These evocative, atmospheric tales...capture the spirit of Christmas

A strange and beguiling series of stories, penned Scandinavia's literary greats, spanning three centuries... Beautifully decorated, this is a hardback any household would be proud to have adorn their coffee table

A hygge Christmas is assured with these folksy traditional and modern stories... Best enjoyed with a steaming glass of glögg

A gorgeous collection of classic tales from everyone from Hans Christian Anderson to Karl Ove Knausgaard. Magical tales of winter wonderlands of dark woods, you'll love this smorgasbord of festive short stories!

Ditlevsen's wonderful and devastatingly bleak short stories simmer with melancholy and despair ... Her prose is clear and spare, pared back to the essential task of describing the struggle for an unwon freedom from domestic despair and unsatisfactory marriages

The depths of desire and despair are Ditlevsen's subjects and illuminating them is her talent

Ditlevsen's writing is crystal clear and vividly, painfully raw

A terrifying talent

Her writing is incredible, so focused and clear. Not a word that doesn't need to be there

Brilliant...engrossing, thrilling and ultimately satisfying: each story has the weight of a novel.

Alexander MacLeod looks like a heavyweight in the making.

[Old Babes in the Wood] showcase[s] Atwood's spiky wit and imagination

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