I’m always waiting for the next Kate Atkinson book to come out.

I love her books because of their humour. Call me shallow but I can’t cope with sad, depressing, hopeless novels. If not hope, then at least humour is necessary for me to persist with a book. She is brilliant at structuring – weaving – her plots so that the pace never slows.

Her last four books have centred on the same character – Jackson Brodie – a former cop. Unfortunately in a recent interview she said she “might not be writing anymore Jackson books”. oh no!

Looking at her web-site I’ve realised that there are a few books I missed. What happened was I loved her first book – Behind the Scenes at the Museum. This won the Whitbread. Then the next one I read, I didn’t like as much – I’m not sure if that was Human Croquet or Emotionally Weird. So I stopped reading her for a while. I’m tempted to go back now and read them all.

Here’s an interesting interview with her on NPR plus loads of other interviews where you get a sense of how she writes.