Contemporary fiction Books 1151 results

Haruki Murakami

Toru Okada's cat has disappeared. His wife is growing more distant every day. Then there are the increasingly explicit telephone calls he has recently been receiving. As this compelling story unfolds, the tidy suburban realities of Okada's vague and blameless life, spent cooking, reading, listening to jazz and opera and drinking beer at the kitchen table, are turned inside out,...

Haruki Murakami

A narrative particle accelerator that zooms between Wild Turkey Whiskey and Bob Dylan, unicorn skulls and voracious librarians, John Coltrane and Lord Jim. Science fiction, detective story and post-modern manifesto all rolled into one rip-roaring novel, Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is the tour de force that expanded Haruki Murakami's international following. ...

James Baldwin

"Nothing but the darkness, and all around them destruction, and before them nothing but the fire--a bastard people, far from God, singing and crying in the wilderness!" First published in 1953, Baldwin's first novel is a short but intense, semi-autobiographical exploration of the troubled life of the Grimes family in Harlem during the Depression. ...

Zadie Smith

Chosen by the Guardian as one of the Best Books of the 21st Century From the MAN BOOKER PRIZE- and WOMEN'S PRIZE-SHORTLISTED author of Swing Time, On Beauty and Grand Union'BELIEVE THE HYPE' The Times The international bestseller and modern classic of multicultural Britain - an unforgettable portrait of LondonOne of the most talked about debut novels of all time, White Teeth is...

George Orwell

George Orwell's paean to the end of an idyllic era in British history, Coming Up for Air is a poignant account of one man's attempt to recapture childhood innocence as war looms on the horizon. George Bowling, forty-five, mortgaged, married with children, is an insurance salesman with an expanding waistline, a new set of false teeth - and a desperate desire to escape his dreary...

Chinua Achebe

Okonkwo is the greatest warrior alive, famous throughout West Africa. But when he accidentally kills a clansman, things begin to fall apart. Then Okonkwo returns from exile to find missionaries and colonial governors have arrived in the village. With his world thrown radically off-balance he can only hurtle towards tragedy. Chinua Achebe's stark novel reshaped both African and ...

Jun'ichiro Tanizaki

This Is An Essay On Aesthetics By One Of The Greatest Japanese Novelists. The Text Ranges Over Architecture, Jade, Food, Toilets, And Combines An Acute Sense Of The Use Of Space In Buildings, As Well As Perfect Descriptions Of Lacquerware Under Candlelight And Women In The Darkness Of The House Of Pleasure. The Essay Forms A Classic Description Of The Collision Between The Shad...

Graham Greene

In a prison in Occupied France one in every ten men is to be shot. The prisoners draw lots among themselves - and for rich lawyer Louis Chavel, it seems that his whole life has been leading up to an agonizing and crucial failure of nerve. Hysterical with a sense of injustice, he offers to barter everything he owns for someone to take his place. ...

Bernhard Schlink

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • Hailed for its coiled eroticism and the moral claims it makes upon the reader, this mesmerizing novel is a story of love and secrets, horror and compassion, unfolding against the haunted landscape of postwar Germany."A formally beautiful, disturbing and finally morally devastating novel." —Los Angeles TimesWhen he falls ill on his way home from schoo...

Bruce Chatwin

As Seen on BBC Between the Covers This is Chatwin's unforgettable novel of a man in war-torn Communist Prague, driven to protect his collection of porcelain figurines at any cost. Bruce Chatwin's bestselling novel traces the fortunes of the enigmatic and unconventional hero, Kaspar Utz. Despite the restrictions of Cold War Czechoslovakia, Utz asserts his individuality through...

Ian Mcewan

The setting is Berlin. Into this divided city, wrenched between East and West, between past and present; comes twenty-five-year-old Leonard Marnham, assigned to a British-American surveillance team. Though only a pawn in an international plot that is never fully revealed to him, Leonard uses his secret work to escape the bonds of his ordinary life -- and to lose his unwanted in...

Enid Blyton

Spook trains in the middle of the night! And they seem to vanish into thin air - but where do they go? The Famous Five are on to it. But the discovery of an unusual underground tunnel system, and a train-service, has them puzzled. If they follow the tracks, will they solve the mystery? ...

Toni Morrison

Discover Toni Morrison's most iconic work in this Pulitzer-prize winning novel that exemplifies her powerful and important place in contemporary American literature. 'An American masterpiece' AS Byatt It is the mid-1800s and as slavery looks to be coming to an end, Sethe is haunted by the violent trauma it wrought on her former enslaved life at Sweet Home, Kentucky. Her dead ba...

Mario Vargas Llosa

Set in an isolated, run down community in the Peruvian Andes, Vargas Llosa's riveting novel tells the story of a series of mysterious disappearances involving the Shining Path guerrillas and a local couple performing cannibalistic sacrifices with strange similarities to the Dionysian rituals of ancient Greece. Part-detective novel and part-political allegory, it offers a panora...

Paulo Coelho

On a legendary road across Spain, travelled by pilgrims of San Tiago, we find Paulo Coelho on a contemporary quest for ancient wisdom. This journey becomes a truly initiatory experience, and Paulo Coelho is transformed forever as he learns to understand the nature of truth through the simplicity of life. 'The Pilgrimage' has a very important place in the work of Paulo Coelho, n...

