1926, and in a country still recovering from the Great War, London has become the focus for a delirious new nightlife. In the clubs of Soho, peers of the realm rub shoulders with starlets, foreign dignitaries with gangsters, and girls sell dances for a shilling a time.

The notorious queen of this glittering world is Nellie Coker, ruthless but also ambitious to advance her six children. But success breeds enemies, and Nellie’s empire faces threats from without and within. For beneath the dazzle of Soho’s gaiety, there is a dark underbelly, a world in which it is all too easy to become lost.

With her unique Dickensian flair, Kate Atkinson brings together a glittering cast of characters in a truly mesmeric novel that captures the uncertainty and mutability of life; of a world in which nothing is quite as it seems.

The first story collection from Kate Atkinson in twenty years, Normal Rules Don't Apply is a dazzling array of eleven interconnected tales from the bestselling author of Shrines of Gaiety and Life After Life

In this first full collection since Not the End of the World, we meet a queen who makes a bargain she cannot keep; a secretary who watches over the life she has just left; a man whose luck changes when a horse speaks to him.

With clockwork intricacy, inventiveness and sharp social observation, Kate Atkinson conjures a feast for the imagination, a constantly changing multiverse in which nothing is quite as it seems.

During a snowstorm in England in 1910, a baby is born and dies before she can take her first breath.

During a snowstorm in England in 1910, the same baby is born and lives to tell the tale.

What if there were second chances? And third chances? In fact an infinite number of chances to live your life? Would you eventually be able to save the world from its own inevitable destiny? And would you even want to?

Life After Life follows Ursula Todd as she lives through the turbulent events of the last century again and again. With wit and compassion, Kate Atkinson finds warmth even in life’s bleakest moments, and shows an extraordinary ability to evoke the past. Here she is at her most profound and inventive, in a novel that celebrates the best and worst of ourselves.

'Atkinson on her finest form. A marvel of plate-spinning narrative knowhow, a peak performance of consummate control.' OBSERVER 'This is the perfect novel for uncertain times.' THE TIMES 'I can think of few writers other than Dickens who can match it' SUNDAY TIMES 'Brilliant' RICHARD OSMAN 'Kate Atkinson is simply one of the best writers working today, anywhere in the world' GILLIAN FLYNN ____ 1926, and in a country still recovering from the Great War, London has become the focus for a delirious new nightlife. In the clubs of Soho, peers of the realm rub shoulders with starlets, foreign dignitaries with gangsters, and girls sell dances for a shilling a time. At the heart of this glittering world is notorious Nellie Coker, ruthless but also ambitious to advance her six children, including the enigmatic eldest, Niven whose character has been forged in the crucible of the Somme. But success breeds enemies, and Nellie's empire faces threats from without and within. For beneath the dazzle of Soho's gaiety, there is a dark underbelly, a world in which it is all too easy to become lost. With her unique Dickensian flair, Kate Atkinson brings together a glittering cast of characters in a truly mesmeric novel that captures the uncertainty and mutability of life; of a world in which nothing is quite as it seems. _____ 'Seduction, betrayal, and larger-than-life characters that will have you hooked until the last page' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 'This book is one to savour, for the energy, for the wit, for the tenderness of characterisation that make Atkinson enduringly popular' GUARDIAN 'As vividly filthy, populous, dangerous as anything described by Dickens, but writing is closer to Thackeray's...Atkinson is a novelist of unrivalled immediacy, authority, and skill.' FINANCIAL TIMES

