We All Want Impossible Things

Catherine Newman
Doubleday, £14.99, pp224

Edi is dying of terminal cancer. Her best friend, Ash, visits the hospice daily, bringing love, care and a wealth of nostalgia. Ash, meanwhile, is negotiating her own issues: separation from her husband, random sex with inappropriate partners, and mother to two almost-grown daughters. Newman’s remarkable debut adult novel takes this premise and delivers a whip-smart, funny, beautifully observed and exquisitely characterised novel about how even the deepest of losses can be accompanied by a joyous affirmation of life.

Sensational: A New Story of Our Senses

Ashley Ward
Profile, £20, pp320

As a professor of animal behaviour, Ashley Ward argues that to talk of five senses is inadequate and reductive: in fact, he says, there might be as many as 53, depending on how granular we want to be: for example, a sense of balance and a sense of our body’s position both fall under the generalised description of touch. Combining biological science with history, culture, sociology and personal reflections, this is a wide-ranging and highly engaging read.

Invisible Child

Andrea Elliott
Cornerstone, £10.99, pp624 (paperback)

Already the winner of numerous awards, Elliott’s debut tells the heartbreaking and, at times, harrowing story of eight years in the life of Dasani Coates. Coates’s family are homeless and on welfare benefits, and Elliott follows them through inadequate social housing and daily experiences of poverty, bureaucracy, hunger and violence. Shining a light on both the failings of the system and the clan’s desperate situation, it’s a justifiably enraging, moving and timely work.

• To order We All Want Impossible Things, Sensational or Invisible Child go to guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply