Author Guide · Literary & Crime Fiction
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Kate Atkinson grew up in York, the only child of a shopkeeper. She took a master’s degree in English at the University of Dundee in 1974, then failed the defence of her doctoral thesis on the postmodern American short story, and worked as a care worker, a legal secretary and a teacher while she wrote. In 1986 she won a short story competition run by Woman’s Own. Her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, came out in 1995 and won the Whitbread Book of the Year, ahead of Salman Rushdie’s The Moor’s Last Sigh. Since then she has written six Jackson Brodie detective novels and a run of historical novels about England in and after the two world wars. This guide covers her 14 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 14 key books · 1995–2026 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Kate Atkinson’s best-known books are Life After Life (2013), Behind the Scenes at the Museum (1995), A God in Ruins (2015) and the Jackson Brodie novels, which begin with Case Histories (2004). Start with Life After Life. Below are her 14 key books in order, the Jackson Brodie reading order, and her story collections and play.
Where to Start with Kate Atkinson
If you want her most celebrated novel
→ Life After Life (2013) — one woman, born again and again from 1910.
If you want crime fiction
→ Case Histories (2004) — the first Jackson Brodie novel, three cold cases in Cambridge.
If you want where it all began
→ Behind the Scenes at the Museum (1995) — four generations of a York family, her Whitbread-winning debut.
If you want espionage
→ Transcription (2018) — a young MI5 typist in 1940.
14 Kate Atkinson Books, in Order
Behind the Scenes at the Museum
Her first novel follows four generations of women in a working-class family in York, from the great-grandmother Alice to the narrator, Ruby Lennox, whose chapters run from her conception in 1951 to 1992. Between them, flashbacks set out as “footnotes” tell the family’s hidden history, including both world wars. The title refers to York Castle Museum. It won the Whitbread First Novel Award and the overall Whitbread Book of the Year.
Human Croquet
Isobel Fairfax, sixteen, lives in Arden, a post-war street in the north of England built where a forest once stood. Her mother vanished when she and her brother Charles were small, and the family will not speak of her. Isobel starts slipping in and out of time, glimpsing the past and the future, as the novel echoes Shakespeare’s Forest of Arden and the fairy tales.
Emotionally Weird
On a remote Scottish island, Effie Stuart-Murray tells her mother, Nora, the story of her student life at the University of Dundee in 1972, hoping that in return Nora will tell her who her father is. Effie’s attempts at a detective story for her creative writing class are woven through the book.
Case Histories
The first Jackson Brodie novel. In Cambridge, the former police inspector turned private investigator takes on three old cases: a three-year-old who vanished from her family’s garden in 1970, a young woman stabbed in her father’s office in 1994, and a young mother who killed her husband with an axe in 1979. The cases turn out to be linked. It was shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel Award.
One Good Turn
Edinburgh during the summer festival. A road-rage attack in a queue of traffic is watched by a crowd, among them Jackson, who is in town with his actress girlfriend Julia, and the mild crime writer Martin Canning, who stops it by throwing his laptop. Detective Louise Monroe and the wife of a crooked property developer are drawn in as the incident sets off a chain of crimes.
When Will There Be Good News?
Thirty years ago six-year-old Joanna Mason saw a man murder her mother and siblings. Now Dr Joanna Hunter, a married mother living near Edinburgh, she disappears, and only her sixteen-year-old babysitter, Reggie Chase, believes something is wrong. Jackson, on the wrong train, is caught in a crash. It won the Richard & Judy Best Read of the Year at the 2009 British Book Awards.
Started Early, Took My Dog
In Leeds, Tracy Waterhouse, a retired police officer now in charge of security at a shopping centre, buys a small child from an abusive mother on impulse. Jackson is tracing the birth parents of a woman adopted as a child in New Zealand, and both trails lead back to a murder in 1975. The title comes from an Emily Dickinson poem.
Life After Life
Ursula Todd is born on 11 February 1910 near Chalfont St Peter, Buckinghamshire, and dies before she draws breath; then she is born again, and again, each life ending differently, through the Spanish flu, the Blitz and Berlin under the Nazis. It was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. In 2024 The New York Times placed it 51st in its list of the 100 best books of the 21st century. BBC Two adapted it in 2022.
