Bowen's stories show the awesome capabilities of the English language and the surprise and mystery of the human soul

Bowen's stories are novels that have been split open like rocks and reveal the glitter of the naked crystals which have formed them

Like Woolf, like Spark, her language is clear but her effects complex, creating shimmering reflections of reality, her world recognisable but just out of reach

[Bowen's] fiction's uniqueness lies in its versatile, modern understanding of place as 'inner landscape'... [an] astute selection of the short stories... [Brown] write[s] fiction with the texture of history

A brilliant wacky ideas-monger

Translated beautifully and with a vigorous pulse by Katrina Dodson, The Complete Stories is bound to become a kind of bedside Bible or I Ching for readers of Lispector, both old and new. Wherever one opens the book, there is a slice of life to confront. In one of her later stories Lispector recalls the writer Sergio Porto, her friend, who was once asked by a stewardess on a plane if he wanted coffee. To which he replied: "I'll take everything I have a right to." We can approach this volume in a similar spirit: take everything

What a collection it is ... Both volumes fizz with the enthusiasm with which McGuinness has assembled stories that range across centuries and continents ... This will surely turn out to be the definitive anthology of French-language short fiction.

To be honest, we would read anything this woman writes, but Old Babes in the Wood is one of her best

This set of interweaving short stories is a perfect way to get a more bite-sized read... There's a story in here that everyone can relate to

The inimitable author of The Handmaid's Tail is spectacular at short stories

Atwood...writes infectiously... page after page proving that...[her] lavish literary talents remain wholly undiminished

[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