The Price of Salt, or Carol by Patricia Highsmith

“A great American writer…Highsmith’s writing is wicked…it puts a spell on you.” —Entertainment Weekly

Some stories arrive quietly and never leave you. This is one of them.

First published in 1952 and once touted as “the novel of a love that society forbids,” Patricia Highsmith’s masterwork has earned its place as a true cult classic—one of the most important and long-overlooked novels of the twentieth century.

It begins with a single glance across a crowded department store. Therese Belivet, a young stage designer stuck in a job that dulls her days, looks up to find Carol Aird—an elegant suburban housewife shopping for a Christmas toy. What follows is a slow, electric pull toward one another, and a road trip across America that’s equal parts tender and tense.

Drawn from a moment in Highsmith’s own life, this is romantic obsession rendered with all the psychological precision that made her famous. Yet it surprises, too. Where her thrillers chill, this one aches and glows. The adaptation, Carol, brought the story to a whole new generation of readers and film lovers alike.

A landmark of LGBTQ+ literature. A literary classic. A romance that refuses to apologize for itself.

Picture it: a gray afternoon, the sea churning just past the footbridge, and this trade paperback open in your lap. The kind of book you’ll want to linger over.

We’d love to help you discover it. Stop in, browse the shelves, and let the salt air do the rest.

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