Contemporary fiction Books 1499 results

Kurt Vonnegut

Vintage

'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...

Sarah Anderson

Jonathan Cape

Meet Natalie: she hates work, but turns out she's great at labour 'A delightfully sharp, dynamic debut' KILEY REID 'Unputdownable' JULIE BUNTIN The job: deliver seven healthy babies in ten years. In exchange: Natalie's every need attended to, and her labour (figurative and literal) for once generously compensated. And during what Natalie comes to call her 'fallow' periods, s...

Cristina Rivera Garza

Bloomsbury

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...

Lotte Jeffs

Abacus

Named a BEST BOOK OF THE MONTH by the Sunday Times Style, Apple Books, Prima, Cosmopolitan, i NEWS and Stylist 'I loved This Love' Elizabeth Day 'Astute, tender and utterly joy-filled. This is the love story we've been waiting for' Elle 'This is a book I will return to again and again . . . It's beautiful' Jennie Godfrey When Mae and Ari meet their final year at the Univers...

Nikita Gill

Simon & Schuster

Beginning a generation before Hekate, Styx sings the story of the goddess of the underworld river that bears her name... The firstborn child of Titans, Styx is revered as the first of her kind - until she is eclipsed and forgotten amid her scores of siblings, the Oceanids and the Potamoi. Coming of age in a world simmering with paranoia and unspoken fear of Kronos, the volatile...

Banana Yoshimoto

Faber & Faber

Kitchen juxtaposes two tales about mothers, transsexuality, bereavement, kitchens, love and tragedy in contemporary Japan. It is a startlingly original first work by Japan's brightest young literary star and is now a cult film. When Kitchen was first published in Japan in 1987 it won two of Japan's most prestigious literary prizes, climbed its way to the top of the bestseller l...

Ben Lerner

Granta

Included in the BEST OF GRANTA launch list for 2023: this story of a young American abroad and adrift is a hilarious, intelligent cult classic, from one of the most celebrated contemporary novelists. ...

Elena Medel

Pushkin Press

New in paperback: an audacious, critically acclaimed debut about working-class women's livesacross two generations, heralding a new European literary star ...

Shelby Van Pelt

Bloomsbury

**THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER**OVER HALF A MILLION COPIES SOLD WORLDWIDEBBC RADIO 2 BOOK CLUB PICKOVER 29,000 5 STAR REVIEWSGOOD HOUSEKEEPING BEST BOOKS OF 2022GLAMOUR BEST BOOKS OF 2022'Full of heart and humour . . . I loved it.' Ruth Hogan'Will stay with you for a long time.' Anstey Harris'I defy you to put it down once you've started' Cynthia D'Aprix SweeneyAfter T...

Satoshi Yagisawa

Manilla

It is the pride and joy of her uncle Ojisan, who has devoted his life to the bookshop since his wife Momoki left him five years earlier. When Takano's boyfriend reveals he's marrying someone else, she reluctantly accepts her eccentric uncle's offer to live rent-free in the tiny room above the shop.[Bokinfo]. ...

Han Kang

Penguin

Book of the Year 2023 according to New Yorker, TIME magazine, Kirkus A powerful novel of the saving grace of language and human connection, from the celebrated author of The Vegetarian. 'Breathtaking . . . She is simply my favourite living writer to read, and think with, and see the world with' Max Porter In a classroom in Seoul, a young woman watches her Greek language teac...

Bret Easton Ellis

Penguin

The Sunday Times Bestseller 'A full-spectrum triumph' - Guardian A sensational new novel from the bestselling author of Less Than Zero and American Psycho that tracks a group of privileged Los Angeles high school friends as a serial killer strikes across the city. His first novel in 13 years, The Shards is Bret Easton Ellis at his inimitable best. LA, 1981. Buckley College...

Jenny Erpenbeck

Granta

Berlin. 11 July 1986. They meet by chance on a bus. She is a young student, he is older and married. Theirs is an intense and sudden attraction, fuelled by a shared passion for music and art, and heightened by the secrecy they must maintain. But when she strays for a single night he cannot forgive her and a dangerous crack forms between them, opening up a space for cruelty, pun...

Elena Ferrante

Penguin

"Rarely have the foundations upon which our ideas of motherhood and womanhood rest been so candidly questioned. This compelling novel tells the story of one woman's headlong descent into what she calls an ""absence of sense"" after being abandoned by her husband." ...

Alice Winn

Penguin

WINNER OF THE WATERSTONES NOVEL OF THE YEAR PRIZE 2023 'If you haven't read it, you're missing out' Bonnie Garmus, bestselling author of LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY 'One of the best debuts I've read in recent years . . . please rush out and buy it' ELIZABETH DAY ______________________ In 1914, war feels far away to Henry Gaunt and Sidney Ellwood. They're too young to enlist, and an...

Chloe Michelle Howarth

Verve Books

** Shortlisted for the 2023 Nero Book Award for Debut Fiction ** ** An Evening Standard 'One to Watch in 2023 ** ** An Independent 'Best Romantic Summer Reads' ** ** A Book of the Month pick for Diva, Irish Examiner, Novellic & Sainsbury's Magazine ** ** A Most Anticipated pick for PinkNews & Queer on the Street ** It's the early 1990s, and in the Irish village of Crossmore...

