New Release Books by Ian McEwan

Both epic and intimate, the story of one man’s life across generations and historical upheavals: a deeply affecting novel about love, loss, ambition, and resolution from the best-selling author of Atonement. When the world is still counting the cost of the Second World War and the Iron Curtain has closed, eleven-year-old Roland Baines’s life is turned upside down. 2,000 miles from his mother’s protective love, stranded at an unusual boarding school, his vulnerability attracts piano teacher Miss Miriam Cornell, leaving scars as well as a memory of love that will never fade. Now, when his wife vanishes, leaving him alone with his tiny son, Roland is forced to confront the reality of his restless existence. As the radiation from Chernobyl spreads across Europe, he begins a search for answers that looks deep into his family history and will last for the rest of his life. From the Suez Crisis to the Cuban Missile Crisis, the fall of the Berlin Wall to the current pandemic and climate change, Roland sometimes rides with the tide of history, but more often struggles against it. Haunted by lost opportunities, he seeks solace through every possible means—music, literature, friends, sex, politics and, finally, love cut tragically short, then love ultimately redeemed. His journey raises important questions for us all. Can we take full charge of the course of our lives without damage to others? How do global events beyond our control shape our lives and our memories? And what can we really learn from the traumas of the past? Epic, mesmerising and deeply humane, Lessons is a chronicle for our times—a powerful meditation on history and humanity through the prism of one man’s lifetime.

Penguin Readers is an ELT graded reader series for learners of English as a foreign language. With carefully adapted text, new illustrations and language learning exercises, the print edition also includes instructions to access supporting material online. Titles include popular classics, exciting contemporary fiction, and thought-provoking non-fiction, introducing language learners to bestselling authors and compelling content. The eight levels of Penguin Readers follow the Common European Framework of Reference for language learning (CEFR). Exercises at the back of each Reader help language learners to practise grammar, vocabulary, and key exam skills. Before, during and after-reading questions test readers'' story comprehension and develop vocabulary. The Children Act, a Level 7 Reader, is B2 in the CEFR framework. The longer text is made up of sentences with up to four clauses, introducing future perfect simple, mixed conditionals, past perfect continuous, mixed conditionals, more complex passive forms and modals for deduction in the past. Visit the Penguin Readers website Exclusively with the print edition, readers can unlock online resources including a digital book, audio edition, lesson plans and answer keys.

These three bestselling novels by the Booker Award-winning author explore the dark sides of love, family and sexuality. The Child in Time On a routine Saturday morning trip to the supermarket, a father’s brief moment of distraction turns his life upside down when his daughter is kidnapped. His spiral of guilt and bereavement has effects on his marriage, his psyche—and time itself. The Cement Garden When their mother suddenly dies, four siblings hide her body in the basement to prevent others from discovering her death and placing them in foster care. But their dark secret sets them on a path of isolation and boundary-crossing intimacy. The Comfort of Strangers Colin and Mary are vacationing in Venice in hopes of reigniting their relationship. But after losing their way in the winding streets, their acquaintance with another couple takes turns that are likewise erotic and violent in nature.

Kafka meets the world of Brexit in a bitingly funny political satire from Ian McEwan That morning, Jim Sams, clever but by no means profound, woke from uneasy dreams to find himself transformed into a gigantic creature. Jim Sams has undergone a metamorphosis. In his previous six-legged existence he was ignored or loathed, but in his new incarnation he has woken up to discover he is the most powerful man in Britain: the Prime Minister. His mission: a nationalist revival, with or without Europe. Nothing must get in his way: not the opposition, nor the dissenters within his own party. Not even the rules of parliamentary democracy. In this bitingly funny, Kafkaesque satire, Ian McEwan engages with scabrous humour a very recognizable political world and turns it on its head.

From the Booker Prize winner and bestselling author of Atonement—”a sharply intelligent novel of ideas” (The New York Times) that asks whether a machine can understand the human heart, or whether we are the ones who lack understanding. Set in an uncanny alternative 1982 London—where Britain has lost the Falklands War, Margaret Thatcher battles Tony Benn for power, and Alan Turing achieves a breakthrough in artificial intelligence—Machines Like Me powerfully portrays two lovers who 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 comes into money, he buys Adam, one of the first generation of synthetic humans. With Miranda''s assistance, he codesigns Adam''s personality. The near-perfect human that emerges is beautiful, strong, and smart—and a love triangle soon forms. Ian McEwan''s subversive, gripping novel poses fundamental questions: What makes us human—our outward deeds or our inner lives? Could a machine understand the human heart? This provocative and thrilling tale warns against the power to invent things beyond our control. Don’t miss Ian McEwan’s new novel, Lessons, coming in September!

