The second collection of short stories. Call them transcripts of dreams or deadly accurate maps of the tremor zones of the psyche, the seven stories in this collection engage and implicate us in the most fearful ways imaginable. A two-timing pornographer becomes an 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. And in the course of a weekend with his teenage daughter, a guilt-ridden father discovers the depths of his own blundering innocence. At once chilling and beguiling, and written in prose of lacerating beauty, In Between the Sheets is a tour de force by one of England’s most acclaimed practitioners of literary unease. “McEwan proves himself to be an acute psychologist of the ordinary mind.” “A writer in full control of his materials… In [his] short stories, the effect acheived by McEwan’s quiet, precise and sensual touch is that of magic realism—a transfiguration of the ordinary that has a … strong visceral impact.”