The first story collection from Kate Atkinson in twenty years, Normal Rules Don't Apply is a dazzling array of eleven interconnected tales from the bestselling author of Shrines of Gaiety and Life After Life In this first full collection since Not the End of the World, we meet a queen who makes a bargain she cannot keep; a secretary who watches over the life she has just left; a man whose luck changes when a horse speaks to him. With clockwork intricacy, inventiveness and sharp social observation, Kate Atkinson conjures a feast for the imagination, a constantly changing multiverse in which nothing is quite as it seems. ____________ Praise for Kate Atkinson: 'Inexhaustibly ingenious' HILARY MANTEL 'Simply one of the best writers working today, anywhere in the world' GILLIAN FLYNN 'A brilliant and profoundly original writer' RACHEL CUSK 'Atkinson is a novelist of unrivalled immediacy, authority, and skill' FINANCIAL TIMES 'Atkinson has a plotter's mind: intricate, clever, satisfying' THE SUNDAY TIMES 'One of our finest novelists' SUNDAY EXPRESS 'Kate Atkinson is an international treasure: She creates characters with the ease of Agatha Christie, makes narratives out of mysteries and mystery out of narrative, and has written some of the most memorable scenes and dialogue I've encountered in the past decade' VANITY FAIR 'I can think of few writers who can make the ordinary collide with the extraordinary to such beguiling effect' OBSERVER 'One of the country's most innovative, exciting and intelligent authors.' SCOTSMAN

WINNER OF THE 2015 COSTA NOVEL AWARD AND BESTSELLING LITERARY PAPERBACK OF THE YEAR 'Atkinson's finest work, and confirmation that her genre-defying writing continues to surprise and dazzle' Observer A God in Ruins relates the life of Teddy Todd - would-be poet, heroic World War II bomber pilot, husband, father, and grandfather - as he navigates the perils and progress of the 20th century. For all Teddy endures in battle, his greatest challenge will be to face living in a future he never expected to have. This gripping, often deliriously funny yet emotionally devastating book looks at war - that great fall of Man from grace - and the effect it has, not only on those who live through it, but on the lives of the subsequent generations. It is also about the infinite magic of fiction. Few will dispute that it proves once again that Kate Atkinson is one of the most exceptional novelists of our age. 'A dazzling read...ends on one of the most devastating twists in recent fiction' DAILY TELEGRAPH

______________ THE NO.1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER BY AWARD WINNER KATE ATKINSON 'An unapologetic novel of ideas which is also wise, funny and paced like a thriller' Observer In 1940, eighteen-year old Juliet Armstrong is reluctantly recruited into the world of espionage. Sent to an obscure department of MI5 tasked with monitoring the comings and goings of British Fascist sympathizers, she discovers the work to be by turns both tedious and terrifying. But after the war has ended, she presumes the events of those years have been relegated to the past for ever. Ten years later, now a producer at the BBC, Juliet is unexpectedly confronted by figures from her past. A different war is being fought now, on a different battleground, but Juliet finds herself once more under threat. A bill of reckoning is due, and she finally begins to realize that there is no action without consequence. Transcription is a work of rare depth and texture, a bravura modern novel of extraordinary power, wit and empathy. It is a triumphant work of fiction from one of this country's most exceptional writers. 'How vehemently most novelists will wish to produce a masterpiece as good' Telegraph ______________

The PRIZE-WINNING BESTSELLER, now a major BBC1 DRAMA SERIES starring Thomasin McKenzie, Sian Clifford and James McArdle, directed by BAFTA award-winning John Crowley. 'Dazzling, witty, moving, joyful, mournful, profound... one of the best novels I've read this century' Gillian Flynn, bestselling author of GONE GIRL 'A box of delights ... it grips the reader's imagination on the first page and never lets go.' HILARY MANTEL, author of THE MIRROR AND THE LIGHT ___________________________________ What if you had the chance to live your life again and again, until you finally got it right? During a snowstorm in England in 1910, a baby is born and dies before she can take her first breath. During a snowstorm in England in 1910, the same baby is born and lives to tell the tale. What if there were second chances? And third chances? In fact an infinite number of chances to live your life? Would you eventually be able to save the world from its own inevitable destiny? And would you even want to? Life After Life follows Ursula Todd as she lives through the turbulent events of the last century again and again. With wit and compassion, Kate Atkinson finds warmth even in life's bleakest moments, and shows an extraordinary ability to evoke the past. Here she is at her most profound and inventive, in a novel that celebrates the best and worst of ourselves. ____________________ 'Merging family saga with a fluid sense of time and an extraordinarily vivid sense of history at its most human level. A dizzying and dazzling tour de force' Daily Mail 'Absolutely brilliant...it reminded me a bit of her first book Behind the Scenes at the Museum, which is one of my most favourite books ever.' Marian Keyes, author of Rachel, Again 'An exceptional writer' Guardian '[A] magnificently tender and humane novel' Observer 'A ferociously clever writer...a big, bold novel that is enthralling, entertaining' New Statesman 'Exceptionally captivating' New York Times 'Truly brilliant...Think of Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife or David Nicholl's One Day.. a rare book that you want to start again the minute you have finished.' The Times

