Search results for ""author kate atkinson""

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 LifeIn 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.‘What really binds these stories is their underlying theme, which has perhaps always been Atkinson’s true subject: the nature of storytelling itself’ Times Literary Supplement‘Life in all of its surreal, tragic and comic glory is perfectly captured within these pages’ Red‘Sublime’ Good Housekeeping‘Dazzling’ Reader's Digest____________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'One of the country's most innovative, exciting and intelligent authors.' SCOTSMAN

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'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

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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

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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 ...

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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

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The brilliant and profound second novel from the three-times Costa prizewinner and number one bestseller Kate Atkinson.'Vivid, richly imaginative, hilarious and frightening by turns' ObserverOnce it had been the great forest of Lythe. And here, in the beginning, lived the Fairfaxes, grandly, at Fairfax Manor.But over the centuries the forest had been destroyed, replaced by Streets of Trees. The Fairfaxes have dwindled too; now they live in 'Arden' at the end of Hawthorne Close and are hardly a family at all.But Isobel Fairfax, who drops into pockets of time and out again, knows about the past. She is sixteen and waiting for the return of her mother - the thin, dangerous Eliza with her scent of nicotine, Arpège and sex, whose disappearance is part of the mystery that still remains at the heart of the forest.

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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' ObserverA 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

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

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______________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' ObserverIn 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______________

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THE #1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER (August 2024)DISCOVER THE NEW JACKSON BRODIE NOVEL, FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF SHRINES OF GAIETY'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'Christie would be proud . . . I defy you not to snort with laughter as the novel progresses to its farcical denouement. Atkinson is brilliant' Observer**SPECIAL FIRST EDITION PRINT RUN: With an exclusive design underneath the dust jacket and Author Q&A, available while stocks last*******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 sl

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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 LightRuby 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 Patricia 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

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I can think of few writers who can make the ordinary collide with the extraordinary to such beguiling effect...left me so fizzing with admiration' ObserverA stunning collection of short stories by the three-times Costa prizewinner Not the End of the World is Kate Atkinson's first collection of short stories. Playful and profound, they explore the world we think we know whilst offering a vision of another world which lurks just beneath the surface of our consciousness, a world where the myths we have banished from our lives are startlingly present and where imagination has the power to transform reality.From Charlene and Trudi, obsessively making lists while bombs explode softly in the streets outside, to gormless Eddie, maniacal cataloguer of fish, and Meredith Zane who may just have discovered the secret to eternal life, each of these stories shows that when the worlds of material existence and imagination collide, anything is possible.

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A play about love, death, identity and evolution, from the bestselling and highly acclaimed novelist. Elizabeth, forty-something, childless, recently separated, just wants to be alone. She's moved into a converted Victorian mansion, alive with history, character, woodworm and rot. But worse than that she's besieged by invaders of the human kind. Her best friend, her sister, their mother, the builder and a photographer are all determined to make their mark. And a former inhabitant of the house, disturbed from her resting place by Elizabeth's arrival, revisits her own long-forgotten past. Kate Atkinson's play Abandonment was first performed at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, in 2000.

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Kate Atkinson is one of the world's foremost novelists. Her most recent novel, Shrines of Gaiety, set in the aftermath of the First World War, is a Sunday Times bestseller. She won the Whitbread Book of the Year prize with her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum. Her three critically lauded and prize-winning novels set around the Second World War are Life After Life, an acclaimed 2022 BBC TV series, A God in Ruins (both winners of the Costa Novel Award) and Transcription. Her bestselling literary crime novels featuring former detective Jackson Brodie, Case Histories, One Good Turn, When Will There Be Good News? and Started Early, Took My Dog, became a BBC television series starring Jason Isaacs. Jackson Brodie later returned in the novel Big Sky. Kate Atkinson was awarded an MBE in 2011 and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

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______________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' ObserverIn 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______________

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

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The third Jackson Brodie novel, winner of Richard & Judy's Best Read: literary crime from the number-one bestselling author of Big Sky and Transcription.'An exhilarating read. Her wry humour, sharp eye for the quirks of human behaviour and subtle characterisation are a constant joy' Daily MailIn a quiet corner of rural Devon, a six-year-old girl witnesses an appalling crime. Thirty years later the man convicted of the crime is released from prison. In Edinburgh, sixteen-year-old Reggie, wise beyond her years, works as a nanny for a G.P. But her employer has disappeared with her baby, 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 a former acquaintance – Jackson Brodie – himself on a journey that becomes fatally interrupted.

