Contemporary fiction Books 1151 results

Kate Greathead

If you haven't had the misfortune of dating a George, you know someone who has. He's a young man brimming with potential but incapable of following through; sweet yet non-committal to his long-suffering girlfriend; distant from but still reliant on his mother; charmingly funny one minute, sullenly brooding the next. Here, Kate Greathead paints one particular, unforgettable Geor...

Solvej Balle

** AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER NOW **The third volume of the landmark European masterpiece about a woman lost in time. He remembers that we met yesterday.'A classic in the making.' Chetna Maroo'I'm counting the days until the next instalment.' Jon McGregor 'Absolutely, absolutely fantastic.' Karl Ove Knausgaard[Bokinfo]. ...

Jeanette Winterson

An invitation to change our lives and imagine the world anew through reading stories, in the new book from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit I can change the story because I am the story. With her execution looming, a woman is fighting for her life. Every night she tells a story. Every morning, she lives one more day. One Aladdin Two Lamps ...

Olivia Laing

'It is dangerous to want someone this much. He has always known it, from the very first night.' It is September 1974. Two men meet by chance in Venice. One is a young English artist, in panicked flight from London. The other is Danilo Donati, the magician of Italian cinema, the designer responsible for realising the spectacular visions of Fellini and Pasolini. Donati is in Ven...

Charlotte Mcconaghy

THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER'Breathtaking' HANNAH KENT'Spellbinding' Washington Post'A wildly talented writer' EMILY ST JOHN MANDELA family on a remote island. A mysterious woman washed ashore. A storm gathering force. Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny weather-lashed island that is home to the world's largest seed bank. As Shearwa...

Salman Rushdie

If old age was thought of as an evening, ending in midnight oblivion, they were well into the eleventh hour. 'Salman Rushdie is a genius' A.M. Homes Two quarrelsome old men in Chennai, India, experience private tragedy during national calamity. Revisiting the Bombay neighbourhood of Midnight's Children, a magical musician is unhappily married to a multibillionaire. In an Engl...

Eliza Dumais

"The characters are just as vivid as the setting . . . an addictive contemporary that will delight hopeless romantics and armchair travelers alike." —Publishers Weekly, starred review "For readers who want their love stories effervescent but also substantive, Grape Juice offers a glass worth savoring to the last drop." —The Masters Review A gorgeous, seductive fiction debut fr...

Shotaro Ikenami

It has been half a year since Akiyama Daijiro became a samurai; half a year since he left his father Kohei - the wisest swordsman in the land - to set up his own blade school by the cool of the river. Ever since, amid the swaying bamboo groves, he waits patiently for his first disciple. But his serenity is soon disrupted by the visit of a mysterious samurai with an unhonourable...

Jon Fosse

Jatgeir has come from Vaim to the big city, Bjørgvin, on his wooden boat, Eline, named after the long-lost love of his teenage years. He intends to buy a needle and thread to sew a button but he is cheated, twice. That night, while sleeping on his boat, he hears a familiar voice: unexpectedly, it is Eline, who wants to come home to Vaim with him. She leaves a note for her husba...

Baek Sehee

** PRE-ORDER THE SEQUEL I WANT TO DIE BUT I STILL WANT TO EAT TTEOKBOKKI NOW ** THE PHENOMENAL INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER TRANSLATED BY INTERNATIONAL BOOKER SHORTLISTEE ANTON HUR 'Will strike a chord with anyone who feels that their public life is at odds with how they really feel inside.' Red PSYCHIATRIST: So how can I help you? ME: I don't know, I'm - what's the word - de...

Jungeun Yun

The NEXT irresistibly uplifting read for fans of BEFORE THE COFFEE GETS COLD set in a magical laundry The #1 International word-of-mouth bestseller Heartwarming and inspirational, MARIGOLD MIND LAUNDRY will remind you there is always a reason to feel positive 'A life-changing novel' ***** reader review 'A book that makes me reflect on my life' ***** 'Even better when you rea...

Hwang Bo-Reum

From the internationally bestselling author of Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop comes a warm and reflective collection of essays about reading, language and life. Why do we read? What is it that we hope to take away from the intimate, personal experience of reading for pleasure? Rarely do we ask these profound, expansive questions of ourselves and of our relationship to th...

Claire-Louise Bennett

A woman confronts the unquenchable half-life of passion, in a new novel by one of our most acclaimed and inventive writers of fiction. ...

Chris Kraus

An unforgettable new novel from the author of the modern classic I Love Dick-- a witty, probing journey into a fractured America, culminating in the investigation of a teenage murder. On the Iron Range of northern Minnesota, at the end of the last decade, three teenagers shot and killed an older acquaintance after spending the day with him. In a cold, rundown town, the three yo...

Qntm / Qntm

'Astonishing' M. R. Carey, author of Infinity Gate 'Utterly unique, constantly surprising, genuinely unsettling... may very well take its place among the best sci-fi novels of the century so far.' Blake Crouch, New York Times bestselling author of Dark Matter 'Incredibly compelling' 5* reader review 'I cannot recommend this book enough' 5* reader review ---------- An antim...

