Contemporary fiction Books 1240 results

Rose Ruane

'I have GULPED this novel down . . . Birding gave me everything I want in a novel, including a massive, cathartic cry at the end. Achingly poignant, yet ultimately hopeful, with a worn out seaside town I can see so clearly' Jennie Godfrey, author of The List of Suspicious Things 'A beautiful book full of stark truths . . . Lyrical and evocative, highly recommended' Evie King, ...

Hisashi Kashiwai

'Author Hisashi Kashiwai shows a tremendous amount of empathy for his characters as well as a gentle humor. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll open a delivery app' - Apple Books The Restaurant of Lost Recipes, translated from Japanese by Jesse Kirkwood, is the second book in the bestselling, mouth-watering Japanese sleuthing series for fans of Before the Coffee Gets Cold, and fo...

Maggie O'farrell

The Sunday Times Top Ten bestseller from the author of HAMNET and THE MARRIAGE PORTRAIT *400,000 copies sold* 'Insightful and emotionally raw' Daily Telegraph ______ When Lily moves into Marcus's flat, she is intrigued by signs of his recently departed ex-lover. A single dress left hanging in the wardrobe, a mysterious mark on the wall, the lingering odour of jasmine. Who w...

Emma Donoghue

Europe is racing towards the future. Steam travel is the emblem of progress; industry and invention are creating ever greater wealth and ever greater deprivation; and on an autumn day in 1895 a young woman determined to make her mark on history boards the Granville to Paris Express with a bomb.With her travel the train crew and her fellow passengers: the men who run the engine,...

Abdulrazak Gurnah

**Selected as a Book of the Summer 2025 by the Guardian, Financial Times, Economist and the BBC** The new novel from the winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature - 'a maestro' (Guardian). A captivating story of the intertwined lives of three young people coming-of-age in postcolonial East Africa 'A poignant portrait of love, friendship and betrayal' Guardian'Storytelling ...

Kazuo Ishiguro

THE MULTI-MILLION COPY BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES AND GUARDIAN BEST BOOK OF THE 21ST CENTURY 'Masterly.' Sunday Times 'A brilliantly executed book by a master craftsman.' MARGARET ATWOOD 'A page-turner and a heartbreaker, a tour de force of knotted tension and buried anguish.' TIME **Complete with a brand new introduction from the Nobel Prize-winning author.** A beautiful an...

Holly Brickley

Good songs come from love. Great songs come from heartbreak. ------------------------------------------------------- Picked by Cosmopolitan and RED as a best book of 2025. 'For fans of Daisy Jones and the Six and One Day, here is the will they, won't they love story of Percy and Joe ... Destined for the screen' i Paper ------------------------------------------------------- 'Te...

Cheon Seon-Ran

THE #1 KOREAN INSTANT BESTSELLER AND PRIZEWINNER WITH A UNIQUE NARRATOR Discover the original and uplifting sensation for fans of CONVENIENCE STORE WOMAN and KLARA AND THE SUN 'A stunning story of love, care and sacrifice' Bora Chung, author of Cursed Bunny 'Feels like a feather softly descending and tickling my heart' Reader review ***** 'A breath of fresh air' Reader review ...

Cristina Henriquez

ufeff'A gorgeous, sweeping epic' ANN NAPOLITANO 'A master of prose' WASHINGTON POST 'One of my favourite writers' ROXANE GAY 'Spectacular' JOANNE SEFTON 'I didn't want it to end' SARA SHERIDAN A breathtaking historical novel following the incredible construction of the Panama Canal and casting light on the unsung people who lived and laboured in its shadow - by acclaimed auth...

Holly Brickley

Good songs come from love. Great songs come from heartbreak. Picked by Cosmopolitan and RED as a best book of 2025. Picked by The Bookseller as Book of the Month for March 2025 ------------------------------------------- 'Tender as a ballad and pleasurable as a pop song' COCO MELLORS 'Clever and heart-wrenching and addictive' MIRANDA COWLEY HELLER 'An incredibly special book'...

