Contemporary fiction Books 1499 results

Matt Haig

Canongate

"'Between life and death there is a library, and within that library, the shelves go on forever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be if you had made other choices... Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets?' A dazzling novel about all the choices that go into a life well liv...

Ali Smith

Ladybird

WINNER OF THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR FICTION 2021 LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE 2021 A once-in-a-generation series, Ali Smith's Seasonal quartet is a tour-de-force about love, time, art, politics, and how we live now. 'A maestra's portrait of her age . . . remarkable' Guardian In the present, Sacha knows the world's in trouble. Her brother Robert just is trouble. Their mother a...

Brit Bennett

Abacus

THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP BESTSELLER #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 'An utterly mesmerising novel..I absolutely loved this book' Bernardine Evaristo, winner of the Booker Prize 2019 'Epic' Kiley Reid, O, The Oprah Magazine The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just ...

Emma Cline

Vintage

'Taut, beautiful and savage' GuardianA man travels to his son's school to deal with the fallout of a violent attack and to make sure his son will not lose his college place. But what exactly has his son done? And who is to blame? A young woman trying to make it in LA, working in a clothes shop while taking acting classes, turns to a riskier way of making money but will be forc...

Carmen Laforet

Vintage

A modern Spanish classic, first published sixty years ago and translated into eighteen languages, now available in English with a preface by Mario Vargas Llosa. The novel conveys beautifully the spirit of war-torn, brutalized Barcelona. ...

Kurt Vonnegut

Ladybird

Dr Felix Hoenikker - a father of the atomic bomb - has another creation. Far more dangerous than that which levelled Hiroshima is ice-nine, a chemical that could freeze the world's oceans solid. The search for Hoenikker leads first to his three children, each in possession of the chemical, and then to the Republic of San Lorenzo, a mysterious island in thrall to a bizarre relig...

Lisa See

Simon & Schuster

The beautiful novel of female friendship and family secrets on a small Korean island, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane Mi-ja and Young-sook, two girls living on the Korean island of Jeju, are best friends that come from very different backgrounds. When they are old enough, they begin working in the sea with their village's all-fema...

Hisham Matar

Ladybird

FROM THE PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING AND MAN BOOKER-SHORTLISTED AUTHOR 'Sparkles with brilliant observations on art and architecture, friendship and loss' Guardian 'Everybody should get to spend a month with Mr. Matar, looking at paintings' Zadie Smith, Wall Street Journal, Books of the Year_______________________________________________ Matar was nineteen years old when his father ...

Adania Shibli

Fitzcarraldo

Minor Detail begins during the summer of 1949, one year after the war that the Palestinians mourn as the Nakba - the catastrophe that led to the displacement and expulsion of more than 700,000 people - and the Israelis celebrate as the War of Independence. Israeli soldiers capture and rape a young Palestinian woman, and kill and bury her in the sand. Many years later, a woman i...

Sophie Ranald

Sphere

'Absolutely brilliant... I devoured it in a few hours because it was impossible to put down... Be prepared for a rollercoaster of emotions... Had me laughing all the way through... Perfect.' Goodreads Reviewer Is this all there is? I scraped the last dregs of Caramel Chew Chew ice cream out of the bottom of the tub with my finger and licked it. It left a sticky smear on my pho...

Jessica Andrews

Hodder

WINNER OF THE PORTICO PRIZE 'A distinctive new voice for fans of 'Fleabag' or Sally Rooney' Independent 'Raw, intimate and authentic' The Sunday Times 'Gorgeous . . . Andrews's writing is transportingly voluptuous, conjuring tastes and smells and sounds like her literary godmother, Edna O'Brien.' New York Times When Lucy wins a place at university, she thinks London will un...

Édouard Louis

Vintage

Who Killed My Father is the story of a tough guy - the story of the little boy I never was. The story of my father. 'What a beautiful book' MAX PORTER In Who Killed My Father, douard Louis explores key moments in his father's life, and the tenderness and disconnects in their relationship. Told with the fire of a writer determined on social justice, and with the compassion of ...

Patrick Suskind

Ladybird

'Witty, stylish and ferociously absorbing' Observer Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is abandoned on the filthy streets of eighteenth-century Paris as a baby, but grows up to discover he has an extraordinary gift: a sense of smell more powerful than any other human's. Gradually he learns how to exploit this gift in the art of creating the most sublime perfumes in France. Yet there is o...

Taylor Jenkins Reid

Ballantine Books

#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • OVER TWO MILLION COPIES SOLD! A gripping novel about the whirlwind rise of an iconic 1970s rock group and their beautiful lead singer, revealing the mystery behind their infamous breakup—from the author of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Malibu Rising, and Carrie Soto Is BackREESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK • NOW AN EMMY AWARD-NOMINATED ORIGINAL STREAMING SERI...

Taylor Jenkins Reid

Penguin

"Daisy is a girl coming of age in L.A. in the late sixties, sneaking into clubs on the Sunset Strip, sleeping with rock stars, and dreaming of singing at the Whisky a Go-Go. The sex and drugs are thrilling, but it's the rock and roll she loves most. By the time she's twenty, her voice is getting noticed, and she has the kind of heedless beauty that makes people do crazy things....

