Contemporary fiction Books 1240 results

Laurent Mauvignier

Buried deep in rural France, little remains of the isolated hamlet of the Three Lone Girls, save a few houses and a curiously assembled quartet: Patrice Bergogne, inheritor of his family's farm; his wife, Marion; their daughter, Ida; and their neighbour, Christine, an artist. While Patrice plans a surprise for his wife's fortieth birthday, inexplicable events start to disrupt t...

Bret Easton Ellis

Incisive, controversial and startlingly funny, The Rules of Attraction examines a group of affluent students at a small, self-consciously bohemian, liberal-arts college on America's East Coast. Lauren, who changes the man in her bed even more often than she changes course, is dating Victor but sleeping with Sean. Sean - cool, ambivalent and deeply cynical - might be in love wit...

Taylor Jenkins Reid

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo "u200bTouching and powerful...Reid masterfully grabs hold of the heartstrings and doesn't let go. A stunning first novel."u200bPublishers Weekly (starred review) ...

Hanya Yanagihara

The No.1 Sunday Times bestseller from the author of A LITTLE LIFE To Paradise is a bold, brilliant novel spanning three centuries and three different versions of the elusive idea of utopia; driven by Yanagihara's understanding of our desire to protect those we love - partners, lovers, children, friends, family and even our fellow citizens - and the pain that ensues when we can...

Elle Cosimano

'I absolutely adored it!' ? ? ? ? ? 'These books are a blast!' ? ? ? ? ? 'My all-time favourite book character' ? ? ? ? ? Meet Finlay Donovan: - Single mum - Floundering crime writer - Accidental hit-woman Ever since she was overheard talking about her new book - and someone got the wrong end of the stick - she's been busier than ever, living the life of murder and mayhem usu...

Yasunari Kawabata

"If the ending is doomed at the beginning of the encounter, will you still pursue the snowflakes falling in your heart in vain?" Kawabata Yasunari's beautiful masterpiece carved over 13 years Nobel Prize for Literature, the first person in Japanese literature, Kawabata Literature A masterpiece that is second to none Liu Ziqian, a famous Japanese literary translator, uses conden...

Pedro Mairal

'A searing tale of seduction and betrayal, both wryly comic and deeply serious' Sigrid Nunez, National Book Award-winning author of The Friend 'Intimate, irreverent, fast-paced and raw' Sunday Times Lucas Pereyra, an unemployed writer in his forties, embarks on a day trip from Buenos Aires to Montevideo to pick up a fifteen thousand dollar advance in cash. This small fortune ...

Claire Keegan

It is 1985, in an Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal and timber merchant, faces into his busiest season. As he does the rounds, he feels the past rising up to meet him - and encounters the complicit silences of a people controlled by the Church. ...

Karl Ove Knausgaard

Nine lives will be changed forever in the exhilarating new novel from the international bestseller. 'Addictive' Daily Telegraph 'Knausgaard retains the ability to lock you, as if in a tractor beam, into his storytelling' New York Times One long night in August, Arne and Tove are staying with their children in their summer house in southern Norway. Kathrine, a priest, is flyi...

Anthony Doerr

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'A dazzling epic of love, war and the joy of books' Guardian ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVOURITE BOOKS OF 2021 A NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST 'Wonderment and despair, love and destruction and hope - all find their place in its sumptuously plotted pages' Observer 'There is magic in this place ... You just have to sit and breathe and wait and it will find ...

Claire Keegan

It is a hot summer in rural Ireland. A girl is sent to live with foster parents on a farm, not knowing when she will return home. In the strangers' house, she finds a warmth and affection she has not known before and slowly begins to blossom in their care. But in a house where there are meant to be no secrets, she discovers how fragile her idyll is ...

Kristin Hannah

The Bestselling Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick 'One of the greatest storytellers of our time' - Delia Owens, author of Where the Crawdads Sing Soon to be a major motion picture, Kristin Hannah's The Nightingale has captured the hearts of millions of readers becoming a number one bestseller across the world. It is a heart-breakingly beautiful novel that celebrates the resili...

Cormac Mccarthy

Adapted by the Coen Brothers into an Academy Award winning film, No Country For Old Men is a dark and suspenseful novel from Cormac McCarthy, author of The Road.Llewelyn Moss, hunting antelope near the Rio Grande, stumbles upon a transaction gone horribly wrong. Finding bullet-ridden bodies, several kilos of heroin, and a caseload of cash, he faces a choice - leave the scene as...

Cormac Mccarthy

The post-apocalyptic modern classic with an introduction by novelist John Banville. In a burned-out America, a father and his young son walk under a darkened sky, heading slowly for the coast. They have no idea what, if anything, awaits them there. The landscape is destroyed, nothing moves save the ash on the wind and cruel, lawless men stalk the roadside, lying in wait. Attemp...

Neil Blackmore

'Witty, original and clever, this tale of Jacobean power and lust is a blast' THE TIMES, Best Historical Fiction of the Year Francis Bacon, philosopher, politician, writer, is an outsider at the court of King James I. He is clever but not aristocratic, has ambition but no money. So when his political enemies form a deadly alliance against him, centred around the King's poisonou...

