Book One of the Chronicles of the Necromancer. The debut of a stunning new talent in the fantasy firmament, and the beginning of an epic, engrossing tale of loss and revenge, of life and afterlife - and of the thin line betwen them. Will appeal to fans of Robin Hobb, Lois McMaster Bujold and Terry Goodkind.

Serena Frome, the beautiful daughter of an Anglican bishop, has a brief affair with an older man during her final year at Cambridge, and finds herself being groomed for the intelligence services. The year is 1972. Britain, confronting economic disaster, is being torn apart by industrial unrest and terrorism and faces its fifth state of emergency.

The Cold War has entered a moribund phase, but the fight goes on, especially in the cultural sphere. Serena, a compulsive reader of novels, is sent on a 'secret mission' which brings her into the literary world of Tom Haley, a promising young writer. First she loves his stories, then she begins to love the man.

Can she maintain the fiction of her undercover life? And who is inventing whom? To answer these questions, Serena must abandon the first rule of espionage - trust no one. McEwan's mastery dazzles us in this superbly deft and witty story of betrayal and intrigue, love, and the invented self.

Did someone try to kill me or am I going mad? When writer Rob Fallon gets drunk one night and ends up joining his best-friend's girlfriend, Jenny, in her apartment in London's West End, he's feeling guilty before anything's even happened. But guilt quickly turns to shock when two men break into the apartment, abduct Jenny, and try to kill Rob. But when Rob reports the abduction to the police no one believes him.

Kurdistan, Persia. A village high in the Zagros mountains. A small green-eyed boy wrestles free from his mother and climbs atop a straw and mud hut to gaze at the dusty landscape; the jagged mountains and azure sky, the cattle in the distance.