David Szalay

'Brilliance on every page' Samantha Harvey 'Spare, visceral, urgent, compelling. This book doesn't f**k around' Gary Stevenson 'So brilliant and wise on chance, love, sex, money' David Nicholls 'How do I get out of a reading slump? This is the book to do that' Rhianna Dhillon, BBC Radio 4 Through chance, luck and choice, one man's life takes him from a modest apartment in Hung...

George. Orwell

Animal Farm is one of the most famous warnings ever written. Orwell's immortal satire - 'against Stalin' as he wrote to his French translator - can be read on many levels. With its piercing clarity and deceptively simple style it is no surprise that this novel is required reading for schoolchildren and politicians alike. This fable of the steadfast horses Boxer and Clover, the ...

Laila Lalami

'A gripping, Kafkaesque foray into an all-too-plausible future ... An elegant meditation on identity, motherhood, and what we sacrifice, unthinkingly, for the sake of convenience' JENNIFER EGAN 'Extraordinary ... More than just a political warning; the book is an exploration of the psyche itself, the strange ungovernable forces of fate and emotion that make us human' RUMAAN AL...

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

A sweeping story about four women whose lives are shaped by love, longing, and pain. Chiamaka is a Nigerian travel writer living in the US who is unlucky in love and coping with the pandemic on her own. Zikora, is a successful lawyer living in Washington DC who finds herself, unexpectedly, a heartbroken single mother. Omelogor is a scholar researching pornography for a Master's...

Ava Reid

FROM THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF LADY MACBETH AND A STUDY IN DROWNING 'There's one thing about Ava Reid; she doesn't miss.' Sasha Peyton Smith 'You'll start saving space on your shelf for Ava Reid.' Kendare Blake --------- The Last of Us meets The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes in this stand-alone dystopian romance about survival, sacrifice, and love that risks ever...

Kate Atkinson

THE #1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER THE NEW JACKSON BRODIE NOVEL, FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF SHRINES OF GAIETY 'How delicious to have Jackson Brodie back, this time in a story that starts off in Agatha Christie's world but soon becomes a landscape that could only have been crafted from the pen of the incomparable Kate Atkinson' Ian Rankin 'Christie would be proud . . . I defy...

Nussaibah Younis

'By normal, you mean like you? A slag with a saviour complex?' Nadia is an academic who's been disowned by her puritanical mother and dumped by her lover, Rosy. She decides to make a getaway, accepting a UN job in Iraq. Tasked with rehabilitating ISIS women, Nadia becomes mired in the opaque world of international aid, surrounded by bumbling colleagues. Sara is a precocious a...

Virginia Feito

NOW BEING ADAPTED FOR A MAJOR FILM STARRING MARGARET QUALLEY'Simmering with rage, propulsive and laugh-out-loud funny' CATRIONA WARD'Weird and wonderful' LUCY MANGAN, GUARDIAN Winifred Notty arrives at Ensor House prepared to play the perfect Victorian governess. She'll dutifully tutor her charges, Drusilla and Andrew, tell them bedtime stories, and only joke about eating chil...

Mizuki Tsujimura

THE UNFORGETTABLE MILLION-COPY JAPANESE BESTSELLER BY THE AUTHOR OF LONELY CASTLE IN THE MIRROR 'Recalls early Murakami. An enchanting read' FT ____________ Readers are obsessed: 'Every word resonated in my heart' ***** Reader review' 'Perfect for anyone who loves to think deeply about what they have just read' ***** Reader review 'Makes you ponder about death and about life' ...

Tash Aw

'A mesmerising tale. Both heartbreaking and joyful' MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM A radiant novel of the longing that blooms between two boys over the course of one summer - about family, desire, and what we inherit - from celebrated author Tash Aw. 'Shimmeringly intelligent and elegiacally intimate' YIYUN LI CHOSEN AS A TIMES, GUARDIAN and FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF 2025. When his grandfath...

