Where to start with Kate Atkinson

British novelist, born 1951. Won the Costa Novel Award in 2013 and 2015.

Best Kate Atkinson book to start with: Life After Life (2013), on 7 of the 18 lists it could have made.

Life After Life, which won the Costa Novel Award in 2013, is the Atkinson to begin with. It was also shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Walter Scott Prize. A woman born in 1910 lives her life over and over, differently each time, and Atkinson keeps the structure clear enough that you are never lost. It is long, but it moves.

A God in Ruins is the natural second. It follows her younger brother through the same century and won the Costa in 2015. You could read it first, but it lands harder when you already know the family.

If you would rather have a puzzle, try Case Histories, shortlisted for the Costa in 2004. It is the first of her novels about the detective Jackson Brodie, and When Will There Be Good News? is a later one, so read them in that order. Transcription, shortlisted for Fiction Book of the Year at the British Book Awards in 2019, is a stand-alone wartime story of a young woman working for British intelligence. It is the one to pick up when you want a plot and no sequels.