Kate Atkinson Books In Order

Case Histories

‘Investigating other people’s tragedies and cock ups and misfortunes was all he knew. He was used to being a voyeur, the outsider looking in, and nothing, but nothing, that anyone did surprised him any more. Yet despite everything he d seen and done, inside Jackson there remained a belief a small, battered and bruised belief that his job was to help people be good rather than punish them for being bad.’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. His days are full of people clamouring for answers and explanations. A jealous husband suspects his wife. Two spinster sisters make a shocking find. A solicitor investigates an old murder. A nurse has lost her niece; a widow, her cats. Jackson has never felt at home in Cambridge, and has a failed marriage to prove it. He is forty five but feels much, much older. He is at that dangerous age when men suddenly notice that they re going to die eventually, inevitably, and there isn t a damn thing they can do about it. Surrounded by death, intrigue and misfortune, his own life is brought sharply into focus. Ingeniously plotted, full of suspense and heartbreak, Case Histories is a feat of bravura storytelling that conveys the mysteries of life, its inanities and its hilarities. It is a life affirming work of profound insight and intelligence. From the Trade Paperback edition.

One Good Turn

‘Atkinson’s bright voice rings on every page, and her sly and wry observations move the plot as swiftly as suspense turns the pages of a thriller.’ San Francisco ChronicleTwo years after the events of Case Histories left him a retired millionaire, Jackson Brodie has followed Julia, his occasional girlfriend and former client, to Edinburgh for its famous summer arts festival. But when he witnesses a man being brutally attacked in a traffic jam the apparent victim of an extreme case of road rage a chain of events is set in motion that will pull the wife of an unscrupulous real estate tycoon, a timid but successful crime novelist, and a hardheaded female police detective into Jackson’s orbit. Suddenly out of retirement, Jackson is once again in the midst of several mysteries that intersect in one giant and sinister scheme.’Compelling and always entertaining.’ USA Today’One Good Turn crackles with energy and imagination.’ Chicago Tribune’Atkinson’s tart prose sparkles.’ Entertainment Weekly’Entertaining both as a murder mystery and as a sprawling multi character study in the best post Nashville tradition.’ The Onion’A remarkable feat of storytelling bravado.’ Washington Post

When Will There Be Good News?

International BestsellerWhen 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. Thirty years ago, six year old Joanna witnessed the brutal murders of her mother, brother and sister, before escaping into a field, and running for her life. Now, the man convicted of the crime is being released from prison, meaning Dr. Joanna Hunter has one more reason to dwell on the pain of that day, especially with her own infant son to protect. Sixteen year old Reggie, recently orphaned and wise beyond her years, works as a nanny for Joanna Hunter, but has no idea of the woman’s horrific past. All Reggie knows is that Dr. Hunter cares more about her baby than life itself, and that the two of them make up just the sort of family Reggie wished she had: that unbreakable bond, that safe port in the storm. When Dr. Hunter goes missing, Reggie seems to be the only person who is worried, despite the decidedly shifty business interests of Joanna s husband, Neil, and the unknown whereabouts of the newly freed murderer, Andrew Decker. Across town, Detective Chief Inspector Louise Monroe is looking for a missing person of her own, murderer David Needler, whose family lives in terror that he will return to finish the job he started. So it s not surprising that she listens to Reggie s outrageous thoughts on Dr. Hunter s disappearance with only mild attention. But when ex police officer and Private Investigator, Jackson Brodie arrives on the scene, with connections to Reggie and Joanna Hunter of his own, the details begin to snap into place. And, as Louise knows, once Jackson is involved there s no telling how many criminal threads he will be able to pull together or how many could potentially end up wrapped around his own neck. 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. From the Hardcover edition.

Started Early, Took My Dog

It’s a day like any other for Tracy Waterhouse, running errands at the local shopping center, 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. Witnesses to Tracy’s Faustian exchange are Tilly, an elderly actress teetering on the brink of her own disaster, and Jackson Brodie, who has returned to the land of his childhood, in search of someone else’s roots. Variously accompanied, pursued, or haunted by neglected dogs, unwanted children, and keepers of dark secrets, soon all three will learn that the past is never history and that no good deed goes unpunished. Brim*ming with wit, wisdom, and a fierce moral intelligence, Started Early, Took My Dog confirms Kate Atkinson’s status as one of the most original and entertaining writers of our time.

