Keith Oatley has made substantial advances in several areas including the psychology of stress, the psychology of emotions, and readers' responses to fictional literature. He is the author of Best Laid Schemes, on emotions as they relate to people's goals, and coauthor of the leading textbook on emotions, Understanding Emotions. His novel, The Case of Emily V., won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for best first novel in 1994. His second novel, A Natural History, follows simultaneously the cognitive aspects of a scientific investigation and the emotions of a marriage relationship.