# The Birthday Present

Canonical: https://www.bookquiver.com/ruth-rendell/the-birthday-present

![The Birthday Present](https://quivercdn.com/covers/penguin/ruth-rendell/the-birthday-present_978-01-4192-360-4.jpg?v=2026-04-23%2022%3A38%3A15)

- Authors: [Ruth Rendell](https://www.bookquiver.com/ruth-rendell)
- Language: en_GB
- Published: 2009-04-02

## Description

It's late spring of 1990 and a love affair is flourishing: between Ivor Tesham, a thirty-three year old rising star of Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government, and Hebe Furnal, a stunning North London housewife stuck in a dull marriage. What excitement Hebe lacks at home, however, is amply compensated for by the well-bred and intensely attractive Tesham - an ardent womanizer and ambitious politican. On the eve of her twenty-eighth birthday, Tesham decides to give Hebe a present to remember: something far more memorable than, say, the costly string of pearls he's already lavished upon her. Involving a fashionable new practice known as 'adventure sex', a man arranges for his unsuspecting but otherwise willing girlfriend to be snatched from the street, bound and gagged, and delivered to him at a mutually agreed venue ... Set amidst an age of IRA bombings, the first Gulf War, and sleazy politics, The Birthday Present is the gripping story of a fall from grace, and of a man who carries within him all the hypocrisy, greed and self-obsession of a troubled era.

## Editions

### The Birthday Present

- Publisher: Penguin
- ISBN: 978-01-4103-621-2
- Pages: 288
- Published: 2009-04-02
- Language: en_GB

### The Birthday Present

- Publisher: Penguin
- Medium: ebook
- ISBN: 978-01-4192-360-4
- Published: 2009-04-02
- Language: en_GB

### The Birthday Present

- Publisher: crown
- Medium: ebook
- ISBN: 978-03-0745-199-6
- Published: 2009-03-10
- Language: en_US