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.

Discover the new novel from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Shrines of Gaiety and Life after Life.

Welcome to Rook Hall.

The stage is set. The players are ready. By night’s end, a murderer will be revealed.

Ex-detective Jackson Brodie is staving off a bad case of midlife malaise when he is called to a sleepy Yorkshire town, and the seemingly tedious matter of a stolen painting. But one theft leads to another, including the disappearance of a valuable Turner from Burton Makepeace, home to Lady Milton and her family. Once a magnificent country house, Burton Makepeace has now partially been converted into a hotel, hosting Murder Mystery weekends.

As paying guests, a vicar, an ex-army officer, impecunious aristocrats, and old friends converge, we are treated a fiendishly clever mystery; one that pays homage to the masters of the genre—from Agatha Christie to Dorothy Sayers.

Brilliantly inventive, with all of Atkinson’s signature wit, wordplay and narrative brio, Death at the Sign of the Rook may be Jackson Brodie’s most outrageous and memorable case yet.

Welcome to Rook Hall. The stage is set. The players are ready. By night’s end, a murderer will be revealed.

Ex-detective Jackson Brodie is staving off a bad case of midlife malaise when he is called to a sleepy Yorkshire town, and the seemingly tedious matter of a stolen painting. But one theft leads to another, including the disappearance of a valuable Turner from Burton Makepeace, home to Lady Milton and her family.

Once a magnificent country house, Burton Makepeace has now partially been converted into a hotel, hosting Murder Mystery weekends. As paying guests, a vicar, an ex-army officer, impecunious aristocrats, and old friends converge, we are treated a fiendishly clever mystery; one that pays homage to the masters of the genre—from Agatha Christie to Dorothy Sayers.

Brilliantly inventive, with all of Atkinson’s signature wit, wordplay and narrative brio, Death at the Sign of the Rook may be Jackson Brodie’s most outrageous and memorable case yet.

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.

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, 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.

'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...

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 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.

'An absolute joy to read...the pleasure of One Good Turn lies in the ride, in Atkinson's wry, unvanquished characters, her swooping, savvy, sarcastic prose and authorial joie de vivre' Guardian

The second Jackson Brodie novel (after Case Histories): literary crime from the prizewinning, number-one bestselling author of Big Sky and Transcription.

It is summer, it is the Edinburgh Festival. People queuing for a lunchtime show witness a road-rage incident - a near-homicidal attack which changes the lives of everyone involved. Jackson Brodie, ex-army, ex-police, ex-private detective, is also an innocent bystander - until he becomes a murder suspect.

As the body count mounts, each member of the teeming Dickensian cast's story contains a kernel of the next, like a set of nesting Russian dolls. They are all looking for love or money or redemption or escape: but what each actually discovers is their own true self.

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.

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 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.

Tracy Waterhouse leads a quiet, ordered life as a retired police detective-a life that takes a surprising turn when she encounters Kelly Cross, a habitual offender, dragging a young child through town. Both appear miserable and better off without each other-or so decides Tracy, in a snap decision that surprises herself as much as Kelly. Suddenly burdened with a small child, Tracy soon learns her parental inexperience is actually the least of her problems, as much larger ones loom for her and her young charge.
Meanwhile, Jackson Brodie, the beloved detective of novels such as Case Histories, is embarking on a different sort of rescue-that of an abused dog. Dog in tow, Jackson is about to learn, along with Tracy, that no good deed goes unpunished.

Case one: A little girl goes missing in the night.
"Case two: " A beautiful young office worker falls victim to a maniac's apparently random attack.
"Case three: " A new mother finds herself trapped in a hell of her own making - with a very needy baby and a very demanding husband - until a fit of rage creates a grisly, bloody escape.
Thirty years after the first incident, as private investigator Jackson Brodie begins investigating all three cases, startling connections and discoveries emerge . . .

'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.

Romantic drama starring Toni Collette as Sandy, an archetypal Australian woman: ambitious, strong and confident. When her business partner asks her to play tour guide to a prospective new client, Japanese businessman Hiromitsu (Gotaro Tsunashima), Sandy is reluctant - and her guest's uncommunicative manner and sexist remarks don't help to break the ice. But events lead to the mismatched couple being stranded together in a remote part of the outback for a night, and an unusual and intense relationship begins to unfold that changes both their lives forever.

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."

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