A brilliant – and rather transgressive – collection of short stories from the double Man Booker Prize-winning author of Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies and The Mirror & the Light. Including a new story ‘The School of English’.

‘An exhilarating, if dark, collection … ‘The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher’ is a small triumph: a lesson in artfully controlled savagery’ Sunday Times ‘Remarkably good: taut, engaging and shocking … acutely observed’ Evening Standard ‘I would recommend the brilliantly chilling …The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher over most other long or short works this year.’ Telegraph, Books of the Year ‘What a fabulously nasty concoction Hilary Mantel has served up … It’s a fugu fish of a book; parts of which will leave you dizzily elated, while other parts may make you very ill indeed … The venom is distilled, bottled and dripped like slowly staining bitters into the cocktail of the entertainment … That title story, wickedly good, is alone worth the price of admission to the book’ Simon Schama, Financial Times ‘The best stories in the collection … combine sharp observation and sly wit with a subtle burrowing into the recesses of her protagonists’ heads. The darker stories recall both the metaphysical speculations of Jorge Luis Borges and the trickery of Roald Dahl’ Mail on Sunday ‘Infused with Mantel’s almost lush evocations of isolation and distress … All in all, these are alluring portraits of interior disquiet’ Observer ‘No one else quite sounds like Mantel in this vein, although a top-level summit of Muriel Spark and Alan Bennett might conceivably come close. Mantel takes absolutely nothing on trust. Bodies can, and will, malfunction; ditto minds, and marriages. Malice, power or simple chance may always undermine the ground beneath your feet’ Independent ‘These are the sticky slices of suburban noir that Mantel served up so well in her pre-Wolf Hall output and they never fail to deliver’ The Times ‘Much of Mantel’s glorious power comes from her unsentimental, forensic gaze and willingness to describe the uncomfortable … Mantel’s brutally dissecting eye is much in evidence here … Her prose is sublime … the glittering details exquisite’ Independent on Sunday

• Hilary Mantel is the first British author to have won two Booker prizes, the only woman to have done so and the only writer to have won with two consecutive novels. She is now recognised as one of our very finest authors. • WOLF HALL is the most successful Booker winner since records began, selling over 1.5 million copies. • THE ASSASSINATION OF MARGARET THATCHER has already sold over 80,000 copies, and was a Top 10 Bestseller. • It received huge publicity. The title story received 100,000 views in one day, when serialised on the Guardian website – making it one of the most read (and most controversial!) short stories of the decade. Competition: The;Wolf Hall;Bring up the Bodies;Testaments;Handmaid’s Tale;American Dirt;girl, woman, other;Tidelands;A place of Greater Safety;marriage plot;to paradise. By;Margaret Atwood;Philippa Gregory;Bill Bryson;Robert Harris;John le Carre;Alison Weir;Kate Atkinson;maggie ofarrell;hanya yanagihara