THE NUMBER ONE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER: THE RETURN OF JACKSON BRODIE, 'LIKE ALL GOOD DETECTIVES, A HERO FOR MEN AND WOMEN ALIKE' (The Times) 'Big Sky is laced with Atkinson's sharp, dry humour, and one of the joys of the Brodie novels has always been that they are so funny' (Observer) Jackson Brodie has relocated to a quiet seaside village in North Yorkshire, in the occasional company of his recalcitrant teenage son Nathan and ageing Labrador Dido, both at the discretion of his former partner Julia. It's a picturesque setting, but there's something darker lurking behind the scenes. Jackson's current job, gathering proof of an unfaithful husband for his suspicious wife, seems straightforward, but a chance encounter with a desperate man on a crumbling cliff leads him into a sinister network-and back into the path of someone from his past. Old secrets and new lies intersect in this breathtaking new literary crime novel, both sharply funny and achingly sad, by one of the most dazzling and surprising writers at work today.

WINNER OF THE 2009 RICHARD & JUDY BEST READ

In rural Devon, six-year-old Joanna Mason witnesses an appalling crime. Thirty years later the man convicted of the crime is released from prison. In Edinburgh, sixteen-year-old Reggie works as a nanny for a G.P. But Dr Hunter has gone missing and Reggie seems to be the only person who is worried. Across town, Detective Chief Inspector Louise Monroe is also looking for a missing person, unaware that hurtling towards her is an old friend -- Jackson Brodie -- himself on a journey that becomes fatally interrupted.

'An astonishingly complex and moving literary detective story that made me sob but also snort with laughter. It's the sort of novel you have to start rereading the minute you've finished it' Guardian

The first Jackson Brodie novel: literary crime from the prizewinning, number-one bestselling author of Big Sky and Transcription.

Cambridge is sweltering, during an unusually hot summer. To Jackson Brodie, former police inspector turned private investigator, the world consists of one accounting sheet - Lost on the left, Found on the right - and the two never seem to balance.

Surrounded by death, intrigue and misfortune, his own life haunted by a family tragedy, Jackson attempts to unravel three disparate case histories and begins to realise that in spite of apparent diversity, everything is connected...

A God in Ruins relates the life of Teddy Todd – would-be poet, heroic World War II bomber pilot, husband, father, and grandfather – as he navigates the perils and progress of the 20th century. For all Teddy endures in battle, his greatest challenge will be to face living in a future he never expected to have.

This gripping, often deliriously funny yet emotionally devastating book looks at war – that great fall of Man from grace – and the effect it has, not only on those who live through it, but on the lives of the subsequent generations. It is also about the infinite magic of fiction.

Those who loved the bestselling Life After Life will recognise Teddy as Ursula Todd’s adored younger brother – but for those who have not read it, A God in Ruins stands fully on its own. Few will dispute that it proves once again that Kate Atkinson is one of the most exceptional novelists of our age.

The perfect Christmas gift: three festive tales from the brilliant pen of Kate Atkinson. 'Lucy would have challenged anyone not to cry at the sight of their child in a Nativity play. Even a sheepish Maude, even a scowling Beatrice - currently attempting a Chinese burn on an adjacent angel. A shepherd shouted something incomprehensible to Joseph. One of the Wise Men wet himself. Beatrice waved enthusiastically - a little too enthusiastically - at Lucy from the angelic choir. It was better than any religion, Lucy thought.' From the Costa Award-winning author of LIFE AFTER LIFE

On a hot summer day, Joanna Mason's family slowly wanders home along a country lane. A moment later, Joanna's life is changed forever...
On a dark night thirty years later, ex-detective Jackson Brodie finds himself on a train that is both crowded and late. Lost in his thoughts, he suddenly hears a shocking sound...
At the end of a long day, 16-year-old Reggie is looking forward to watching a little TV. Then a terrifying noise shatters her peaceful evening. Luckily, Reggie makes it a point to be prepared for an emergency...
These three lives come together in unexpected and deeply thrilling ways in the latest novel from Kate Atkinson, the critically acclaimed author who Harlan Coben calls "an absolute must-read."

