Kate Atkinson for Our Noble Selves

Kate Atkinson is coming to The Bookshop on Thursday 17 September to talk about her new novel, Our Noble Selves. It's a mid-week evening in the city, and if you've followed her work, it's one of those nights that's easy to clear the diary for.

Our Noble Selves takes us back to the summer of 1951, with the Festival of Britain as its backdrop. The story follows Harry Flynn, a war reporter, and it's the kind of historical setting Atkinson does so well. If you're not yet familiar with her, she's one of the country's most established novelists: she was awarded an MBE in 2011, is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and won the Whitbread Book of the Year with her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum.

Beyond the historical stuff, she's well known for her Jackson Brodie crime series—Case Histories, One Good Turn, When Will There Be Good News?, Started Early, Took My Dog, Big Sky, and Death at the Sign of the Rook—which was adapted into a BBC television series starring Jason Isaacs. Her novel Life After Life also became an acclaimed BBC series, and she's published two short-story collections, Not the End of the World and Normal Rules Don't Apply. So, whether you come to her through the crime novels, the television adaptations, or the standalone fiction, there's a good chance you've crossed paths with her work before.

The evening is at The Bookshop, 1 Museum Street, York YO1 7DT. It starts at 7pm, with doors opening at 6.30pm, so you've got plenty of time to get settled before she begins.