ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE

by Elizabeth Strout (Viking £12.99)

Elizabeth Strout is a novelist in whose hands anything really is possible, and if you’ve yet to discover her, make this holiday the one you do. this latest novel is a companion piece of sorts to her 2016 bestseller My Name is Lucy Barton, and picks up on the stories of the inhabitants we met fleetingly in their dustbowl illinois town.

Strout is a master of making microscopic details of individual lives resound with unerring universal truths, and this glimmering, profound, beautiful novel is modern American writing at its very best.