A jewel of a short story from the bestselling, award-winning author of Atonement—“My Purple Scented Novel” follows the perfect crime of literary betrayal, scrupulously wrought yet unscrupulously executed. Published to celebrate Ian McEwan’s 70th birthday. “You will have heard of my friend the once celebrated novelist Jocelyn Tarbet, but I suspect his memory is beginning to fade. . . . You’d never heard of me, the once obscure novelist Parker Sparrow, until my name was publicly connected with his. To a knowing few, our names remain rigidly attached, like the two ends of a seesaw. His rise coincided with, though did not cause, my decline. . . . I don’t deny there was wrongdoing. I stole a life, and I don’t intend to give it back. You may treat these few pages as a confession.”

New from the bestselling author of Atonement and The Children Act Trudy has betrayed her husband, John. She''s still in the marital home—a dilapidated, priceless London townhouse—but John''s not there. 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.

‘This is a history of intellectual courage, hard work, occasional inspiration and every conceivable form of human failing. It is also an extended invitation to wonder, to pleasure’ How far have we come in our understanding of the world around us? In this eye-opening collection, Ian McEwan looks back at the history of scientific discovery from Darwin to Dawkins as well as exploring, with brilliant originality, what a future with AI and climate change could hold for us. Selected from Solar, Enduring Love, Machines Like Me VINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS. A series of short books by the world’s greatest writers on the experiences that make us human Also in the Vintage Minis ''Great Ideas'' series: Religion by Karen Armstrong Art by Simon Schama

In this stunning new novel, Ian McEwan’s first female protagonist since Atonement is about to learn that espionage is the ultimate seduction. Cambridge student Serena Frome’s beauty and intelligence make her the ideal recruit for MI5. The year is 1972. The Cold War is far from over. England’s legendary intelligence agency is determined to manipulate the cultural conversation by funding writers whose politics align with those of the government. The operation is code named “Sweet Tooth.” Serena, a compulsive reader of novels, is the perfect candidate to infiltrate the literary circle of a promising young writer named Tom Haley. At first, she loves his stories. Then she begins to love the man. How long can she conceal her undercover life? To answer that question, Serena must abandon the first rule of espionage: trust no one. Once again, Ian McEwan’s mastery dazzles us in this superbly deft and witty story of betrayal and intrigue, love and the invented self.

''A classic'' Financial Times The trouble with being a daydreamer who doesn''t say much, like Peter Fortune, is that people are likely to think you are rather stupid or dull. No one can see the amazing things that are going on in your head, such as swapping bodies with a cat, or a baby; vanquishing the school bully; or discovering a mysterious cream that makes your family disappear. Peter learns that the best thing to do, if he wants people to understand him, is to write down some of the things that happen to him while he is staring out of the window or lying on his back looking at the sky. So in this book you''ll find some of those strange and wonderful adventures, written down exactly as they happened.

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.

Michael Beard is a Nobel prize-winning physicist with a floundering marriage. When his professional and personal worlds collide in a freak accident, he has the chance to extricate himself from his marital mess, reinvigorate his career, and save the world from environmental disaster.

Darkly brilliant short fiction by the New York Times-bestselling, Booker Prize-winning author of Machines Like Me and Atonement. A two-timing pornographer becomes the unwilling object in the fantasies of one of his victims. A jaded millionaire buys himself the perfect mistress and plunges into a hell of jealousy and despair. Over the course of a weekend, a guilt-ridden father with his teenage daughter discovers the depths of his own blundering innocence. Whether these are the written transcripts of dreams or deadly accurate maps of the tremor zones of our psyche, all seven stories in this collection implicate us in the most fearful ways imaginable. “His stories are complex and his prose, like Orwell’s, is as clear as windowpane… McEwan’s comic edge gives these stories a moral force. They are not meant simply to shock and horrify middle-class readers. Rather, like all good satire, they seek to unmask hypocrisy and cruelty.”—The Washington Post Book World

A twisted relationship between two couples reaches a terrible climax in this novel by the New York Times-bestselling author of Machines Like Me. Colin and Mary are lovers on holiday in Italy, their relationship becoming increasingly problematic as they become increasingly alienated from one and other. They move from place to place in this foreign land but seemingly without aim or purpose, seemingly bored and without attachment. Then they meet a man named Robert and his disabled wife, Caroline. Colin and Mary seem happy for the diversion—happy to meet another couple that takes their focus off of each other for a while. But things become strange when they attempt to leave: Robert and Caroline insist that they stay with them for a while longer. While Mary and Colin do rediscover an erotic attraction to each other during this time, they also find that their relationship with Robert and Caroline is taking a dreadful and horrific turn, in this “fine novel” by the Booker Prize-winning author of Saturday and On Chesil Beach (New Statesman). “McEwan perfectly captures the thrill of travel when one is divorced from familiar surroundings and the chance of something unusual and out-of-character seems possible. Of course, this being a McEwan fiction, the possibility is a brutal truth about how people find love in extreme ways.”—The Daily Beast

