Misadventures by Sylvia Smith (published by Canongate, £6.99 in UK)

A woman groped on the tube, a father and daughter with piles, a lodger never washing, a man setting fire to his wife, a student exploding a can of beans. This "ordinary" secretary , a straight woman to life's misadventures, had a surprise success with the publication of these oddly addictive tales dating from her east-end childhood in the 1950s to life on the dole in the 1990s. These banal, often embarrassing, sometimes cruel stories make Sylvia Smith the Henry Pooter of the 21st century as she adds meaning, humour and social comment to the most mundane of events.