Carmen Maria Machado’s debut collection Her Body & Other Parties (Serpent’s Tail, £12.99) takes a confident straddle across speculative fiction, erotica, fable and horror. In these electric stories, the author explores the challenges and promises of women’s bodies with forceful verve.

In ‘Real Women Have Bodies’, a mysterious illness makes women gradually fade away; many of them ask a seamstress to stitch their disappearing bodies into the fabric of dresses.