You know how sometimes you blink and everyone at work/on the tube/on Instagram is reading the same new book, and you're wondering how everyone else got the memo before you? Well fear not, here are five debut female novelists we predict everyone will be name dropping/posting all over Insta come spring...
Grazia books - 5 February
1 of 5In At The Deep End - Kate Davies (Borough Press)
Being properly saucy while having a huge heart is something the best of us aspire to year-round but Davies' debut has managed it and made it look effortless. Julia seems like a classic chick-lit heroine: bored at work, annoyed by her flatmates, having shit dates. Then she falls in love, with a woman. But not just any woman, someone who sees sex as a hobby and monogamy as tedium. Fleabag-level dirty jokes, Eleanor Oliphant-levels of empathy and a heroine who feels like your best mate spilling the gossip after two glasses drunk a little too quickly. Fresh, funny and filthy. And 4 other new female authors to read before everyone else does
2 of 5Blood Orange - Harriet Tyce (Wildfire)
A thriller with a pleasingly flawed woman at its heart: Alison not just a high-powered defence lawyer who believes her client might not be telling the truth, but who is having an affair which is totally preoccupying her, and who .. seems to be on the brink of unravelling. Tyce has done a brilliant job as creating a character so unlikeable as to be fascinating, while throwing twists and reveals just when you least expect them. You'll start off reading for the murder trial plot and somehow end up reading to find out if Alison is going to survive.
3 of 5The Familiars - Stacey Halls (Bonnier Zaffre)
Witches are, as they say, so hot right now. From the reboots of Sabrina and Charmed to the forthcoming Discovery of Witches dramatisation, they're providing the perfect analogy to our era of fresh feminist turmoil. Now one of the year's most trumpeted debuts has used the backdrop of eternally creepy Lancashire's Pendle witch trials. Fleetwood Shuttleworth, an aristocratic teenaged wife who is desperate to save her fourth pregnancy finds Alice Grey, a midwife who promises to help her carry a healthy baby at last. Except Alice has become embroiled in the witch trials. Should Fleetwood help her or fear her?
4 of 5Stubborn Archivist - Yara Rodrigues Fowler (Fleet)
A mixture of poetry, prose and a smattering of Portuguese make this debut about growing up in a Brazilian-English household unlike so much else that we're told is a 'strong female voice' today. Equally assured discussing Sainsbury's, bad dates or the intimacies of the second generation immigrant's experience, Rodrigues Fowler's has a tone instantly recognisable to anyone who has lived in a big UK city, yet entirely individual. Her story of straddling two cultures as a young woman torn between them is charming, pithy and moving.
5 of 5The Age Of Light - Whitney Scharer (Picador)
1930s Paris: women with hopes, dreams and fantastic bias cut dresses. And the men who are stealing their limelight. This love story is based on the real life relationship between iconic photographer Lee Miller and surrealist artist Man Ray. Hugely atmospheric, it captures all of the glamour and romance of the era while shining a light on Lee Miller and what it took for her to find her own voice, and cling to it while navigating a relationship with someone as charismatic - and difficult - as Ray. Mrs Hemingway meets The Muse, it's a deliciously chic feminist take on a legend.