There were conjugal visits in the slave camps of the USSR. Valiant women would travel continental distances, over weeks and months, in the hope of spending a night, with their particular enemy of the people, in the House of Meetings. The consequences of these liaisons were almost invariably tragic. This title is about one such liaison.

Martin Amis first wrote about September 11 a week later in a piece for The Guardian. He has kept returning to September 11, in essays and reviews, and in two remarkable short stories, 'In the Palace of the End' and 'The Last Days of Muhammad Atta'. All are collected here, together with an account of his travels with Tony Blair in 2007.

Charles Highway, a precociously intelligent and highly-sexed teenager, is determined to sleep with an older woman before he turns twenty. Rachel fits the bill perfectly and Charles plans his seduction meticulously. He sets the scene with infinite care -- but it doesn t come off quite as Charles expects."

How can one writer hurt the reputation of another? This is the problem facing novelist Richard Tull, contemplating the success of his friend and rival, Gwyn Barry. 'The Information' is at once revenge tragedy, comedy of errors and contemporary satire.

Lionel Asbo - a very violent but not very successful criminal - has always looked out for his nephew, Desmond Pepperdine. He gives him fatherly advice and introduces him to the joys of Internet porn. Des, on the other hand, desires nothing more than books, a girl to love and to steer clear Uncle Li's psychotic pitbulls, Joe and Jeff.

Detective Hoolihan, a policewoman, a police in cop parlance, begins to investigate the death of Jennifer. The evidence swings towards suicide - the gun in her hand, the suicide note, the secret history of depression and drug addiction, and then swings away; could be suicide administer three and why does the autopsy reveal no sign of drug abuse?

An ex-circus strongman and Notting Hill rough-justice artist, meets his own personal holocaust and 'Einsteinian' destiny. There is maximum boredom and minimum love-making advised, while a new strain of schizophrenia overwhelms the young son of a 'father of the nuclear age'. This book offers a collection of stories that reveal a deep preoccupation.

When she awakes and realizes she is all right, that Time is starting again, it seems fitting that she should lie on a spindly white trolley in a white room. A nearby voice tells she is on her own now and to be good. Was she not good before? This story unfolds a metaphysical thriller where jealously guarded secrets jostle with startling insights.

The narrator of this tale, Samson Young, enters the Black Cross, an undesirable public house, and finds the main characters of his drama waiting to begin.

The new novel from Martin Amis