**In this irresistibly readable ( *New York Review of Books* ) **tour de force of psychological unease, the Booker Prize winner and bestselling author of *Atonement* excavates the ruins of childhood and uncovers things that most adults have spent a lifetime forgetting **—** or denying.** * * * * In the arid summer heat, four children—Jack, Julie, Sue and Tom—find themselves abruptly orphaned. All the routines of childhood are cast aside as the children adapt to a now parentless world. Alone in the house together, the children’s lives twist into something unrecognizable as the outside begins to bear down on them. **Don’t miss Ian McEwan’s new novel, *Lessons.***