Re-jacketed in stunning new series style, this is the second collection of blazingly original short stories from Booker prize-winning, Sunday Times bestselling Ian McEwan.

"His stories are so resonant and frightening because they are totally original. They are about the recognizable world of private fantasy and nightmare -- a world, despite our protestations to the contrary, we are all involved in." -- Paul Bailey, "Observer"
"McEwan proves himself to be an acute psychologist of the ordinary mind." -- "New York Times"
"His stories are so resonant and frightening because they are totally original. They are about the recognizable world of private fantasy and nightmare -- a world, despite our protestations to the contrary, we are all involved in." -- "The Times
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"The style recalls some dangerous activity: skillful driving too fast round corners, say -- Form and content are so intricately linked you can't divide them. This is a writer whose plainest combination of words is, like the draughtsman's proverbial dot, unmistakably telling." -- "Financial Times
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"His writing is exact, tender, funny, voluptuous, disturbing." -- "The Times
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"The Maestro." -- "New Statesman
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"McEwan has -- a style and a vision of life of his own...No one interested in the state and mood of contemporary Britain can afford not to read him." -- John Fowles
"A sparkling and adventurous writer." -- Dennis Potter

Ian McEwan is the author of two collections of stories and twelve previous novels, including Enduring Love, Amsterdam, for which he won the Booker Prize in 1998, Atonement and, most recently, Solar.