Jackson Brodie has relocated to a quiet seaside village, in the occasional company of his teenage son and an aging Labrador, both at the discretion of his ex-partner Julia. It's picturesque, but there's something darker lurking behind the scenes. Jackson's current job, looking for lost cats and gathering proof of an unfaithful husband, is fairly standard-issue, but a chance encounter with a desperate man on a crumbling cliff leads him into a sinister network—and back across the path of his old friend Reggie. After a hiatus of nine years—in which she wrote the Costa Award winning A God in Ruins—Kate Atkinson finally follows up Started Early, Took My Dog with this fifth outing, a prime example of how she "tells a great story, toys with expectations, deceives by omission, blows smoke and also writes like she's your favorite friend." (NYTimes)