Asako Yuzuki

WINNER OF WATERSTONES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024 THE NUMBER 1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER A BBC BETWEEN THE COVERS BOOK CLUB PICK 'A full-fat, Michelin-starred treat' THE SUNDAY TIMES 'Unputdownable, breathtakingly original' ERIN KELLY 'I have been glued to Asako Yuzuki's new novel Butter' NIGEL SLATER 'Compelling, delightfully weird' PANDORA SYKES The cult Japanese bestseller about a f...

Ursula K. Le Guin

She chose love. The price she paid was war. A stunning combination of history and mythology - 'an intriguing, luxuriously realised novel' FINANCIAL TIMES READERS on LAVINIA: 'Utterly compelling' ????? 'Clever twist' ????? 'Super' ????? 'Like Spartan Helen, I caused a war. She caused hers by letting men who wanted her take her. I caused mine because I wouldn't be given, wo...

Lucy Steeds

'A blaze of a book, poetic, passionate and quietly powerful' Daily Mail 'The year's most lauded debut novelist . . . A sultry, headily perfumed portrait of monstrous male egos and oppressed overlooked women . . . The Artist uncovers its secrets by stealth' Telegraph 'Dextrous and powerful . . . a hugely accomplished portrait of ambition and self-fulfilment' Guardian 'The Art...

Sanam Mahloudji

'The word-of-mouth breakout' STYLIST 'As funny as it is moving' GUARDIAN 'A joy of a debut' DAVID MITCHELL 'Mesmerising' MONICA ALI 'Glorious' SARAH WINMAN 'Funny and profound' TASH AW 'Wonderful' MARIAN KEYES A stunning debut novel following five women from three generations of a once illustrious Iranian family as their lives are turned upside down Meet the women of the Valiat...

Tony Tulathimutte

'A thrill for the sickos among us' JIA TOLENTINO 'Utterly inimitable' RAVEN LEILANI 'Unrelentingly brutal and gut-bustingly funny and spares no one' CARMEN MARIA MACHADO 'Symbiotically serious and funny' MEGAN NOLAN 'The funniest, darkest thing' ST VINCENT LONGLISTED FOR THE 2024 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN FICTION An audacious and original novel-in-stories following a cast of int...

Maggie Su

'Witty and wild' Harper's Bazaar 'A strange but uniquely beautiful concept of a love story that delves into care, compassion and what it is to be human' Stylist 'This is a sharp, funny and poignant look at what it means to connect with another being, and yourself' Weike Wang, New York Times A hilarious and moving debut novel about a young woman who decides to turn a sentient ...

A. Rae Dunlap

Death is only the beginning...?? ''Breathtaking ... A new talent [in] the field of gothic historical literature'' NEW YORK JOURNAL OF BOOKS ''Devilishly macabre ... As dark as a midnight graveyard'' PATRICE McDONOUGH ''Hauntingly gothic, intimately told, and wickedly, wonderfully grotesque'' MARIELLE THOMPSON *#1 BOOK OF THE MONTH - AMAZON EDITOR''S PICK* *A USA TODAY BESTSEL...

Sarah Handyside

'We've all done this. We know what it feels like. We can write it down.'A beautiful, razor-sharp debut by Sarah Handyside, Instructions for Heartbreak is a life-affirming novel about female friendship, self-love and how to survive a broken heart.What if heartbreak came with a manual?It starts with a late-night knock on the door. Thirty-something best friends Dee, Liv and Rosa s...

Edmund White

'Trousers down from page one ... NSFW' THE TIMES 'The gayest book ever written' HENRY HOKE, author of Open Throat 'Daddy's diary fully delivers' JEREMY ATHERTON LIN, author of Gay Bar --------------------------------------------With his trademark wit, candour and relentlessly perceptive eye, Edmund White, the beloved 85-year-old 'paterfamilias of queer literature' (New York Tim...

Molly Keane

We kept our heads above the morass, stifled screaming despairs only by the exercise of Good Behaviour. Behind the gates of Temple Alice, the aristocratic St Charles family is sinking into a state of decaying grace. Aroon, the unlovely daughter of the house, silently longs for affection - which she receives neither from her icy mother nor her hunting-obsessed father.The fierce f...