Unsuspecting victims are devoured by their own obsessions in this perfectly chilling collection. A man becomes devoted to his pet snails, with fatal results. A young nanny turns arsonist in a bid to become heroine of the hour. A boy finally stands up to his mother, with knife in hand. Highsmith weaves a world claustrophobic in its intensity, disturbing in its mundanity, as she probes the dark corners of the human psyche. ''Eleven'' is a collection of masterpieces of Highsmith's particular art, full of compulsion, foreboding and cruel pleasures.