Most Popular Books by Kate Atkinson

Cambridge is sweltering, during an unusually hot summer. To Jackson Brodie, formar 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 tragendy, Jackson attempts to unravel three disparate case histories and begins to realize that in spite of apparent diversity, everything is connected…

SOON TO BE 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. Wildly inventive, deeply felt. Hilarious. Humane. Simply put- it''s one of the best novels I''ve read this century'' Gillian Flynn, bestselling author of GONE GIRL ''A box of delights. Ingenious in construction, indefatigably entertaining, 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 Grown Ups ''Truly brilliant...Think of Audrey Niffenegger''s The Time Traveler''s Wife or David Nicholl''s One Day... or Martin Amis''s Times Arrow.... This is a rare book that you want to start again the minute you have finished.'' The Times

With Dickensian brilliance, Kate Atkinson creates plots peopled with unlikely heroes and villains. It''s a day like any other for security chief Tracy Waterhouse, until she makes a purchase she hadn''t bargained for. 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. Witness to Tracy''s Faustian 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.

The acclaimed author''s "startlingly original . . . poignant and beautifully wrought portrait" of a girl''s growing awareness of her dysfunctional family ( The Seattle Times). Winner of the Whitbread Book of the Year Ruby Lennox begins narrating her life at the moment of conception, and from there takes us on a whirlwind tour of the twentieth century as seen through the eyes of an English girl determined to learn about her family and its secrets. Kate Atkinson''s first novel is "a multigenerational tale of a spectacularly dysfunctional Yorkshire family and one of the funniest works of fiction to come out of Britain in years" ( The New York Times Book Review).

International Bestseller When Will There Be Good News? is the brilliant new novel from the acclaimed author of Case Histories and One Good Turn, once again featuring private investigator Jackson Brodie. On a hot, beautiful day in the English country-side, six-year-old Joanna Mason witnesses a horrific crime. Thirty years later, the man convicted of the crime is released from prison. Sixteen-year-old Reggie works as a nanny for a doctor devoted to her infant son. When Dr. Hunter goes missing, Reggie—no stranger to bad luck and worse—seems to be the only person who is worried. Detective Chief Inspector Louise Monroe is also looking for a missing person, unaware that hurtling toward her is an old friend, private investigator Jackson Brodie, himself on a journey that becomes fatally interrupted. As lives and histories intersect, as past mistakes and current misfortunes collide, Jackson and Louise both get caught up in an investigation that will call into question everything they once thought true. In an extraordinary virtuoso display, Kate Atkinson has produced one of the most engrossing, masterful, and piercingly insightful novels of this or any year. It is also as hilarious as it is heartbreaking, as Atkinson weaves in and out of the lives of her eccentric, grief-plagued, and often all-too-human cast. Yet out of the excesses of her characters and extreme events that shake their worlds comes a relatively simple message, about being good, loyal, and true. When Will There Be Good News? shows us what it means to survive the past and the present, and to have the strength to just keep on keeping on.

Arthur is a precocious eight-year-old boy whose mother is a B-list celebrity more concerned with her bank account than with her son''s development. Then an enigmatic young nanny introduces him to a world he never knew existed.

On a beautiful summer day, crowds lined up outside a theater witness an extreme act of road rage: a tap on a fender triggers a nearly homicidal attack.

This stunning companion to Kate Atkinson''s #1 bestseller Life After Life, "one of the best novels I''ve read this century" (Gillian Flynn), follows Ursula''s brother Teddy as he navigates an unknown future after a perilous war. "He had been reconciled to death during the war and then suddenly the war was over and there was a next day and a next day. Part of him never adjusted to having a future." Kate Atkinson''s dazzling Life After Life explored the possibility of infinite chances and the power of choices, following Ursula Todd as she lived through the turbulent events of the last century over and over again. A God in Ruins tells the dramatic story of the 20th Century through Ursula''s beloved younger brother Teddy -- would-be poet, heroic pilot, husband, father, and grandfather -- as he navigates the perils and progress of a rapidly changing world. After all that Teddy endures in battle, his greatest challenge is living in a future he never expected to have. An ingenious and moving exploration of one ordinary man''s path through extraordinary times, A God in Ruins proves once again that Kate Atkinson is one of the finest novelists of our age.