A child’s abduction sends a father reeling in this Whitbread Award-winning novel that explores time and loss with “narrative daring and imaginative genius” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). Stephen Lewis, a successful author of children’s books, is on a routine trip to the supermarket with his three-year-old daughter. In a brief moment of distraction, she suddenly vanishes—and is irretrievably lost. From that moment, Lewis spirals into bereavement that effects his marriage, his psyche, and his relationship with time itself: “It was a wonder that there could be so much movement, so much purpose, all the time. He himself had none at all.” In The Child in Time, acclaimed author Ian McEwan “sets a story of domestic horror against a disorienting exploration in time” producing “a work of remarkable intellectual and political sophistication” that has been adapted into a PBS Masterpiece movie starring Benedict Cumberbatch (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). “A beautifully rendered, very disturbing novel.” —Publishers Weekly

Orphaned siblings create a macabre secret world for themselves in this “irresistibly readable” novel by the New York Times-bestselling author (The New York Review of Books). This “powerful and disconcerting” novel by the Booker Prize-winning author of The Children Act and Atonement (The Daily Telegraph) tells the story of a dying family who live in a dying part of the city. A father of four children decides, in an effort to make his garden easier to control, to pave it over. In the process, he has a heart attack and dies, leaving the cement garden unfinished and the children to the care of their mother. Soon after, the mother too dies and the children, fearful of being separated by social services, decide to cover up their parents’ deaths: they bury their mother in the cement garden. The story is told from the point of view of Jack, one of the sons, who is entering adolescence with all of its attendant curiosity and appetites. Julie, the eldest, is almost a grown woman. Sue is rather bookish and observes all that goes on around her. And Tom is the youngest and the baby of the lot. The children seem to manage in this perverse setting rather well—until Julie brings home a boyfriend who threatens their secret by asking too many questions. “[A] beautiful but disturbing novel.”—The AV Club “McEwan’s evocative detail and perfect British prose lend a genteel decorum to the death and decay that surround the family.”—The New Yorker

Set in late 1980s Europe at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Black Dogs is the intimate story of the crumbling of a marriage, as witnessed by an outsider. Jeremy is the son-in-law of Bernard and June Tremaine, whose union and estrangement began almost simultaneously. Seeking to comprehend how their deep love could be defeated by ideological differences Bernard and June cannot reconcile, Jeremy undertakes writing June''s memoirs, only to be led back again and again to one terrifying encouner forty years earlier—a moment that, for June, was as devastating and irreversible in its consequences as the changes sweeping Europe in Jeremy''s own time. In a finely crafted, compelling examination of evil and grace, Ian McEwan weaves the sinister reality of civiliation''s darkest moods—its black dogs—with the tensions that both create love and destroy it.

GENERAL & LITERARY FICTION. Atonement is a magnificent novel, shaped and paced with awesome confidence and eloquence'', Independent .''Subtle as well as powerful, adeptly encompassing comedy as well as atrocity, Atonement is a richly intricate book- A superb achievement which combines a magnificent display of the powers of the imagination with a probing exploration of them'', Sunday Times .''He is this country''s unrivalled literary giant...a fascinatingly strange, unique and gripping novel'', Independent on Sunday.

A member of a British-American surveillance team in Cold War Berlin finds himself in too deep in this masterful work from the author of Atonement. Twenty-five-year-old Leonard Marnham’s intelligence work—tunneling under a Russian communications center to tap the phone lines to Moscow—offers him a welcome opportunity to begin shedding his own unwanted innocence, even if he is only a bit player in a grim international comedy of errors. His relationship with Maria Eckdorf, an enigmatic and beautiful West Berliner, likewise promises to loosen the bonds of his ordinary life. But the promise turns to horror in the course of one terrible evening—a night when Marnham learns just how much of his innocence he''s willing to shed.

A National and International Bestseller A Globe and Mail Notable Book of 1998 On a chilly February day two old friends meet in the throng outside a 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 as Britain''s most successful modern composer, Vernon as editor of the broadsheet The Judge. But gorgeous, feisty Molly had other lovers too, notably Julian Garmony, the Foreign Secretary, a notorious right-winger poised to be the next prime minister. What happens in the aftermath of her funeral has a profound and shocking effect on all her lovers'' lives, and erupts in the most purely enjoyable fiction Ian McEwan has ever written.