The eight stories in Alexander MacLeod's excellent second collection, composed in crystalline prose, glimmer and gleam with yearning and loss, as strange longings overwhelm his finely-drawn characters.

Exquisite.

Mesmerising... MacLeod...explore[s] the absurdities and dislocations of twenty-first-century life.

Brilliantly unsettling.

A five-star book. I loved it. Eight short stories, each one satisfying and complete... They all have a kind of yearning, a voice that is intimate, often troubled, but each shines a light on relationships good and bad.

MacLeod's stories seemed startlingly strange, until I realised they were about my own life. A book full of truth, sadness and mercy.

Alexander MacLeod's control of cadence and rhythm is so complete that it seems effortless. These stories offer a real pleasure which comes from the sense of life and emotional honesty in them... They contain a rare kind of truthfulness.

A thoughtful, beautifully crafted, big-hearted work.

Taut to a point of richness, deft in the dark, with an understanding of narrative suspense that's somehow actually beautiful, Light Lifting is a powerful collection and the debut of a writer clearly a master of the form.

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