AN AMAZON BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • THE INSTANT #1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER (SUNDAY TIMES, UK) • The highly anticipated return of private eye Jackson Brodie in the newest installment of the bestselling series. “How delicious to have Jackson Brodie back, this time in a story that starts off in Agatha Christie''s world but soon becomes a landscape that could only have been crafted from the pen of the incomparable Kate Atkinson.”–Ian Rankin, author of the Inspector Rebus Novels 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 mid-life malaise when he is called to a sleepy Yorkshire town, and the seemingly tedious matter of a stolen painting. But Jackson soon uncovers a string of unsolved art thefts that lead him down a dizzying spiral of disguise and deceit to Burton Makepeace, a formerly magnificent estate now partially converted into a hotel hosting Murder Mystery weekends. As paying guests, impecunious aristocrats and old friends collide, we are treated to Atkinson’s most charming and fiendishly clever mystery yet, one that pays homage to the masters of the genre—from Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers to the modern era of Knives Out and Only Murders in the Building. 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.

From the award-winning author of Life After Life comes Kate Atkinson''s Human Croquet, part fairy tale, part mystery, part coming-of-age novel New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year Human Croquet tells the story of Isobel Fairfax, a girl growing up in Lythe, a typical 1960s British suburb. But Lythe was once the heart of an Elizabethan feudal estate and home to a young English tutor named William Shakespeare, and as Isobel investigates the strange history of her family, her neighbors, and her village, she occasionally gets caught in Shakespearean time warps. Meanwhile, she gets closer to the shocking truths about her missing mother, her war-hero father, and the hidden lives of her close friends and classmates. A stunning feat of imagination and storytelling, Kate Atkinson''s Human Croquet is rich with the disappointments and possibilities every family shares.

A dazzling collection of eleven interconnected stories from the bestselling, award-winning author of Shrines of Gaiety and Life After Life, which offer the gimlet eye and delightful social critique that have made Atkinson one of the most lauded writers of our time. In this brilliant volume, nothing is quite as it seems. We meet a queen who makes a bargain she cannot keep; a secretary who watches over the life she has just left; a lost man who bets on a horse that may--or may not—have spoken to him. Everything that readers love about the novels of Kate Atkinson is here—the inventiveness, the verbal felicity, the sharp observations on human nature and the deeply satisfying emotional wallop. Witty and wise, with subtle connections between the stories, Normal Rules Don''t Apply is a startling and funny feast for the imagination, stories with the depth and bite to create their own fully-formed worlds.

Iconoclastic detective Jackson Brodie returns in a triumphant new novel about secrets, sex, and lies. Jackson Brodie has relocated to a quiet seaside village, in the occasional company of his recalcitrant teenage son and an aging Labrador, both at the discretion of his ex-partner Julia. It''s picturesque, but there''s something darker lurking behind the scenes. Jackson''s current job, gathering proof of an unfaithful husband for his suspicious wife, is fairly standard-issue, but a chance encounter with a desperate man on a crumbling cliff leads him into a sinister network -- and back across the path of his old friend Reggie. Old secrets and new lies intersect in this breathtaking novel by one of the most dazzling and surprising writers at work today. "Thank goodness the long Jackson Brodie hiatus is over." --Janet Maslin, New York Times

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The award-winning author of Life after Life transports us to a restless London in the wake of the Great War—a city bursting with money, glamour, and corruption—in this spellbinding tale of seduction and betrayal. A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: WASHINGTON POST, TIME, THE GUARDIAN, BOOKLIST "Set during Jazz Age London, in all its fizzy madness and desperation.... As dark as [Atkinson''s] stories can get, within them always shines a beacon of humanity.” —Gillian Flynn, bestselling author of Dark Places 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 gives us a window in a vanished world. Slyly funny, brilliantly observant, and ingeniously plotted, Shrines of Gaiety showcases the myriad talents that have made Atkinson one of the most lauded writers of our time.

Effie, a college student, and her mother bond in a remote Scottish house.

A dramatic story of WWII espionage, betrayal, and loyalty, by the #1 bestselling author of Life After Life 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 forever. Ten years later, now a radio 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 the best writers of our time.