A dazzling collection of eleven interconnected stories from the bestselling, award-winning author of Shrines of Gaiety and Life After Life, with everything that readers love about her novels - the inventiveness, the verbal felicity, the sharp observations on human nature, and the deeply satisfying emotional wallop.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 of 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.