Contemporary fiction Books 1422 results

Nick Hornby

Nick Hornby's internationally bestselling first novel, available as a Penguin Essential for the first time.Do you know your desert-island, all-time, top five most memorable split-ups? Rob does. He keeps a list, in fact. But Laura isn't on it - even though she's just become his latest ex. He's got his life back, you see. He can just do what he wants when he wants: like listen to...

Chinelo Okparanta

One day in 1968, at the height of the Biafran civil war, Ijeoma's father is killed and her world is transformed forever. Separated from her grief-stricken mother, she meets another young lost girl, Amina, and the two become inseparable. Theirs is a relationship that will shake the foundations of Ijeoma's faith, test her resolve and flood her heart. In this masterful novel of fa...

Sarah Perry

London 1893. When Cora Seaborne's controlling husband dies, she steps into her new life as a widow with as much relief as sadness. Along with her son Francis - a curious, obsessive boy - she leaves town for Essex, in the hope that fresh air and open space will provide refuge. On arrival, rumours reach them that the mythical Essex Serpent, once said to roam the marshes claiming ...

David Szalay

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2016 MAN BOOKER PRIZE 'Increasingly looking like the masterpiece of British fiction from the past few years' Evening Standard Nine men. Each of them at a different stage of life, each of them away from home, and each of them striving - in the suburbs of Prague, beside a Belgian motorway, in a cheap Cypriot hotel - to understand just what it means to be ali...

Alice Walker

THE ICONIC CLASSIC, WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE ONE OF THE BBC '100 NOVELS THAT SHAPED OUR WORLD' 'A lush celebration of all that it means to be a black female. I love that The Color Purple doesn't try to soften its blows but is also courageous enough to hold on to a wonderfully affirming faith in possibility, in forgiveness and kindness and hope' Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 'T...

Gabriela Cabezón Cámara

The slums of Buenos Aires, the government, the mafia, the Virgin Mary, corrupt police officers, prostitutes, transvestites, thieves, drug dealers, cumbia music and debauchery all combine in this sweeping novel deemed to be a "revelation for contemporary literature" and "pure dynamite" (Andraes Neuman, author of Traveller of the Century & Talking to Ourselves, Pushkin Press). Sl...

Madeline Miller

**OVER 3 MILLION COPIES SOLD** WINNER OF THE ORANGE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION THE INTERNATIONAL SENSATION A SUNDAY TIMES AND NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 'Captivating' DONNA TARTT 'A book I could not put down' ANN PATCHETT 'Ravishingly vivid' EMMA DONOGHUE Greece in the age of heroes. Patroclus, an awkward young prince, has been exiled to the court of King Peleus and his perfect ...

Kristin Hannah

A #1 New York Times bestseller, Wall Street Journal Best Book of the Year, and soon to be a major motion picture, this unforgettable novel of love and strength in the face of war has enthralled a generation. With courage, grace, and powerful insight, bestselling author Kristin Hannah captures the epic panorama of World War II and illuminates an intimate part of history seldom s...

Fredrik Backman

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Man Called Ove returns with Beartown--an instant New York Times bestseller--about a forgotten town fractured by scandal, and the amateur hockey team that might just change everything. People say Beartown is finished. A tiny community nestled deep in the forest, it is slowly losing ground to the ever encroaching trees. But down by th...

Leonard Gardner

Stockton, California. When two men meet in the gym - the ex-boxer Billy Tully and the novice Ernie Munger - their brief sparring session sets in motion their hidden fates, initiating young Munger into the 'company of men' and luring Tully back into training. 'Fat City' tells of their anxieties and hopes, their loves and losses, and the stubborn determination of their manager, R...

Markus Zusak

The 10th-anniversary edition of the No. 1 international bestseller and modern classic beloved by millions of readers HERE IS A SMALL FACT - YOU ARE GOING TO DIE 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier. Liesel, a nine-year-old girl, is living with a foster family on Himmel Street. Her parents have been taken away to a concentration camp...

Walter Tevis

NOW A MAJOR NETFLIX SERIES starring Anya Taylor-Joy from Academy-Award nominee Scott Frank and BAFTA nominee Allan Scott 'Superb' Time Out 'Mesmerizing' Newsweek 'Gripping' Financial Times 'Sheer entertainment. It is a book I reread every few years - for the pure pleasure and skill of it' Michael Ondaatje 'Don't pick this up if you want a night's sleep' Scotsman When she is s...

Fredrik Backman

'A touching, sometimes funny, often wise portrait of grief' Kirkus Heartbreaking and hilarious in equal measure, this novel by the author of the New York Times bestselling phenomenon A Man Called Ove will charm and delight anyone who has ever had a grandmother. Everyone remembers the smell of their grandmother's house. Everyone remembers the stories their grandmother told the...

Liz Tuccillo

It's the most annoying question and they just can't help asking you. You'll be asked it at family gatherings, particularly weddings. Men will ask you on first dates. Therapists will ask you over and over again. It's the question that has no good answer. It's the question that when people stop asking it, makes you feel even worse: WHY ARE YOU SINGLE? 'A DELICIOUS FEAST OF A FIRS...

László Krasznahorkai

A circus, promising to display the stuffed body of the largest whale in the world, arrives in the dead of winter, prompting bizarre rumours. Word spreads that the circus folk have a sinister purpose in mind, and the frightened citizens cling to any manifestation of order they can find - music, cosmology, fascism. ...

