Bonnie Garmus

This debut novel written by a copywriter in her sixties has been one of the year’s biggest publishing sensations. Fought over by publishing houses, adored by its mainly female critics, hogging the bestseller lists and already in production for an Apple TV series starring Brie Larson, it’s an ingenious comedy with a serious social message about a clever woman fighting her corner and winning. It’s California in the 1950s, and Elizabeth Zott is training as a research chemist, at a time when “women wore shirtwaist dresses and joined garden clubs and drove legions of children around in seat belt-less cars without giving it a second thought”. Fast forward ten years and thanks to workplace misogyny, she’s out of a job, so tries her hand as a TV cook instead. It turns out that her passion for science translates brilliantly into dispensing lessons in life as she whisks onscreen, to the delight of millions of housewives. Entertainment with a kick.