A day like any other for security chief Tracy Waterhouse, until she makes a shocking impulse purchase. That 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 outrageous exchange in the Merrion Centre in Leeds are Tilly, an elderly actress teetering on the brink of her own disaster, and Jackson Brodie who has returned to his home county in search of someone else’s roots. All three characters learn that the past is never history and that no good deed goes unpunished.

Kate Atkinson won the Whitbread (now Costa) Book of the Year prize with her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, and has been a critically acclaimed writer ever since. Her four bestselling novels featuring former detective Jackson Brodie became the BBC television series Case Histories, starring Jason Isaacs. Her latest novel Life After Life was the winner of the Costa Novel Prize and the South Bank Sky Arts Literature Prize, and was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize. She was appointed MBE in the 2011 Queen’s Birthday Honours List.

Visit Kate’s website at www.kateatkinson.co.uk or her Facebook page at www.facebook.com/KateAtkinsonOfficial.

Behind the Scenes at the Museum
A surprising, tragicomic and subversive family saga set in York, Kate Atkinson’s prizewinning first novel, like all her novels, has a mystery at its heart.

‘Nothing short of a masterpiece’
Daily Mail

Human Croquet
A multilayered, moving novel about the forest of Arden, a girl who drops in and out of time, and the heartrending mystery of a lost mother.

‘Brilliant and engrossing’
Penelope Fitzgerald

Emotionally Weird
Set in Dundee, this clever, comic novel depicts student life in all its wild chaos, and a girl’s poignant quest for her father.

‘Achingly funny . . . executed with wit and mischief’
Meera Syal

Not the End of the World
Kate Atkinson’s first collection of short stories – playful and profound.

‘Moving and funny, and crammed with incidental wisdom’
Sunday Times

Life After Life
What if you had the chance to live your life again and again, until you finally got it right?

‘Grips the reader’s imagination on the first page and never lets go. If you wish to be moved and astonished, read it’
Hilary Mantel

Also featuring Jackson Brodie

Case Histories
The first novel to feature Jackson Brodie, the former police detective, who finds himself investigating three separate cold murder cases in Cambridge, while still haunted by a tragedy in his own past.

‘The best mystery of the decade’
Stephen King

One Good Turn
Jackson Brodie, in Edinburgh during the Festival, is drawn into a vortex of crimes and mysteries, each containing a kernel of the next, like a set of nesting Russian dolls.

‘The most fun I’ve had with a novel this year’
Ian Rankin

When Will There Be Good News
A six-year-old girl witnesses an appalling crime. Thirty years later, Jackson Brodie is on a fatal journey that will hurtle him into its aftermath.

‘Genius . . . insightful, often funny, life-affirming’
Sunday Telegraph

Started Early, Took My Dog
Jackson Brodie returns to Yorkshire, his home county, in search of someone else’s roots, while security chief Tracy Waterhouse makes an impulse purchase that will replace the tedium of everyday life with fear and danger.

‘The best British crime novel of the year’
Heat

HUMAN CROQUET
Kate Atkinson

‘Wonderfully eloquent and forceful . . . brilliant and engrossing’
Penelope Fitzgerald, Evening Standard

Once it had been the great forest of Lythe – a vast and impenetrable thicket of green. And here, in the beginning, lived the Fairfaxes, grandly, at Fairfax Manor, visited once by the great Gloriana herself.

But over the centuries the forest had been destroyed, replaced by Streets of Trees. The Fairfaxes have dwindled too; now they live in ‘Arden’ at the end of Hawthorne Close and are hardly a family at all.

But Isobel Fairfax, who drops into pockets of time and out again, knows about the past. She is sixteen and waiting for the return of her mother – the thin, dangerous Eliza with her scent of nicotine, Arpège and sex, whose disappearance is part of the mystery that still remains at the heart of the forest.

‘Vivid, richly imaginative, hilarious and frightening by turns’
Cressida Connolly, Observer

‘A novel which will dazzle readers for years to come’
Hilary Mantel, London Review of Books

EMOTIONALLY WEIRD
Kate Atkinson

‘Funny, bold and memorable’
The Times

On a peat and heather island off the west 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 father was – variously Jimmy, Jack, or Ernie. Effie tells of her life at college in Dundee, the land of cakes and William Wallace, where she lives in a lethargic relationship with Bob, a student who never goes to lectures, seldom gets out of bed, and to whom the Klingons are as real as the French and the Germans (more real than the Luxemburgers). But strange things are happening. Why is Effie being followed? Is someone killing the old people? And where is the mysterious yellow dog?

‘A truly comic novel – achingly funny in parts – challenging and executed with wit and mischief’
Meera Syal, Daily Express

‘Sends jolts of pleasure off the page . . . Atkinson’s funniest foray yet . . . it is a work of Dickensian or even Shakespearean plenty’
Catherine Lockerbie, Scotsman

NOT THE END OF THE WORLD
Kate Atkinson

‘Moving and funny, and crammed with incidental wisdom’
Sunday Times

What is the real world? Does it exist, or is it merely a means of keeping another reality at bay? Not the End of the World is Kate Atkinson’s first collection of short stories. Playful and profound, they explore the world we think we know whilst offering a vision of another world which lurks just beneath the surface of our consciousness, a world where the myths we have banished from our lives are startlingly present and where imagination has the power to transform reality.

