Ian McEwan

Recruited into MI5 against a backdrop of the Cold War in 1972, Cambridge student Serena Frome, a compulsive reader, is assigned to infiltrate the literary circle of a promising young writer whose politics align with those of the government, a situation that is compromised when she falls in love with him.

Saturday is a masterful novel set within a single day in February 2003. Henry Perowne is a contented man--a successful neurosurgeon, happily married to a newspaper lawyer, and enjoying good relations with his children. Henry wakes to the comfort of his large home in central London on this, his day off. He is as at ease here as he is in the operating room. On this particular Saturday morning, Perowne's day moves through the ordinary to the extraordinary....

On the hottest day in 1935, and on the brink of a world war, three children lose their innocence as the sweltering summer heat bears down and their lives are changed forever. Cecilia Tallis is of England's privileged class; Robbie Turner is the housekeeper's son. In their moment of intimate surrender, they are interrupted by Cecilia's hyper-imaginative and scheming 13-year-old sister, Briony. As chaos consumes the family, Briony commits a crime, the...

With his life constantly in flux as he lives through many historic upheavals, Roland Baines, haunted by lost opportunities, searches for comfort through music, literature, friends, sex, politics and love, struggling against global events beyond his control that have shaped his existence and memories. When the world is still counting the cost of the Second World War, eleven-year-old Roland Baines is stranded at a boarding school. His vulnerability...

One of the world's most acclaimed novelists, New York Times best-selling author Ian McEwan has earned the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. A tour de force of stunning power, The Cement Garden is a beautiful yet disturbing look at the psychology of childhood. After their parents die, four children are left alone in the family house. They are free to live however they choose-but they must preserve a terrible secret.

In the affairs of his dead wife, a British publisher discovers compromising pictures of the foreign secretary who was her lover. An opportunity for revenge on both the political and personal level.

Ian McEwan's Somerset Maugham Award-winning collection First Love, Last Rites brought him instant recognition as one of the most influential voices writing in England today. Taut, brooding, and densely atmospheric, these stories show us the ways in which murder can arise out of boredom, perversity can result from adolescent curiosity, and sheer evil might be the solution to unbearable loneliness. These tales are as horrifying as anything written by...

The Comfort of Strangers is an exquisitely crafted gothic novella. On holiday, Colin and Maria wander the ancient streets of Venice and frequently lose their way. When they are accosted by a man with a strange and alluring story to tell, they soon become entwined in a fantasy of violence and erotic obsession.

War-weary Berlin has much to offer Leonard Markham, a young, naive postal engineer: first the arts of sophisticated intrigue, then the delights of sexual pleasure. But Leonard's new knowledge carries a heavy price, dragging him into a life that is exhaustively suspenseful and utterly irresistible.