"Fiona Maye is a High Court judge in London presiding over cases in family court. She is fiercely intelligent, well respected, and deeply immersed in the nuances of her particular field of law. But the law requires more rigor than mere pragmatism, and Fiona is expert in considering the sensitivities of culture and religion when handing down her verdicts. But Fiona's professional success belies domestic strife. Her husband, Jack, asks her to consider...

"Trudy has betrayed her husband, John. She's still in the marital home--a dilapidated, priceless London townhouse--but John's not here. Instead, she's with his brother, the profoundly banal Claude, and the two of them have a plan. But there is a witness to their plot: the inquisitive, nine-month-old resident of Trudy's womb. Told from a perspective unlike any other, Nutshell is a classic tale of murder and deceit from one of the world's master storytellers"--...

Nobel Prize-winning scientist Michael Beard coasts through his professional life as his fifth marriage disintegrates, but gets an unexpected chance at redemption when he is called on to save humanity from environmental disaster.

In the relentless summer heat, four abruptly orphaned children retreat into a shadowy, isolated world, and find their own strange and unsettling ways of fending for themselves.

"On vacation in a city that may or may not be Venice, Mary and Colin are growing weary of each other, lost among the city's ancient, endlessly winding streets. Then one night, on their way to a late dinner, they meet an enigmatic stranger named Robert. Forceful, insistent, perhaps a little too forthcoming, Robert leads them through the city--and away from their ordinary lives forever."--Back cover.

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...

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...

Orphaned at the age of eight, teenaged Jeremy seeks comfort and conversation in the parlors of his schoolmates' parents. He is a relentless student and finally gains entry to Oxford, but never accepts his place in the world--choosing instead to gain and lose aquaintances with isolating regularity. Finally marrying at 37, he discovers the redeeming power of love. But his fixation on writing a memoir of his wife's estranged parents begin to agitate...

The Booker Prize-winning contemporary morality talecleverly disguised as a comic novelfrom the acclaimed author of Atonement. On a chilly February day, two old friends meet in the throng outside a London crematorium to pay their last respects to Molly Lane. Both Clive Linley and Vernon Halliday had been Molly's lovers in the days before they reached their current eminence: Clive is Britain's most successful modern composer, and Vernon...

"Machines Like Me occurs in an alternative 1980s London. Britain has lost the Falklands War, Margaret Thatcher battles Tony Benn for power, and Alan Turing achieves a breakthrough in artificial intelligence. In a world not quite like this one, two lovers will be tested beyond their understanding. Charlie, drifting through life and dodging full-time employment, is in love with Miranda, a bright student who lives with a terrible secret. When Charlie...