Mona Awad

Simon & Schuster

From the critically acclaimed author of Bunny comes a horror-tinted, gothic fairy tale about a lonely dress shop clerk whose mother's unexpected death sends her down a treacherous path in pursuit of youth and beauty. Can she escape her mother's fateand find a connection that is more than skin deep? For as long as she can remember, Belle has been insidiously obsessed with her sk...

Dolly Alderton

Penguin

Every relationship has one beginning. This one has two endings. Andy loves Jen. Jen loved Andy. And he can't work out why she stopped. Now he is... Without a home Waiting for his stand-up career to take off Wondering why everyone else around him seems to have grown up while he wasn't looking Set adrift on the sea of heartbreak at a time when everything he thought he knew about ...

Miye Lee

Wildfire

The first book of Miye Lee's whimsical and moving duology, translated from the Korean language by Sandy Joosun Lee.[Bokinfo]. ...

Irene Solá

Granta

A ferociously imaginative, polyphonic debut: amid the rugged beauty of the Pyrenees, the mountains' inhabitants - both human and non-human - bear witness to the tragedies that befall one family ...

James Mcbride

Penguin

In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighbourhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by...

Kaveh Akbar

Picador

'I will carry this story, and the people in it, with me for the rest of my life' JOHN GREEN, author of The Fault in Our StarsA BOOK OF THE YEAR IN: The New York Times Time Observer USA Today Vanity Fair NPR The Atlantic Electric Lit Vox The New Yorker 'Smart, dazzling, different . . . This book is thrilling.' Ann Patchett, author of Tom Lake 'Playful, soulful, kaleidoscopic, ...

Kristin Hannah

Panmacmillan

An instant Sunday Times bestseller and soon to be a major motion picture! 'Utterly absorbing . . . A triumph' - Taylor Jenkins Reid, bestselling author of Daisy Jones & The Six 'Stuns with sacrifice. Uplifts with heroism' - Bonnie Garmus, bestselling author of Lessons in Chemistry 'Powerful and compelling. Never has a novel of war metamorphosed so profoundly into a story of ...

Mohsin Hamid

Ladybird

The Reluctant Fundamentalist is Mohsin Hamid's thrillingly provocative international bestseller, available as a Penguin Essential for the first time. Shortlisted for the Man Booker prize in 2007 Now a major film directed by Mira Nair and starring Kate Hudson and Kiefer Sutherland 'Excuse me, sir, but may I be of assistance? Ah, I see I have alarmed you. Do not be frightened by ...

Samantha Harvey

Vintage

**FROM THE AUTHOR OF 2024 BOOKER PRIZE WINNING ORBITAL** **SHORTLISTED FOR THE WALTER SCOTT PRIZE 2019** 15th century Oakham, in Somerset; a tiny village cut off by a big river with no bridge. When a man is swept away by the river in the early hours of Shrove Saturday, an explanation has to be found: accident, suicide or murder? The village priest, John Reve, is privy to many...

Rosanna Pike

Ladybird

THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER: TUDOR ENGLAND AS YOU'VE NEVER SEEN IT BEFORE, WITH A HEROINE YOU'LL NEVER FORGET 'Crisp, transportive, uplifting. The fresh, irreverent voice of Tibb Ingleby is sheer brilliance. I loved it!' BONNIE GARMUS, author of LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY --- Born a vagabond, Tibb Ingleby has never had a roof of her own. But her mother has taught her that ...

Emily Slapper

Harper

'I hope the lights are on when we finally have sex so he can see how young I am compared to his wife.' Readers are loving Everyone I Know is Dying: 'An important, electric portrayal of mental health' ????? 'Brutally relatable' ????? 'One of the most powerful books I've ever read' ????? 'Brilliantly written by an outstanding new literary talent' ????? 'Words struggle to expres...

Doris Lessing

Harper

The Nobel Prize-winner Doris Lessing's first novel is a taut and tragic portrayal of a crumbling marriage, set in South Africa during the years of Arpartheid. Set in Rhodesia, 'The Grass is Singing' tells the story of Dick Turner, a failed white farmer and his wife, Mary, a town girl who hates the bush and viciously abuses the black South Africans who work on their farm. But ...

Leigh Bardugo

Ladybird

AN INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'A richly imagined, intricate tale of magic and intrigue' DEBORAH HARKNESS, #1 bestselling author of A Discovery of Witches 'Riveting... Leigh Bardugo's characters are so three dimensional you want to reach through the page' DIANA GABALDON, #1 bestselling author of Outlander 'A wonderful, transporting ride through history... a deeply romant...

Madeleine Gray

Penguin

A BEST BOOK OF 2024 IN STYLIST, DAILY MAIL, THE i PAPER, IRISH TIMES, SUNDAY TIMES AND RED SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2025 BRITISH BOOK AWARDS DEBUT FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR 'ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS YOU WILL READ ALL YEAR' ELIZABETH DAY 'BRILLIANT. WHAT A WRITER' NIGELLA LAWSON 'INCREDIBLY FUNNY' CAITLIN MORAN 'WONDERFUL' GILLIAN ANDERSON 'THIS YEAR'S SORROW AND BLISS' DAILY MAIL Hera...