Clare Chambers

Chambers published six novels through the nineties and early two thousands, was dropped by her publisher, and spent roughly ten years working as an editor and assuming she was finished. Small Pleasures arrived in 2020, was longlisted for the Women's Prize and outsold everything before it put together. It is set in 1957 and turns on a suburban newspaper investigating a woman who says her daughter was born without a father, a claim the paper takes seriously enough to test.