-year-old with a job she hates and a boyfriend she doesn't love; Carol is a sophisticated, bored suburban housewife in the throes of a divorce and a custody battle for her only daughter. As Therese becomes irresistibly drawn into Carol's world, she soon realizes how much they both stand to lose...

First published pseudonymously in 1952 as The Price of Salt, Carol is a hauntingly atmospheric love story set against the backdrop of fifties' New York.

Patricia Highsmith: Carol. Bloomsbury, ISBN: 9781408808979 (June, 2010), 311 p., £7.99.

Patricia Highsmith: The Price of Salt (USA 2004)

From the Publisher:
"A great American writer... Highsmith's writing is wicked... it puts a spell on you." -- Entertainment Weekly
Patricia Highsmith's story of romantic obsession may be one of the most important, but still largely unrecognized, novels of the twentieth century. First published in 1952 and touted as "the novel of a love that society forbids," the book soon became a cult classic.

Based on a true story plucked from Highsmith's own life, The Price of Salt (or Carol) tells the riveting drama of Therese Belivet, a stage designer trapped in a department-store day job, whose routine is forever shattered by a gorgeous epiphany -- the appearance of Carol Aird, a customer who comes in to buy her daughter a Christmas toy. Therese begins to gravitate toward the alluring suburban housewife, who is trapped in a marriage as stultifying as Therese's job. They fall in love and set out across the United States, ensnared by society's confines and the imminent disapproval of others, yet propelled by their infatuation. The Price of Salt is a brilliantly written story that may surprise Highsmith fans and will delight those discovering her work.

Patricia Highsmith: The Price of Salt. W. W. Norton, ISBN: 9780393325997 (March, 2004), 292 p., $15.95.

Patricia Highsmith: The Price of Salt (USA 1996)

From the Publisher:
THE PRICE OF SALT
Patricia Highsmith writing as Claire Morgan
Revealed for the first time...
Internationally renowned Patricia Highsmith, author of many critically acclaimed suspense novels, including the famous Strangers on a Train, is Claire Morgan, author of The Price of Salt.

Nineteen year-old Therese is engaged to be married. Elegant, sophisticated Carol is married and has a child. In a New York City department store, Therese looks up from her work to meet Carol's gray-eyed gaze. From that moment on, the lives of the two women veer irrevocably off course...

So begins the eloquent, compellingly beautiful love story of Therese and Carol, first published in 1952. An entire generation of women took this great classic story to their grateful hearts and made it one of the best selling lesbian novels of all time.

The Price of Salt is timeless.
The Price of Salt belongs on every bookshelf.

Patricia Highsmith: The Price of Salt. Naiad Press, ISBN: 1562800035 (July, 1996), 292 p., $10.95.

Claire Morgan: The Price of Salt (USA 1991)

From the Publisher:
"For years I searched through libraries, The Lesbian in Literature bibliography in hand, for honest novels about lesbian lives. Occasionally I found a gem, like The Price of Salt. Thank you, Naiad Press, for bringing back to us this artistic and deeply moving lost classic." -- Bonnie Zimmermann

But the most important point I did not mention and was not thought of by anyone -- that the rapport between two men or two women can be absolute and perfect, as it can never be between man and woman, and perhaps some people want just this, as others want that more shifting and uncertain thing that happens between men and women. -- From: The Price of Salt

Claire Morgan: The Price of Salt. Naiad Press, ISBN: 1562800035 (March, 1991), 292 p., $8.95.

Claire Morgan: The Price of Salt (USA 1958)

From the Publisher:
TWO WOMEN
One was a lonely, ardent girl, besieging the walls of New York's theatrical world; the other, a beautiful, mature woman, experienced, sophisticated, but unsatisfied...

Their problem is dealt with gracefully and distinctively in this thoughtful, discerning novel, which faces frankly one of the basic problems of today's restless, searching, puzzled world.

..."Such a novel will inevitably receive mixed comments. While some may label it sensational, others will call it courageous." LIBRARY JOURNAL

Claire Morgan: The Price of Salt. A Bantam Giant. Bantam #A1831 (August, 1958), 292 p., ¢35.

Claire Morgan: The Price of Salt (USA 1953)

From the Publisher:
"A NEW DEPARTURE"
HERE IS A NOVEL, utterly sincere and honest, which deals with a subject until recently considered taboo. Now a young woman, Claire Morgan, comes along and writes of unsanctioned love from a completely new point of view. As the Louisville Times says:

"The Price of Salt"... seems to mark a new departure in this type of fiction... Claire Morgan is completely natural. She has a story to tell and she tells it with an almost conversational ease. Her people are neither degenerate monsters nor fragile victims of the social order. They must -- and do -- pay a price for thinking, feeling and loving "differently;" but they are courageous and true to themselves throughout.

Claire Morgan: The Price of Salt. The novel of love society forbids. Bantam #1148 (September, 1953), 292 p., ¢25.