Discover the fantastical Sunday Times bestselling short story collection from the award-winning author of Shrines of Gaiety and Life After Life.

'Simply one of the best writers working today, anywhere in the world' Gillian Flynn

‘As soon as you get to the end, you’ll be tempted to just start at the beginning’ Independent

‘Funny and poignant in equal measure, you’ll want to read this captivating collection in one mystical sitting.’ Daily Express


Welcome to a world, where nothing is quite what it seems…
In these pages, you’ll meet, among others, a queen who makes a bargain she cannot keep, a secretary who watches over the life she has just left, and 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 in a constantly changing multiverse.

Atkinson’s first short story collection in twenty years, Normal Rules Don't Apply is a dazzling array of eleven interconnected tales.

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‘Hilarious, breathtaking, horrific, irresistible ... [Atkinson is] always in command ... Heart in mouth, I never wanted this book to end’ Sydney Morning Herald

‘Sublime … showcases her superb storytelling and the wit of her writing’ Good Housekeeping

‘Life in all of its surreal, tragic and comic glory is perfectly captured within these pages’ Red

‘Dazzling’ Reader's Digest

Praise for Kate Atkinson:

'Inexhaustibly ingenious' HILARY MANTEL

'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

What really binds these stories is their underlying theme, which has perhaps always been Atkinson’s true subject: the nature of storytelling itself. She can be very funny, but she is highly serious about the idea that human existence is bound up with words… If you’re thinking about what fiction means, no invocation could be more thought-provoking or ironically complex * Times Literary Supplement *
What joy! A loosely connected collection of short stories from Kate Atkinson. Life in all of its surreal, tragic and comic glory is perfectly captured within these pages. * Red *
Sublime … showcases her superb storytelling and the wit of her writing * Good Housekeeping *
All kinds of stories are inside these tales – fairy stories, creation myths, fantasy, Bible stories, tabloid headlines, soaps, movies and crime. Atkinson’s sly humour percolates all the way through, but there’s also humanity, hope and forgiveness... The simplicity of the short story form belies the book’s multi-layered approach. As soon as you get to the end, you’ll be tempted to just start at the beginning again to see the nuances you missed first time round, and tease out the threads that run between each tale. * Independent *
Hilarious, breathtaking, horrific, irresistible ... [Atkinson is] always in command ... Heart in mouth, I never wanted this book to end * Sydney Morning Herald *
Atkinson has the happy knack of capturing the nature of her characters with arch aplomb * Daily Mail *
Dazzling ... Most striking of all is the abiding sense of infectious, slightly bonkers fun. * Reader's Digest *
A deftly interconnected short-story collection [that is] varied and inventive * i Newspaper *
Funny, erudite and profound * Excelle Magazine *
Here you will find lots of tricks, lots of playfulness, clever narrative engineering. * BBC Radio 4 Front Row *

KATE ATKINSON is one of the world’s foremost novelists. She won the Whitbread Book of the Year prize with her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum. Life After Life, an acclaimed BBC TV series, won several prizes including the Costa Novel Award, as did A God in Ruins. Two further historical novels – Transcription and Shrines of Gaiety - were also Sunday Times bestsellers. She has published two critically acclaimed collections of short stories: Not the End of the World and Normal Rules Don’t Apply.

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 and the most recent, Death at the Sign of the Rook, was a number one bestseller.

Kate Atkinson was awarded an MBE in 2011 and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

For information about Kate’s books, including her Jackson Brodie series, visit www.kateatkinson.co.uk