Virginia Feito

'Nastily good fun' Metro SET TO BECOME A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING ELIZABETH MOSS Shirley Jackson meets Ottessa Moshfegh meets My Sister the Serial Killer in a brilliantly unsettling and darkly funny debut novel full of suspense and paranoia George March's latest novel is a smash hit. None could be prouder than Mrs. March, his dutiful wife, who revels in his accolade...

Elizabeth Strout

Lucy Barton is a successful writer living in New York, navigating the second half of her life as a recent widow and parent to two adult daughters. A surprise encounter leads her to reconnect with William, her first husband - and longtime, on-again-off-again friend and confidante. Recalling their college years, the birth of their daughters, the painful dissolution of their marri...

Deborah Rodriguez

THE INTERNATIONALLY BESTSELLING NOVEL. A TOP TEN SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER. HALF A MILLION COPIES SOLD IN THE UK. 'If you love The Kite Runner you'll love The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul' Look magazine In a little coffee shop in one of the most dangerous places on earth, five very different women come together . . . SUNNY, the proud proprietor, who needs an ingenious plan - a...

Elif Shafak

A rich, magical new novel from the Booker-shortlisted author of 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World - available for pre-order now Two teenagers, a Greek Cypriot and a Turkish Cypriot, meet at a taverna on the island they both call home. The taverna is the only place that Kostas and Defne can meet in secret, hidden beneath the blackened beams from which hang garlands of ...

Colleen Hoover

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The #1 New York Times bestselling author of It Ends with Us--whose writing is "emotionally wrenching and utterly original" (Sara Shepard, New York Times bestselling author of the Pretty Little Liars series)--delivers a tour de force novel about a troubled marriage and the one old forgotten promise that might be able to save it. Quinn and ...

Amanda Craig

Thirty-nine, divorced, jobless: Benedick Hunter is going nowhere, heading in the exact opposite direction he expected. So when he comes across a children's book that his mother, Laura, wrote, he decides that her life and work - haunting stories replete with sinister woods, wicked witches and brave girls who battle giants - hold the key to finding out why his own life is such a ...

Mick Herron

*Now a major TV series starring Gary Oldman* 'The new king of the spy thriller' Mail on Sunday From the Intelligence Service purgatory that is Slough House, where disgraced spies are sent to see out the dregs of their careers, Jackson Lamb is on his way to Oxford, where a former spook has turned up dead on a bus. Dickie Bow was a talented streetwalker once, good at following ...

Michelle Zauner

One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2021The New York Times bestseller from the Grammy-nominated indie rockstar Japanese Breakfast, an unflinching, deeply moving memoir about growing up mixed-race, Korean food, losing her Korean mother, and forging her own identity in the wake of her loss, which brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had ...

Lucia Berlin

CELEBRATING 50 YEARS OF PICADOR BOOKSThe world just goes along. Nothing much matters, you know? I mean really matters. but then sometimes, just for a second, you get this grace, this belief that it does matter, a whole lot.With an introduction from Lydia DavisLucia Berlin's stories in A Manual for Cleaning Women make for one of the most remarkable unsung collections in twentiet...

Melissa Broder

Rachel is twenty-four, a lapsed Jew who has made calorie restriction her religion. By day, she maintains an illusion of control by way of obsessive food rituals. At night, she pedals nowhere on the elliptical machine. Then Rachel meets Miriam, a young Orthodox Jewish woman intent upon feeding her. Rachel is suddenly and powerfully entranced by Miriam - by her sundaes and her bo...

Kristin Hannah

'A powerful, stirring, wind-swept tale set in Depression-era America that makes your heart break and soar in equal measure.' - Matt Haig, author of The Midnight Library The Four Winds, an instant New York Times number one bestseller and Richard and Judy Book Club Pick, is a deeply moving story about the strength and resilience of women and the bond between mother and daughter,...

Imogen Binnie

Maria, a trans woman in her thirties, is going nowhere. She spends her aimless days working in a New York bookstore, trying to remain true to a punk ethos while drinking herself into a stupor and having a variety of listless and confusing sexual encounters. After her girlfriend cheats on her, Maria steals her car and heads for the Pacific, embarking on her version of the Great ...

Alan Hollinghurst

Celebrating Fifty Years of Picador Books There was the soft glare of the flash - twice - three times - a gleaming sense of occasion, the gleam floating in the eye as a blot of shadow, his heart running fast with no particular need of courage as he grinned and said, 'Prime Minister, would you like to dance?' In the summer of 1983, twenty-year-old Nick Guest moves into an attic...

Hollie Mcnish

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'An intoxicating mixture of poetry and prose, Slug is a taboo-busting delight' SCOTSMAN 'One of the best poets we have' MATT HAIG 'She writes with honesty, conviction, humour and love' KAE TEMPEST The bestselling collection of poetry and prose from the Ted Hughes Award-winning author of Nobody Told Me From Finnish saunas and soppy otters to grief,...

Jennifer Saint

As Princesses of Crete and daughters of the fearsome King Minos, Ariadne and her sister Phaedra grow up hearing the hoofbeats and bellows of the Minotaur echo from the Labyrinth beneath the palace. The Minotaur - Minos's greatest shame and Ariadne's brother - demands blood every year. When Theseus, Prince of Athens, arrives in Crete as a sacrifice to the beast, Ariadne falls in...