A God in Ruins
A companion to Life After Life, following Ursula’s younger brother Teddy: an RAF Halifax bomber pilot in the Second World War, then a husband, a widower and a father to a resentful daughter, Viola, and a grandfather. The story moves back and forth across his life. The title comes from a line in Emerson’s Nature.
Transcription
In 1940 eighteen-year-old Juliet Armstrong is recruited by MI5 to type up the bugged conversations of British fascist sympathisers in a London flat, and is then sent to infiltrate their circle. Ten years later, working as a producer at the BBC, she finds that people from the war have not finished with her.
Big Sky
The first Brodie novel in nine years. Jackson, separated from Julia, lives in a village on the North Yorkshire coast with his teenage son Nathan and an old Labrador, doing routine work such as checking on unfaithful spouses, until a man he saves on a clifftop leads him into a case of human trafficking and murder. Characters from earlier books return.
Shrines of Gaiety
London, 1926. Nellie Coker, just out of prison, runs a string of Soho nightclubs where aristocrats, film stars and gangsters mix, and wants to set up her six children. Detective John Frobisher is trying to bring her down, with the help of Gwendolen Kelling, a librarian who becomes his informer, while a runaway teenager, Freda, comes to London hoping to dance on the stage.
Death at the Sign of the Rook
Hired after a valuable portrait disappears from a dead woman’s bedroom in Yorkshire, Jackson goes looking for her missing carer. With his old ally Reggie Chase, now a police officer, he ends up at Burton Makepeace, a stately home hosting a murder mystery weekend, where a snowstorm traps everyone inside. The novel plays openly with Agatha Christie.
Our Noble Selves
London in 1951, as Britain prepares the Festival of Britain. Harry Flynn, a former war reporter who was captured in Singapore and held as a prisoner of war, takes a job on the festival, and becomes the chief suspect when a woman he went out with disappears. MI5 and a group of British fascists are part of the plot. NPR’s reviewer described it as a mix of her historical novels and the Brodie books.
In What Order to Read Kate Atkinson
Most of her novels stand alone and can be read in any order. Two exceptions matter. A God in Ruins is a companion to Life After Life; it can be read on its own, but it means more once you know Ursula and the Todd family, so read Life After Life first.
The Jackson Brodie novels are best read in publication order, because the characters and relationships build from book to book: Case Histories (2004), One Good Turn (2006), When Will There Be Good News? (2008), Started Early, Took My Dog (2010), Big Sky (2019) and Death at the Sign of the Rook (2024). Each has a self-contained mystery, so starting later in the series also works.
A reading path
1. Life After Life (2013)
2. A God in Ruins (2015)
3. Behind the Scenes at the Museum (1995)
4. Case Histories (2004)
5. Transcription (2018)
Everything Else Kate Atkinson Published
Beyond the 14 key books: 3 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Short story collections
2
2 books · 2002–2023
- 2002Not the End of the Worldher first collection of stories
- 2023Normal Rules Don’t Applyeleven linked stories, her first collection in over twenty years
Play
1
1 book · 2000
- 2000Abandonmentpremiered at the Edinburgh Festival in August 2000
The years · 1951–2026
Quick facts about Kate Atkinson
- Known for
- Novels that move back and forth in time through English family history and the two world wars, and the Jackson Brodie crime series.
- 1951
- Born in York
- 1995
- Whitbread Book of the Year for her first novel
- 2004
- Case Histories, the first Jackson Brodie novel
- 2013
- Life After Life
- 2026
- Our Noble Selves
- Born
- 20 December 1951, York; the only child of a shopkeeper
- Education
- University of Dundee, MA in English literature, 1974
- Before writing
- Care worker, legal secretary and teacher
- Lives
- Edinburgh
- Prizes
- Whitbread Book of the Year (1995); Costa Novel Award (2013, 2015)
- Honours
- MBE for services to literature (2011); Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (2010)
The red mark is 2013: Life After Life, her novel about Ursula Todd, who lives her life again and again.
How Kate Atkinson Writes: Time Out of Order
Atkinson rarely tells a story in a straight line. Behind the Scenes at the Museum sets the family’s past in “footnotes” between Ruby’s chapters; Human Croquet sends its narrator slipping through time; Life After Life restarts Ursula’s life every time it ends; and A God in Ruins jumps between decades of Teddy’s life. The effect is that the reader learns the family secrets in the order the characters cannot.