From Charlene and Trudi, obsessively making lists while bombs explode softly in the streets outside, to gormless Eddie, maniacal cataloguer of fish, and Meredith Zane who may just have discovered the secret to eternal life, each of these stories shows that when the worlds of material existence and imagination collide, anything is possible.

‘I can think of few writers who can make the ordinary collide with the extraordinary to such beguiling effect . . . left me so fizzing with admiration’
Observer

‘Exceptional . . . sharp, witty and completely compelling’
Daily Mail

‘An exceptionally funny, quirky and bold writer’
Independent on Sunday

CASE HISTORIES
Kate Atkinson

‘Not just the best novel I read this year but the best mystery of the decade’
Stephen King

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.

Jackson has never felt at home in Cambridge, and has a failed marriage to prove it. Surrounded by death, intrigue and misfortune, his own life haunted by a family tragedy, he attempts to unravel three disparate case histories and begins to realize that in spite of apparent diversity, everything is connected . . .

‘An astonishingly complex and moving literary detective story . . . the sort of novel you have to start re-reading the minute you’ve finished it’
Guardian

‘Triumphant . . . her best book yet . . . a tragi-comedy for our times’
Sunday Telegraph

‘Part complex family drama, part mystery, it winds up having more depth and vividness than ordinary thrillers and more thrills than ordinary fiction . . . a wonderfully tricky book’
New York Times

ONE GOOD TURN
Kate Atkinson

‘Very funny . . . that rarest of things – a good literary novel and a cracking holiday read’
Observer

It is summer, it is the Edinburgh festival. People queuing for a lunchtime show witness a road-rage incident – a near-homicidal attack which changes the lives of everyone involved. Jackson Brodie, ex-army, ex-police, ex-private detective, is also an innocent bystander – until he becomes a murder suspect.

As the body count mounts, each member of the teeming Dickensian cast’s story contains a kernel of the next, like a set of nesting Russian dolls. They are all looking for love or money or redemption or escape: but what each actually discovers is their own true self.

‘The most fun I’ve had with a novel this year’
Ian Rankin, Guardian (Books of the Year)

‘Delivers everything a good book should have. It’s a fantastic detective story and a wonderful piece of writing . . . has taken the crime genre to another level’
Daily Express

‘Thrillingly addictive . . . quite unique in her ability to fuse emotional drama and thriller’
The Times

‘A detective novel packed with more wit, insight and subtlety than an entire shelf-full of literary fiction’
Marie Claire

WHEN WILL THERE BE GOOD NEWS?
Kate Atkinson

‘Genius . . . insightful, often funny, life-affirming’
Sunday Telegraph

In a quiet corner of rural Devon, a six-year-old girl witnesses an appalling crime. Thirty years later the man convicted of the crime is released from prison.

In Edinburgh, sixteen-year-old Reggie, wise beyond her years, works as a nanny for a G.P. But her employer has disappeared with her baby, and Reggie seems to be the only person who is worried. Across town, Detective Chief Inspector Louise Monroe is also looking for a missing person, unaware that hurtling towards her is a former acquaintance – Jackson Brodie – himself on a journey that is about to be fatally interrupted.

‘Funny, bracingly intelligent . . . Kate Atkinson is that rarest of beasts, a genuinely surprising novelist’
Guardian

‘An exhilarating read. Her wry humour, sharp eye and subtle characterisation are a constant joy’
Daily Mail

STARTED EARLY, TOOK MY DOG
Kate Atkinson

‘Accept Atkinson’s vision; enjoy, admire, laugh and be moved’
The Times

A day like any other for security chief Tracy Waterhouse, 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 in the Merrion Centre in Leeds are Tilly, an elderly actress teetering on the brink of her own disaster, and Jackson Brodie who has returned to his home county in search of someone else’s roots. All three characters learn that the past is never history and that no good deed goes unpunished.

‘Hypnotic, compulsive reading’
Scotland on Sunday

‘Atkinson’s detective novels capture the strangeness of modern times . . . with spiky wit, emotional intelligence and consummate cleverness’
Independent

‘Hypnotic, compulsive reading’
Scotland on Sunday

‘Atkinson’s finest novel to date . . . deserves to be read for decades to come’
Mirror

STARTED EARLY,
TOOK MY DOG

Kate Atkinson

TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS
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A Random House Group Company
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STARTED EARLY, TOOK MY DOG
A BLACK SWAN BOOK: 9780552772464
Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781409095422

First published in Great Britain
in 2010 by Doubleday
an imprint of Transworld Publishers
Black Swan edition published 2011

Kate Atkinson has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

This ebook is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

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2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

For my father

All mistakes are mine, some deliberate. I have not necessarily kept to the truth.

My thanks are due to:

Russell Equi, as usual; Malcolm Graham, Detective Chief Superintendent, Lothian and Borders Police; Malcolm R. Dickson, former Assistant Inspector of Constabulary for Scotland; David Mattock and Maureen Lenehan, for revisiting Leeds and the seventies with me.

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.

For want of a shoe the horse was lost.

For want of a horse the rider was lost.

For want of a rider the battle was lost.

For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.

And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

Traditional

‘I was just cleaning up the place a bit.’

Peter Sutcliffe

Treasure

STARTED EARLY,TOOK MY DOG

STARTED EARLY,
TOOK MY DOG