'Crime has given Atkinson the freedom to write an ambitious, panoramic work, full of excitement, colour and compassion' Sunday Times

The fourth Jackson Brodie novel: literary crime from the prizewinning number-one bestselling author of Big Sky and Transcription.

A day like any other for security chief Tracy Waterhouse, until she makes a shocking impulse purchase. That one moment of madness is all it takes for Tracy's humdrum world to be turned upside down, the tedium of everyday life replaced by fear and danger at every turn.

Witnesses to Tracy's outrageous exchange in the Merrion Centre in Leeds are Tilly, an elderly actress teetering on the brink of her own disaster, and Jackson Brodie, who has returned to his home county in search of someone else's roots. All three characters learn that the past is never history and that no good deed goes unpunished.

"One of the best novels I've read this century. Kate Atkinson is a marvel. There aren't enough breathless adjectives to describe LIFE AFTER LIFE: Dazzling, witty, moving, joyful, mournful, profound."--Gillian Flynn, author of Gone GirlWhat if you could live again and again, until you got it right?
On a cold and snowy night in 1910, Ursula Todd is born, the third child of a wealthy English banker and his wife. She dies before she can draw her first breath. On that same cold and snowy night, Ursula Todd is born, lets out a lusty wail, and embarks upon a life that will be, to say the least, unusual. For as she grows, she also dies, repeatedly, in any number of ways. Ursula's world is in turmoil, facing the unspeakable evil of the two greatest wars in history. What power and force can one woman exert over the fate of civilization -- if only she has the chance?
Wildly inventive, darkly comic, startlingly poignant -- this is Kate Atkinson at her absolute best.

Kate Atkinson's brilliant and unforgettable first novel, which won the Whitbread (now Costa) Book of the Year Prize. 'Delivers its jokes and its tragedies as efficiently as Dickens...outrageously funny...will dazzle readers for years to come' - HILARY MANTEL, author of The Mirror and the Light Ruby Lennox was conceived grudgingly by Bunty and born while her father, George, was in the Dog and Hare in Doncaster telling a woman in an emerald dress and a D-cup that he wasn't married. Bunty had never wanted to marry George, but here she was, stuck in a flat above the pet shop in an ancient street beneath York Minster, with sensible and sardonic Patrica aged five, greedy cross-patch Gillian who refused to be ignored, and Ruby... Ruby tells the story of The Family, from the day at the end of the nineteenth century when a travelling French photographer catches frail beautiful Alice and her children, like flowers in amber, to the startling, witty, and memorable events of Ruby's own life. 'Little short of a masterpiece...Fizzing with wit and energy, Kate Atkinson's hilarious novel made me laugh and cry' Daily Mail 'An astounding book...without doubt one of the finest novels I have read for years' THE TIMES

THE NUMBER ONE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER: THE RETURN OF JACKSON BRODIE, 'LIKE ALL GOOD DETECTIVES, A HERO FOR MEN AND WOMEN ALIKE' (The Times)

'Big Sky is laced with Atkinson’s sharp, dry humour, and one of the joys of the Brodie novels has always been that they are so funny' (Observer)

Jackson Brodie has relocated to a quiet seaside village in North Yorkshire, in the occasional company of his recalcitrant teenage son Nathan and ageing Labrador Dido, both at the discretion of his former partner Julia. It’s a picturesque setting, but there’s something darker lurking behind the scenes.

Jackson’s current job, gathering proof of an unfaithful husband for his suspicious wife, seems straightforward, but a chance encounter with a desperate man on a crumbling cliff leads him into a sinister network―and back into the path of someone from his past. Old secrets and new lies intersect in this breathtaking new literary crime novel, both sharply funny and achingly sad, by one of the most dazzling and surprising writers at work today.