Kate Atkinson got into the big league of modern literature on her first try: her debut novel “The Museum of My Secrets” received the prestigious Whitbread Prize, beating “The Moor’s Farewell Sigh” by Salman Rushdie, and the series of novels about private detective Jackson Brody, which managed to fall in love with Russian readers (“Crimes of the Past”, “Turn for the Better”, “Should We Expect Good News?”, “It’s Daybreak, Together with the Dog”), Stephen King dubbed “the main detective project of the decade.” So, meet Nora and Effie; Nora is the mother and Effie is the daughter. On a tiny Scottish island, surrounded by heather and peat moss, they take refuge from the elements in the huge, dilapidated house of their ancestors and tell each other stories. Nora kisses toads, picks nettles for soup and talks about everything except what Effie wants to hear about, namely, who is her father. Effie talks about her friend Bob, who has long stopped going to philosophy lectures, almost never gets out of bed, and for him “the Klingons are no less real than the French and Germans, and much more real, say, the Luxembourgers.” Meanwhile, someone may be keeping an eye on Effie; someone may be killing old people; and the mysterious yellow dog disappeared somewhere...For the first time in Russian.