Somerset Maugham Award winner: Dark early fiction by the author of Nutshell—“A splendid magician of fear” (The Village Voice Literary Supplement). Taut, brooding, and densely atmospheric, the stories here show us how murder can arise out of boredom, perversity from adolescent curiosity—and how sheer evil can become the solution to unbearable loneliness. These short fiction pieces from the early career of the New York Times–bestselling and Man Booker Prize–winning author of Atonement and On Chesil Beach are claustrophobic tales of childhood, twisted psychology, and disjointed family life as terrifying as anything by Stephen King—and finely crafted with a lyricism and an intensity that compels us to confront our secret kinship with what repels us. “A powerful talent that is both weird and wonderful.” —The Boston Sunday Globe “Ian McEwan’s fictional world combin[es] the bleak, dreamlike quality of de Chirico’s city-scapes with the strange eroticism of canvases by Balthus. Menace lies crouched between the lines of his neat, angular prose, and weird, grisly things occur in his books with nearly casual aplomb.” —The New York Times

A powerful story of two sisters, and the love that changed their lives It wasn't a privileged childhood, but it was a happy one. Sybil and Lizzie Cream, brought up in a fisherman's cottage on the edge of the cold North Sea were content to leave privilege where it belonged: with their friends the Wintertons. Christina Winterton was the same age as Sybil and the two girls were inseparable, but it was Lizzie whom Ralph Winterton, three years older, found irresistible. Then war came to East Anglia, and so did Manchester-born Fenn Kitzmann now of the American Army Air Force. At their first meeting he is attracted by Sybil's subtle charm, but before he sees her again her own personal tragedy has struck, and he finds her changed almost out of recognition...

Don't miss your chance to meet this sexy playboy boss in a seductive reissue from reader-favourite Carole Mortimer. One night with her playboy boss… Alexander Blair is definitely the wrong man for Lauri. Not only is he a shameless playboy with a revolving door to his bedroom, he's also older than her—and her boss! He's everything that Lauri doesn't want. Yet the undeniable attraction between them is almost too strong to resist… So when Alexander suggests that the best way to get over their desire is to give in to it, it sounds like a reasonable theory… But, in practice, their passion for each other doesn't work that way!

Reprint of the original, first published in 1869.