The stories here are perfect . . . suffused with an understanding of love, desire and emotional incompetence

Perfectly formed snapshots of life at its most mystifying

Consistently entertaining

Boyd achieves his best writing, observing tiny moments of love, lust and epiphany with extraordinary sensitivity

Lively has guts and style. You are in the hands of a master

The short stories are an excellent entry point for Murakami neophytes. If he has passed you by and you're trying to work out where to begin they'll give you an immediate taste for whether his tone and effect works for you or leaves you cold: without the pressure of hundreds of pages and epic scope, he's stripped back to the deeply human, deeply funny weirdness that defines his best work.

At his strongest he's like Kafka in Tokyo

Thought-provoking: the essence of life, Murakami suggests, is grappling with the inexplicable

Philosophical and mysterious, the stories in First Person Singular all touch beautifully on love and solitude, childhood and memory - all with a signature Murakami twist

A wonderfully surreal collection of short stories... Murakami has an ability to make the mundane fantastical and the fantastical mundane... First Person Singular is an engaging and enigmatic collection to savour and enjoy

[First Person Singular is] sure to satisfy both hardcore Murakami fans and those looking for an introduction to his work

Murakami fans will love this new collection of stories all steeped in a love of music

The 15 stories in this collection from the stellar Margaret Atwood are book-ended by the touching, tender, grief-tinged tales of Tig and Nell

There are authors we turn to because they can uncannily predict our future; there are authors we need for their skillful diagnosis of our present; and there are authors we love because they can explain our past. And then there are the outliers: those who gift us with timelines other than the one we're stuck in, realities far from home. If anyone has proved, over the course of a long and wildly diverse career, that she can be all four, it's Margaret Atwood . . . Long may she reign

As affecting as any of Atwood's strongest work

In Old Babes in the Wood, Margaret Atwood delivers her signature sci-fi with a human heart. It is a story collection that teems with playfulness and invention... reminding us of her skill in the short form

A highly personal collection

The Tig and Nell stories... are subtle and poignant, written in grief and from the heart

Devastating and thought-provoking in equal measure, you will find yourself thoroughly entertained - and we're sure you'll return to these again and again

Old Babes in the Wood... [is] a clear demonstration of her prevailing skill as a writer

As her short story collection Old Babes in the Wood debuts at the top of the fiction chart, Margaret Atwood can rest assured that she has reached literary legend status. It was one thing for The Handmaid's Tale to make it to No 1, but quite another for stories narrated by snails and aliens to do it

Her latest collection of short stories... proves once again she's also an impassioned observer of everyday people and their struggles, with a hilarious sense of humour

Each [story] is interesting in its own right...Atwood's imagination and mastery of storytelling is evident

[A] writer who is still so sparky and brilliant in the sudden ways she tips you into despair or delight. Whatever she's up to, I'll take more if it's going

Quietly devastating

Any new publication by the estimable Atwood...is an event and this collection of 15 short stories is no exception

Bracing, darkly funny and cheerfully unsentimental