Susan Abulhawa

From the author of the international bestseller Mornings in Jenin comes a powerful, passionate story of a family separated by conflict, and the tragedy they endure 'The story Susan Abulhawa tells in this marvellous novel is hard to bear but impossible to ignore ... precise, courageous, and dazzling' Teju Cole 'Gripping and deeply moving ... Suffering and resilience are diffic...

Elfriede Jelinek

One of Elena Ferrante's Top 40 Best Books by Women'One of my all time favourites' ELIZA CLARKErika Kohut teaches piano at the Vienna Conservatory by day. By night she trawls the city's porn shows while her mother, whom she loves and hates in equal measure, waits up for her. Into this emotional pressure-cooker bounds music student and ladies' man Walter Klemmer.With Walter as he...

Amor Towles

""In all ways a great novel, a nonstop pleasure brimming with charm, personal wisdom, and philosophic insight.this book more than fulfills the promise of Towles' stylish debut, Rules of Civility."--Kirkus Reviews (starred) From the New York Times bestselling author of Rules of Civility--a transporting novel about a man who is ordered to spend the rest of his life inside a luxur...

Ottessa Moshfegh

SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2016 SHORTLISTED FOR THE GORDON BURN PRIZE 2016 SHORTLISTED FOR THE CWA NEW BLOOD DAGGER AWARD 2016 Selected as a Book of the Year 2016 in The Times, Observer and Daily Telegraph Fully lives up to the hype. A taut psychological thriller, rippled with comedy as black as a raven's wing, Eileen is effortlessly stylish and compelling. - Robert ...

Hanya Yanagihara

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2015, A Little Life is an immensely powerful and heartbreaking novel of brotherly love and the limits of human endurance. 'A singularly profound and moving work ... Yanagihara takes you so deeply into the lives and minds of these characters that you struggle to leave them behind.' Fiona Wilson, }The Times{ Shortlisted for the Man Booker Priz...

Kazuo Ishiguro

*Kazuo Ishiguro's new novel Klara and the Sun is now available* The Romans have long since departed, and Britain is steadily declining into ruin. The Buried Giant begins as a couple, Axl and Beatrice, set off across a troubled land of mist and rain in the hope of finding a son they have not seen for years. They expect to face many hazards - some strange and other-worldly - bu...

Maria Duenas

Declared "a writer to watch" (Publishers Weekly, starred review), New York Times bestselling author María Dueñas pours heart and soul into this story of a woman who discovers the power of second chances.A talented college professor in Madrid, Blanca Perea seems to have it all. But her world is suddenly shattered when her husband of twenty years leaves her for another woman. Que...

Alan Hollinghurst

Young, gay, William Beckwith spends his time, and his trust fund, idly cruising London for erotic encounters. When he saves the life of an elderly man in a public convenience an unlikely job opportunity presents itself. The man is Lord Nantwich, a gay peer of the realm and in the market for a biographer. Reluctantly accepting the commission, Will receives the first of Nantwich'...

Rita Mae Brown

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY RITA MAE BROWN Molly Bolt is a young lady with a big character. Beautiful, funny and bright, Molly figures out at a young age that she will have to be tough to stay true to herself in 1950s America. In her dealings with boyfriends and girlfriends, in the rocky relationship with her mother and in her determination to pursue her career, she will fight for ...

Elif Shafak

Shortlisted for the 2005 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, Elif Shafak's The Flea Palace is a moving and highly original novel about a group of individuals who live in the same building and who together become embroiled in a mystery. By turns comic and tragic, The Flea Palace is an outstandingly original novel driven by an overriding sense of social justice. Bonbon Palace was ...

Larry Mcmurtry

The final novel in Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove quartet, Streets of Laredo is an exhilarating and achingly poignant tale of heroism and friendship, set in the American West. Captain Woodrow Call, Gus McCrae's old partner, once a youthful Texas Ranger, is now a bounty hunter hired to track down a brutal young Mexican bandit. Riding with Call are an Eastern city slicker, a wit...

Alice Munro

The only novel from bestselling author Alice Munro, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature Catching frogs, grazing knees, singing songs to save England from Hitler - that was childhood for Del Jordan, and now she's impatient for more. More than she can find in the encyclopedias sold by her mother, or in the half-understood innuendos dispensed by best friend Naomi, or in the wh...

Fredrik Backman

There is something about Ove. At first sight, he is almost certainly the grumpiest man you will ever meet. He thinks himself surrounded by idiots - neighbours who can't reverse a trailer properly, joggers, shop assistants who talk in code, and the perpetrators of the vicious coup d'etat that ousted him as Chairman of the Residents' Association. He will persist in making his dai...

Elif Shafak

From one of Turkey's most acclaimed and outspoken writers comes a novel about the tangled histories of two families. In her second novel written in English, Elif Shafak confronts her country's violent past in a vivid and colorful tale set in both Turkey and the United States. At its center is the "bastard" of the title, Asya, a nineteen-year-old woman who loves Johnny Cash and...

Anthony Doerr

WINNER OF THE 2015 PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTIONNATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALISTNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERWINNER OF THE CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR FICTION A beautiful, stunningly ambitious novel about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II 'Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close...