Bernardine Evaristo

Penguin

THE SUNDAY TIMES 1# BESTSELLER & BOOKER PRIZE WINNER This is Britain as you've never read it.This is Britain as it has never been told. From Newcastle to Cornwall, from the birth of the twentieth century to the teens of the twenty-first, Girl, Woman, Other follows a cast of twelve characters on their personal journeys through this country and the last hundred years. They're eac...

Yoko Ogawa

Vintage

Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2020, an enthralling Orwellian novel about the terrors of state surveillance from one of Japan's greatest writers. 'Beautiful... Haunting' Sunday Times 'A dreamlike story of dystopia' Jia Tolentino __________ Hat, ribbon, bird rose. To the people on the island, a disappeared thing no longer has any meaning. It can be burned in t...

André Aciman

Faber & Faber

In Find Me, Aciman shows us Elio's father, Samuel, on a trip from Florence to Rome to visit Elio, now a gifted classical pianist. A chance encounter on the train upends Sami's visit and changes his life forever. Elio soon moves to Paris, where he, too, has a consequential affair, while Oliver, a New England college professor with a family, suddenly finds himself contemplating a...

Elif Shafak

Ladybird

"In the first minute following her death, Tequila Leila's consciousness began to ebb, slowly and steadily, like a tide receding from the shore. Her brain cells, having run out of blood, were now completely deprived of oxygen. But they did not shut down. Not right away...' For Leila, each minute after her death brings a sensuous memory: the taste of spiced goat stew, sacrificed ...

Margaret Atwood

Vintage

Fifteen years after the events of "The Handmaid's Tale", the Republic of Gilead maintains its grip on power, but there are signs it is beginning to rot from within. At this moment, the lives of three different women converge, with potentially explosive results.Two have grown up as part of the first generation to come of age in the new order. The testimonies of these women are j...

Min Jin Lee

Head Of Zeus

* The million-copy bestseller* * National Book Award finalist * * One of the New York Times's 10 Best Books of 2017 * * Selected for Emma Watson's Our Shared Shelf book club * 'This is a captivating book... Min Jin Lee's novel takes us through four generations and each character's search for identity and success. It's a powerful story about resilience and compassion' BARACK ...

Elena Ferrante

Europa Editions

From one of Italy's most acclaimed authors, comes this ravishing and generous-hearted novel about a friendship that lasts a lifetime. The story of Elena and Lila begins in the 1950s in a poor but vibrant neighbourhood on the outskirts of Naples. Growing up on these tough streets the two girls learn to rely on each other ahead of anyone or anything else, as their friendship, bea...

Carmen Maria Machado

Serpents Tail

In the Dream House is Carmen Maria Machado's engrossing and wildly innovative account of a relationship gone bad. Tracing the full arc of a harrowing experience with a charismatic but volatile woman, this is a bold dissection of the mechanisms and cultural representations of psychological abuse. Each chapter views the relationship through a different lens, as Machado holds even...

Natalie Haynes

Macmillan

NATIONAL BESTSELLERAn NPR Best Book of the Year"Gorgeous.... With her trademark passion, wit, and fierce feminism, Natalie Haynes gives much-needed voice to the silenced women of the Trojan War."--Madeline Miller, author of CirceShortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction, a gorgeous retelling of the Trojan War from the perspectives of the many women involved in its causes an...

Hilary Mantel

Harper

Winner of the Man Booker Prize 2012, the 2012 Costa Book of the Year and shortlisted for the 2013 Women's Prize for Fiction. An astounding literary accomplishment, Bring Up the Bodies is the story of this most terrifying moment of history, by one of our greatest living novelists. 'Our most brilliant English writer' Guardian Bring Up the Bodies unlocks the darkly glitteri...

Philippe Besson

Penguin

THE NO.1 FRENCH BESTSELLER 'Stunning and heart-gripping' André Aciman, author of Call Me by Your Name 'A beautiful, shattering novel about desire and shame, about passionate youth and the regrets of age' Olivia Laing, bestselling author of Crudo Just outside a hotel in Bordeaux, Philippe, a famous writer, chances upon a young man who bears a striking resemblance to his first lo...

Charles Bukowski

Canongate

Charles Bukowski lays bare Hollywood, revealing the absurdity and egotism behind the glamour. ...

Lucy Vine

Orion

'Totally relatable and hilarious - one of the best books I've read' - Heat'Laugh-out-loud funny. Truly, the Bridget Jones for our generation' - Louise O'NeillWhat do you get if you cross a dozen drunk hens with one shiny Butler in the Buff?Meet Lilah Fox. She's on the hen do from hell. Then she gets a message (44 of them, actually) from her best friend with big news: she's gett...

Rachel Cusk

Faber & Faber

Rachel Cusk's controversial, funny and moving account of her first few years of motherhood. ...

Fredrik Backman

Penguin

The captivating and moving follow-up to the international bestseller Beartown, from the 18 million copy bestselling author of Anxious People and A Man Called Ove 'I utterly believed in the residents of Beartown, and felt ripped apart by the events in the book' Jojo Moyes on Beartown________ Can a broken town survive a second tragedy?By the time the last goal is scored, someone ...