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The fourth Jackson Brodie novel: literary crime from the prizewinning number-one bestselling author of Big Sky and Transcription.'Crime has given Atkinson the freedom to write an ambitious, panoramic work, full of excitement, colour and compassion' Sunday TimesA 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.

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Kate Atkinson is one of the world's foremost novelists. Her most recent novel, Shrines of Gaiety, set in the aftermath of the First World War, is a Sunday Times bestseller. She won the Whitbread Book of the Year prize with her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum. Her three critically lauded and prize-winning novels set around the Second World War are Life After Life, an acclaimed 2022 BBC TV series, A God in Ruins (both winners of the Costa Novel Award) and Transcription. Her bestselling literary crime novels featuring former detective Jackson Brodie, Case Histories, One Good Turn, When Will There Be Good News? and Started Early, Took My Dog, became a BBC television series starring Jason Isaacs. Jackson Brodie later returned in the novel Big Sky. Kate Atkinson was awarded an MBE in 2011 and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

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From the NUMBER 1 bestselling author of LIFE AFTER LIFE, SHRINES OF GAIETY and NORMAL RULES DON'T APPLYOn a peat and heather island off the west coast of Scotland, Effie and her mother Nora take refuge in the large mouldering house of their ancestors and tell each other stories.Nora, at first, recounts nothing that Effie really wants to hear, like who her father was - variously Jimmy, Jack, or Ernie. Effie tells of her life at college in Dundee, where she lives in a lethargic relationship with Bob, a student who never goes to lectures, seldom gets out of bed, and to whom the Klingons are as real as the French and the Germans (more real than the Luxemburgers).But strange things are happening. Why is Effie being followed? Why is everyone writing novels? Is someone killing the old people? And where is the mysterious yellow dog?'Sends jolts of pleasure off the page...Kate Atkinson's funniest foray yet...it is a work of Dickensian or even Shakespearean plenty' SCOTSMAN'A brilliant and profoundly original writer' DAILY TELEGRAPH

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'The stand-out read of the summer. It's a masterclass in brilliant writing and whether you've read the earlier books in the series or not, you'll enjoy it.' Independent'Like all good detectives, he is a hero for men and women alike.' The Times'Laced with Atkinson's sharp, dry humour, and one of the joys of the Brodie novels has always been that they are so funny.' ObserverJackson 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. _________What readers are saying:***** 'A glorious tapestry of storytelling.'***** 'An intelligently written, gripping book with characters you fall in love with.'***** 'Sheer genius, with the characteristic thread of humour.'

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As London comes alive with the 1960s youth revolution, one woman makes a choice that defies all expectations.'So real and humane and utterly transporting' Meg MasonIt's 1967 and London is alive with the new youth revolution. In the suburbs, meanwhile, Phyllis Fischer inhabits a world of conventional stability. Married with two children, her life is both comfortable and predictable.But when Nicky - a twenty-something friend of the family - visits one hot summer evening and kisses Phyllis in the dark of the garden, something in her catches fire. Newly awake to the world, Phyllis makes a choice that defies all expectations . . .'Wonderful' Marian Keyes'My favourite author' Kate Atkinson'Achingly moving and real' Guardian 'Beguiling' Hilary Mantel'Compelling' Elizabeth Day'Will bring you to tears' Daily Mail

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Sunday Times bestseller Tessa Hadley explores the big consequences of small events in this new collectionTessa Hadley is my favourite author' KATE ATKINSONHeloise's father died in a car crash when she was a little girl; at a dinner party in her forties, she meets someone connected to that long-ago tragedy. Janey's bohemian mother plans to marry a man close to Janey''s own age everything changes when an accident interrupts the wedding party. A daughter caring for her elderly mother during the pandemic becomes obsessed with the woman next door; in the wake of his best friend's death, a man must reassess his affair with the friend's wife. Teenager Cecilia wakes one morning on holiday with her parents in Florence and sees them for the first time through disenchanted eyes.These twelve stories plumb the depths of everyday life to reveal the shifting tides and hidden undercurrents of ordinary relationships.Few writers give me

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