Behind the Scenes at the Museum

ABOUTBOOK: From the moment Ruby Lennox announces her own conception ‘I exist!’, it is clear that she is a narrator who will leave no stone unturned in her account of family life above a pet shop in England. Not content simply to describe her own circumstances, Ruby investigates the lives of the women in family both past and present, from her great grandmother’s affair with a French photographer to her mother’s unfulfilled dreams of Hollywood glamour. Hurtling in and out of both World Wars, economic downfalls, the onset of the permissive ’60’s, and up to the present day, Ruby paints a rich and vivid portrait of heartbreak and happiness, and from it draws a rare understanding of the shared secrets, hopes and failures that unite every family. DISCUSSIONQUES: What do cupboards have to do with the story? More than one reviewer compared Behind the Scenes at the Museum to Tristram Shandy and to the works of Marcel Proust and Charles Dickens. What might these novels have in common? How does Kate Atkinson update or expand upon the earlier books’ use of narration and history? One of Atkinson’s innovations is her use of footnotes. Why do you think she adopted this non fiction technique in a novel? Although this novel is very much about a specific time and place, it has been embraced by audiences in twelve countries, in as many languages. What gives Behind the Scenes at the Museum such a universal appeal? What is the meaning of the book’s title? What other fictional narrators does Ruby Lennox bring to mind? What does Behind the Scenes at the Museum say about women’s roles and opportunities in the family and in the world at large? What do the four generations of women in Ruby’s family have in common? Behind the Scenes at the Museum generated controversy in England when a critic called it ‘anti family.’ How would you defend the book against this charge? What other novels, now considered classics, might have had to face this sort of accusation? AUTHORBIO: Kate Atkinson was born in York in 1951, she earned her master’s degree in English literature at Dundee University, and did further graduate work in American literature. While raising her two daughters, she held a variety of jobs, from university tutor to welfare benefits administrator, and always wrote, publishing short stories in British magazines and finally her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, in 1995 in England and 1996 in the United States. The critical response in both countries was overwhelming, and Atkinson’s talent was justly celebrated when Behind the Scenes at the Museum was named England’s Whitbread Book of the Year.

Human Croquet

Human Croquet is a game in which some people act as hoops while others propel a blindfolded ‘ball’ around the course. Though the game is never actually played in Kate Atkinson’s remarkable novel, Human Croquet, the parallels between plot and pastime are undeniable. Atkinson, winner of the 1995 Whitbread Award in Britain, tells the story of Isobel Fairfax and her older brother, Charles. The children’s parents vanished when they were young, leaving them to the care of their grandmother, now dead, and their Aunt Vinny. Recently their father has returned with ‘the Debbie wife’ in tow, and they all live in Arden, the family’s ancestral home built on the foundations of the original manor house that burned to the ground in 1605. According to family legend, the first Fairfax took a wife who mysteriously disappeared one day, leaving in her wake a curse on the Fairfax name. More than 300 years later, Fairfax descendants are still struggling with this painful legacy. Atkinson’s novel is obviously not rooted in dull reality. Narrator Isobel has an uncanny knowledge of past and future events; Charles is obsessed with the concept of parallel universes and time travel; and a faery curse hangs over everybody. Fortunately, Kate Atkinson is a masterful writer who manages to keep her world of wonders in check. Human Croquet is no ordinary novel, and readers who venture into the Fairfax universe are in for a magical ride.

Emotionally Weird

Critical acclaim for Kate Atkinson: ‘Startlingly original’ Johanna Stoberock, The Seattle Times ‘Really comic, really tragic, bracingly unsentimental.’ The Boston Sunday Globe ‘An effervescent, affecting delight.’ Rebecca Radner, The San Francisco Examiner Chronicle ‘Atkinson’s language is a joy.’ Valerie Sayers, Commonweal ‘Full of ambiguities and neat surprises.’ Katharine Weber, The New York Times Book Review ‘Vivid and intriguing…
fizzes and crackles along.’ Penelope Lively, The Independent ‘Luminescent…
sure and sophisticated, poetic and darkly comic.’ Amanda Heller, The Boston Globe On a weather beaten island off the 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 real father was. Effie tells various versions of her life at college, where in fact she lives in a lethargic relationship with bob, a student who never goes to lectures, seldom gets out of bed, and to whom Klingons are as real as the French and the Germans. But as mother and daughter spin their tales, strange things are happening around them. Why is Effie being followed? Is someone killing the old people? And where is the mysterious yellow dog? In a brilliant comic narrative which explores the nonsensical power of language and meaning, Kate Atkinson has created another magical masterpiece.

Not the End of the World

Arthur is a precocious and inquisitive 8 year old boy whose mother is a B list celebrity more concerned with the state of her bank account than with her son’s development. With a new baby on the way, Arthur’s mother hires or is she hired by? an enigmatic young nanny named Missy, who takes Arthur under her wing. In pursuit of art, culture, and finally Arthur’s own missing father, Missy introduces him to a world he never knew existed. It’s Kate Atkinson’s world, and Arthur is just one of its inhabitants hidden connections link him to an entire constellation of characters who live unpredictably between reality and fantasy. The same wry humor and keen observation that have won Atkinson critical and popular acclaim make her new book crackle with life. Equally inspired by Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Prada, by Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Barbie, Not the End of the World is further proof of Kate Atkinson’s formidable powers as a writer of comedy and substance.

Abandonment

Elizabeth, forty something, childless, recently separated, just wants to be alone. She’s moved into a converted Victorian mansion, alive with history, woodworm and dry 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 the house’s former resident, disturbed from her final resting place, stirs long forgotten memories.

Ox-Tales: Earth

Ox-Tales is a set of four compelling and collectible books, each themed on one of the elements. Earth features stories by Rose Tremain, Jonathan Coe, Marti Leimbach, Kate Atkinson, Ian Rankin, Marina Lewycka, Hanif Kureishi, Jonathan Buckley and Nicholas Shakespeare, and a poem by Vikram Seth.

The idea behind Ox-Tales is to raise money for Oxfam and along the way to highlight the charity’s work in project areas: agriculture in Earth, water projects in Water, conflict aid in Fire, and climate change in Air.