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. Nothing is quite as it seems in this collection of eleven dazzling stories. We meet a queen who makes a bargain she cannot keep; a secretary who watches over the life she has just left; a 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 on human nature, and the deeply satisfying emotional wallop. A startling and funny feast for the imagination, these stories conjure a multiverse of subtly connected worlds while illuminating the webs of chance and connection among us all.