Margaret Atwood

The Republic of Gilead offers Offred only one function: to breed . If she deviates, she will, like dissenters, be hanged at the wall or sent out to die slowly of radiation sickness. But even a repressive state cannot obliterate desire - neither Offred's n ...

Alice Munro

These are stories in which women are central. They are about lovers found and lovers lost but lodged still in the subconscious, about secrets that change lives, about people whose histories are opening out or coming to an end. Their power accumulates layer by layer as time and reality shift, identities become uncertain, truths surface. A heart patient on a trip to her doctor on...

Thomas Pynchon

The first novel from the great, incomparable Thomas Pynchon. The quest for V. sweeps us through sixty years and a panorama of Alexandria, Paris, Malta, Florence, Africa and New York. But who, where or what is V.? Bawdy, sometimes sad and frequently hilarious, V. as become a modern classic. 'The greatest, wildest, most infuriating author of his generation' Ian Rankin, Guardian...

Naguib Mahfouz / Najib Ma?Fu?

THE ACCLAIMED INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER BY THE NOBEL PRIZE WINNING AUTHOR. 'A masterpiece' - The Times'The Arab Tolstoy' - Simon Sebag Montefiore'Shamelessly entertaining' - Guardian'Luminous' - New York TimesA sweeping and evocative portrait of both a family and a country struggling to move toward independence in a society that has resisted change for centuries. Set against the...

Donna Tartt

Truly deserving of the accolade Modern Classic, Donna Tartt's cult bestseller The Secret History is a remarkable achievement - both compelling and elegant, dramatic and playful.'A haunting, compelling and brilliant piece of fiction' The Times'So irresistible and seductive it's almost a guilty pleasure' GuardianUnder the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group...

Kurt Vonnegut

'Black satire of the highest polish' Guardian Whilst awaiting trial for war crimes in an Israeli prison, Howard W. Campbell Jr sets down his memoirs on an old German typewriter. He has used such a typewriter before, when he worked as a Nazi propagandist under Goebbels. Though that was before he agreed to become a spy for US military. Is Howard guilty? Can a black or white verd...

Kurt Vonnegut

Long, long ago, as he researched into the origin of species, Charles Darwin had been inspired by the creatures of the Galapagos. Now, a million years on, the new inhabitants of the islands - the human survivors of the 'Nature Cruise of the Century' - have quietly evolved into sleek, furry creatures with flippers, and small brains. All other forms of humankind have ceased to exi...

J.d. Salinger

The "original, first-rate, serious, and beautiful" short fiction (New York Times Book Review) that introduced J. D. Salinger to American readers in the years after World War II, including "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" and the first appearance of Salinger's fictional Glass family.Nine exceptional stories from one of the great literary voices of the twentieth century. Witty, urb...

Emily Usher

'A glittering exploration of love's many faces - Wild Ground aches with hard-won hope and bruised tenderness' Colin Walsh, author of Kala'An intoxicating debut from a compelling new voice' Adelle Stripe, author of Black Teeth and a Brilliant SmileWhen Neef was twelve, her mother moved them out of Leeds and into her boyfriend's flat miles away. Resentful and unwelcome in their s...

Cristina Rivera Garza

Translated by Sarah Booker and Robin Myers 'A labyrinthine masterpiece' New York Times'A subversive twist on the traditional serial killer story' TIME 'Obsessive, dreamlike and hallucinatory' Layla Martinez A city is always a cemetery. When a professor named Cristina stumbles upon the corpse of a man in a dark alley, she finds a stark warning on the brick wall beside the bod...

Solà

"Nestled among rugged mountains, in a remote part of Catalonia frequented by wolf hunters, bandits, deserters, ghosts, beasts and demons, sits the old farmhouse called Mas Clavell. Inside, an impossibly old woman lies on her deathbed while family and caretakers drift in and out. All the women who have ever lived and died in that house are waiting for her to join them. They are ...

Eric Puchner

"Cece is in love. She has arrived early at her in-laws' beautiful lake house in Salish, Montana, to finish planning her wedding to Charlie, a cardiac anaesthesiologist with a brilliant future. When Charlie asks Garrett, his best friend from college, to officiate, Cece can't imagine anyone less appropriate for the task. Garrett doesn't believe in love, much less marriage. But as...

Tomihiko Morimi

SHORTLISTED FOR THE PEN TRANSLATION PRIZE "Beautiful and satisfying."--Tor.com "A treat."--New York Times Book Review An unfulfilled college student hurtles through four parallel realities to explore the what-might've-been and the what-should-never-be in this Groundhog Day meets The Midnight Library-esque novel from one of Japan's most popular authors, now available in a conv...

Joyce Carol Oates

Here is an extraordinary and arresting novel about a women's asylum in the 19th century, and a terrifying doctor who wants to change the world. `Simply the most consistently inventive, brilliant, curious and creative writer going' GILLIAN FLYNN'Delightfully disturbing' iNEWS'A blood-soaked, gothic nightmare' FINANCIAL TIMESFrom one of our most accomplished storytellers, an extr...

Maggie O'farrell

The Sunday Times no. 3 bestselling novel from author of HAMNET and THE MARRIAGE PORTRAIT *Over 330,000 copies sold* Shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award 'A complex, riveting novel of love and hope that grips at the heart' The Sunday Times _____ A reclusive former film star living in the wilds of Ireland, Claudette Wells thinks nothing of firing a gun if strangers get too ...