Normal Rules Don't Apply

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.

"Simply one of the best writers working today, anywhere in the world." -Gillian Flynn, author of Gone Girl

"Atkinson has the happy knack of capturing the nature of her characters with arch aplomb." -The Daily Mail

"Most striking of all...is the abiding send of infectious, slightly bonkers fun. Atkinson is clearly having a great time letting her imagination run wild--and my firm guess is that her readers will too." -Reader's Digest (UK)
 

KATE ATKINSON won the Whitbread (now Costa) Book of the Year prize with her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum. Her four bestselling novels featuring former detective Jackson Brodie became the BBC television series Case Histories, starring Jason Isaacs. Her 2013 novel, Life After Life, was shortlisted for the Women's Prize and voted Book of the Year for the independent booksellers associations on both sides of the Atlantic. It also won the Costa Novel Award, as did her subsequent novel A God in Ruins (2015). She has written twelve ground-breaking, bestselling books and lives in Edinburgh, Scotland.