Niamh Mulvey

'Extraordinary. I loved it' - Jessie Burton'Engrossing and moving . . . gives voice to so much that's unspoken about Ireland' - Emma Donoghue'Wonderfully compelling . . . haunting' - Joseph O'ConnorDelving into the lives of three generations of women, The Amendments is an extraordinary novel about love and freedom, belonging and rebellion - and about how our past is a vital pre...

K. J. Charles

The lush Gothic drama of Crimson Peak meets the murderous intrigue of Knives Out with an LGBTQIA+ love story to die for from award-winning author KJ Charles. WHO WILL SURVIVE LACKADAY HOUSE? When Zeb Wyckham is summoned to a wealthy relative's remote Gothic manor, he is horrified to find all the people he least wants to see in the world: his estranged brother, his sneering cous...

Thomas Pynchon

Milwaukee 1932, the Great Depression going full blast, repeal of Prohibition just around the corner, Al Capone in the federal pen, the private investigation business shifting from labour-management relations to the more domestic kind. Hicks McTaggart, a onetime strikebreaker turned private eye, thinks he's found job security until he gets sent out on what should be a routine ca...

Alison Espach

FROM THE MILLION-COPY BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE WEDDING PEOPLE Sally Holt has always been mystified by the things her older sister, Kathy, seems to have been born knowing. Kathy has answers for all of Sally's questions about life, about love and about Billy Barnes, the high school basketball star who runs the refreshment stand at the local pool. Billy's unfathomable, otherworl...

Gore Vidal

A literary cause célèbre when first published in 1948, Gore Vidal's now-classic The City and the Pillar stands as a landmark novel of the gay experience Jim Willard, former high-school athlete and clean-cut boy-next-door, is haunted by the memory of a romantic adolescent encounter with his friend Bob Ford. As Jim pursues his first love, in awe of the very same masculinity he p...

Hanya Yanagihara

Over one million copies soldToo many broken hearts to countThe 10th Anniversary Collector's Edition'A book unlike any other' The Guardian'This novel challenged everything I thought I knew about love and friendship' Dua LipaThis exclusive 10th anniversary edition of A Little Life features artwork by acclaimed artists RF. Alvarez and Linus Borgo, painted in response to the book, ...

Layne Fargo

To the world, they were a scandal. To each other, an obsession.NATIONAL BESTSELLER • An epic love story set in the sparkling, savage sphere of elite figure skating, starring a woman determined to carve her own path on and off the ice—now with bonus material including two never-before-seen chapters!"Part Wuthering Heights and part Daisy Jones & The Six, this novel is as brillian...

Kiran Desai

When Sonia and Sunny first glimpse each other on an overnight train, they are immediately captivated, yet also embarrassed by the fact that their grandparents had once tried to matchmake them, a clumsy meddling that only served to drive Sonia and Sunny apart. Sonia, an aspiring novelist who recently completed her studies in the snowy mountains of Vermont, has returned to her ...

T. J. Klune

'I loved it. It is like being wrapped up in a big gay blanket. Simply perfect' - V. E. Schwab, Sunday Times bestselling author of Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil A cosy, enchanting story about the profound experience of discovering an unlikely family in an unexpected place. The House in the Cerulean Sea is an uplifting, heart-warming queer fantasy from TJ Klune, a Sunday T...

Claire Adam

In the heart-aching new novel from the author of the award-winning Golden Child, a mother searches for the daughter she left behind a lifetime ago. ...

Patricia Lockwood

A WATERSTONES BEST BOOK OF SEPTEMBER 2025 THE NEW NOVEL FROM THE AUTHOR OF NO ONE IS TALKING ABOUT THIS, WINNER OF THE DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE AND THE ONLY BOOK SHORTLISTED FOR BOTH THE 2021 BOOKER PRIZE AND WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION The world might be in disarray, but for one young woman, the very weave of herself seems to have loosened. Time and memories pass straight through he...

Mona Awad

The highly-anticipated follow up to the viral sensation Bunny, a brilliantly written, laugh-out-loud funny, dark and delirious novel set in the Bunny-verse - a world that Margaret Atwood declared 'soooo genius'. In the cult classic novel Bunny, Samantha Heather Mackey, a lonely outsider student at a highly selective MFA program in New England, was first ostracised and then sed...

Andrew Miller

? Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2025 ? ? Winner of the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2025 ? ? Winner of the Winston Graham Historical Prize 2025 ? 'One of the best writers at work today' TELEGRAPH 'Has an uncanny beauty and depth... A novel that travels into the darkest places of history and the strangest corners of the human mind' GUARDIAN 'Money, class, love...

Jung Chang

THE LONG-AWAITED SEQUEL TO WILD SWANS, THE MULTI-MILLION COPY INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLING SENSATION Jung Chang's Wild Swans was a book that defined a generation, an epic personal history of Jung, her mother and grandmother - 'three daughters of China'. The book opens in 1909 with her grandmother's birth - and foot-binding - when China was under the last emperor, moving through ...

Ian Mcewan

'One of the finest writers alive' Sunday Times 2014- A great poem is read aloud and never heard again. For generations, people speculate about its message, but no copy has yet been found. 2119- The lowlands of the UK have been submerged by rising seas. Those who survive are haunted by the richness of the world that has been lost. Tom Metcalfe, a scholar at the University of ...