Her crime novels work the same way. Each Jackson Brodie book follows several characters whose stories seem separate, such as the three cold cases in Case Histories or the road-rage witnesses in One Good Turn, and links them through coincidence and buried history. Characters return across the series Reggie Chase among them.
She borrows titles and frames from other writers: an Emily Dickinson poem for Started Early, Took My Dog, Emerson for A God in Ruins, Shakespeare’s Forest of Arden in Human Croquet, Agatha Christie’s country houses in Death at the Sign of the Rook. Her settings are mostly places she knows: York, where she was born, Edinburgh, where she lives, and the Yorkshire coast.
Watch
Kate Atkinson in conversation with Susan Orlean
In October 2018, on tour with Transcription, Atkinson talked with the writer Susan Orlean on stage in Santa Monica for Live Talks Los Angeles.
Frequently asked questions about Kate Atkinson’s books
How many books has Kate Atkinson written?
This page lists 17: 14 novels, two story collections (Not the End of the World, 2002, and Normal Rules Don’t Apply, 2023) and one published play, Abandonment (2000). Six of the novels are Jackson Brodie mysteries.
What are Kate Atkinson’s books in order?
Her novels in order: Behind the Scenes at the Museum (1995), Human Croquet (1997), Emotionally Weird (2000), Case Histories (2004), One Good Turn (2006), When Will There Be Good News? (2008), Started Early, Took My Dog (2010), Life After Life (2013), A God in Ruins (2015), Transcription (2018), Big Sky (2019), Shrines of Gaiety (2022), Death at the Sign of the Rook (2024) and Our Noble Selves (2026).
What is the Jackson Brodie reading order?
Case Histories (2004), One Good Turn (2006), When Will There Be Good News? (2008), Started Early, Took My Dog (2010), Big Sky (2019) and Death at the Sign of the Rook (2024). Each novel has its own mystery, but Jackson’s life and the recurring characters develop through the series, so publication order is best.
Where should I start with Kate Atkinson?
Life After Life (2013) is the usual starting point: it is her most praised novel and shows her way with time and family history at full stretch. If you prefer crime fiction, start with Case Histories, the first Jackson Brodie novel.
What is Kate Atkinson’s most famous book?
Life After Life, about Ursula Todd, who is born on 11 February 1910 and lives her life again and again. It won the Costa Novel Award and in 2024 was placed 51st in The New York Times’ list of the 100 best books of the 21st century. Her debut, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, is the other book most associated with her.
Should I read Life After Life before A God in Ruins?
Yes, if you can. A God in Ruins (2015) follows Teddy, Ursula’s younger brother, and is a companion to Life After Life (2013) rather than a sequel. It works on its own, but knowing the Todd family first makes the ending land harder.
Which Kate Atkinson books have been adapted for television?
The BBC One series Case Histories (2011–2013), starring Jason Isaacs as Jackson Brodie and moved to Edinburgh, adapted the first four Brodie novels; two later episodes were original stories. BBC Two adapted Life After Life in four episodes in 2022, with Thomasin McKenzie as Ursula.
What prizes has Kate Atkinson won?
Behind the Scenes at the Museum won the 1995 Whitbread Book of the Year, ahead of Salman Rushdie’s The Moor’s Last Sigh. Life After Life (2013) and A God in Ruins (2015) both won the Costa Novel Award, the successor to the Whitbread. She was made an MBE for services to literature in 2011.
Is Kate Atkinson Scottish?
No, she is English. She was born in York in 1951, but she studied at the University of Dundee and lives in Edinburgh, which is where One Good Turn and When Will There Be Good News? are set.
Is Kate Atkinson still alive?
Yes. She was born on 20 December 1951 in York and is still publishing: Death at the Sign of the Rook came out in 2024 and Our Noble Selves, set around the 1951 Festival of Britain, in 2026.
Footnotes
- Kate Atkinson (writer) — Wikipedia
- Life After Life (novel) — Wikipedia
- Case Histories (TV series) — Wikipedia
- About Kate — kateatkinson.co.uk
- Kate Atkinson’s detective Jackson Brodie returns — The Boston Globe, 2024
- Kate Atkinson’s latest historical escape — NPR (Fresh Air), 2026
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all hers.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“I exist! I am conceived to the chimes of midnight on the clock on the mantelpiece in the room across the hall.”
— Kate Atkinson, Behind the Scenes at the Museum (1995), the first lines of her first novel
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