One of our greatest living writers, Margaret Atwood has a mind that refuses to be boxed in. From her dystopian vision in The Handmaid’s Tale to the historical reimagining of Alias Grace, she’s proven time and again how seamlessly she can flick between the present day and centuries past, the real and the invented. In Old Babes In The Wood (Vintage), her new collection of 15 short stories out today, Atwood has let her imagination fly once again, and the result is a delightful mish-mash of love stories, fairytales and fables. Several chapters are dedicated to Nell and Tig, an elderly couple whose lifelong love is captured in heart-piercing vignettes, while others tell of lost snails, disgruntled aliens and suspected witches.

“This is Atwood is at her magical best, using tropes from fantasy and sci-fi to shed light on the quirks of modern life,” says Meena Alexander, Stylist’s features editor. “In my favourite story, a daughter tries to work out if her spookily intuitive mother really does have magical powers, while in another the inimitable author imagines an extra-terrestrial being who is trying to make sense of an Earthly fairytale, brilliantly skewering the comfort us humans find in fictional happily-ever-afters. With her signature streak of creativity and wit on every page, this is a collection that’s full of surprises.” £22, Bookshop.org