Contemporary fiction Books 1422 results

Aisling Rawle

"Lily--a bored, beautiful twenty-something--wakes up on a remote desert compound, alongside nineteen other contestants competing on a massively popular reality show. To win, she must outlast her housemates to stay in the Compound the longest, while competing in challenges for luxury rewards like champagne and lipstick, plus communal necessities to outfit their new home, like fo...

Min Jin Lee

**FROM THE ACCLAIMED AUTHOR OF PACHINKO** 'This big, beguiling book has all the distinguishing marks of a Great American Novel..' The Times 'Exquisitely evoked.' USA Today 'Ambitious and accomplished.' New York Times 'Could have been penned by Austen herself.' Daily Mail 'An insight into the secret world of Korean America.' Observer Casey Han is a strong-willed, Queens-bred d...

Shida Bazyar

A captivating, polyphonic novel of one family's flight from and return to Iran. 1979. Behsad, a young communist revolutionary, fights with his friends for a new order after the Shah's expulsion. He tells of sparking hope, of clandestine political actions, and of how he finds the love of his life in the courageous, intelligent Nahid. 1989. Nahid lives her new life in West German...

Tom Newlands

Shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize 2025 'Absolutely loved this. Funny and heartbreaking in equal measure' DOUGLAS STUART, Man Booker Prize-winning author of Shuggie Bain 'Glorious . . . so unusual, so moving, so memorable' GUARDIAN 'Tom Newlands may make several prize lists for his stunning debut' OBSERVER 'This isn't just a great first novel; it's a great novel. And Cora...

Fredrik Backman

The beautiful new novel that will make you laugh and cry, from the global bestselling author of Anxious People and A Man Called Ove. Fredrik Backman returns with an unforgettably funny, deeply moving tale of four teenagers whose friendship creates a bond so powerful that it changes a complete stranger's life twenty-five years later... * ONE OF GOODREADS READERS' MOST ANTICIPAT...

Alana S. Portero

'I urge you to read Bad Habit' PEDRO ALMODÓVAR 'Had me hooked from the first page ... Savour every word' DUA LIPA 'The book that everyone is reading' NEW YORK TIMES 'Sublime' ÉDOUARD LOUIS A SERVICE95 BOOK CLUB PICK Beautifully written and told in an irresistible voice, Bad Habit is a powerfully moving coming-of-age novel following a young trans woman in 1980s Madrid. An unna...

Matt Haig

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER'A beautiful novel full of life-affirming wonder and imagination' BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH'What looks like magic is simply a part of life we don't understand yet . . .'When retired Maths teacher Grace Winters is left a run-down house on a Mediterranean island by a long-lost friend, curiosity gets the better of her. She arrives in Ibiza with a one-way tick...

Elizabeth Strout

THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES AND NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER FROM THE PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING, BOOKER-SHORTLISTED AUTHOR SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE 2025 'Stunning, deeply felt and profoundly intelligent' Guardian It's autumn in Maine, and the town lawyer Bob Burgess has become enmeshed in an unfolding murder investigation, defending a lonely, isolated man accused of killing hi...

Stephen Fry

Troy has fallen. After 10 years of war, the Greeks make their way back to their own lands - but what homes now await them? Agamemnon must return to his wife Clytemnestra, who has been nursing her rage since he sacrificed their daughter to the gods for a favourable wind. Her revenge will know no bounds. Meanwhile, Odysseus has angered the god Poseidon and he is cursed to wander...

Michelle Tea

The 25th anniversary edition of Michelle Tea's classic coming-of-age story, now with a foreword by Maggie Nelson, award-winning author of The Argonauts ...

Jodi Picoult

They Never Met. But Their Lives Are Bound by a Secret, a Sacrifice, and a Story That Demands to Be Told... The #1 New York Times Bestseller 'Her best one yet' JOJO MOYES 'A timeless classic' CHRIS WHITAKER '[An] inspiring work of feminist literature' ELLE - New York playwright Melina Green has never seen her work on stage. In a man's world, only through a lie can she get ...

Barbara Demick

In 2000, a Chinese woman gave birth to twins in a bamboo grove, trying to avoid detection by the government because she already had two daughters. Two years later, an American couple travelled to Shaoyang to adopt a Chinese toddler they thought had been abandoned. Their understanding had been that China's brutal one-child policy was leading to hundreds of abandoned girls, despe...

Jeremy Atherton Lin

A Book of the Year for The New Yorker and Electric Lit and a Time Out 10 Best Books of 2025 From the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of Gay Bar comes a rule-breaking, genre-busting story of outlaw love. It's 1996, and Jeremy, a young American, has met the British boy of his dreams -- just as, amid a media frenzy, US Congress prepares the Defense of Marriage ...

Fredrik Backman

#1 New York Times bestselling author Fredrik Backman returns with an unforgettably funny, deeply moving tale of four teenagers whose friendship creates a bond so powerful that it changes a complete stranger's life twenty-five years later. Most people don't even notice them--three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most famous paintings...

Allegra Goodman

A young woman and her lover are marooned on an island in a deeply moving novel of love, faith and survival, for readers of Ariel Lawhon and Anthony Doerr's All The Light We Cannot See In sixteenth-century France, as the heiress to an aristocratic fortune, Marguerite is destined for a life of privilege. Then she is orphaned, and her enigmatic and volatile guardian squanders h...

Taylor Jenkins Reid

AN EPIC NOVEL SET AGAINST THE BACKDROP OF THE 1980S SPACE SHUTTLE PROGRAM ABOUT THE EXTRAORDINARY LENGTHS WE GO TO LIVE AND LOVE BEYOND OUR LIMITS. In the summer of 1980, astrophysics professor Joan Goodwin begins training to be an astronaut at Houston's Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates: Top Gun pilot Hank Redmond; mission specialists J...

Taylor Jenkins Reid

'Thrilling ... heartbreaking ... uplifting. Taylor Jenkins Reid's novel Atmosphere is the fast-paced, emotionally-charged story of one ambitious young woman, finding both her voice and her passion ... I loved it' KRISTIN HANNAH, author of The Women 'NASA? Space missions? The 80s? This is a collection of all the things I love. Great story, excellent research and accuracy, and a...

Daniel Kehlmann

An artist's life, a pact with the devil, a novel about the dangerous illusions of the silver screen. G.W. Pabst, one of cinema's greatest, perhaps the greatest director of his era: when the Nazis seized power he was filming in France, to escape the horrors of the new Germany he flees to Hollywood. But under the blinding California sun, the world-famous director suddenly looks ...

Claire Messud

LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2024 'An epic family odyssey' Guardian, Book of the Day Over seven decades, from 1940 to 2010, the Cassar family is buffeted by conflict, struggling to find its feet - separated in the chaos of World War II, running from a complicated colonial homeland, and, after Algerian independence, without a homeland at all. This Strange Eventful History ...

Sarah Moss

'The achievement of a lifetime' - Jessie Burton, author of The House of Fortune 'A book of lasting pleasures' - Eleanor Catton, Booker Prize-winning author of Birnam Wood 'A powerful and beautifully written story of family, friendship and identity' - Guardian Just out of school and teetering on the brink of adulthood, Edith is sent alone to rural Italy. Her task is simple: sup...

Thomas Grattan

Longlisted for the 2024 Joyce Carol Oates Prize. Named one of the Best Books of 2024 by Glamour and one of them's Best LGBTQ+ Books of 2024. RuPaul and Eric Cervini's Allstora Book Club Pick for June."A novel that should become the touchstone of a whole generation." —Edmund WhiteIt's 2001, and twenty-four-year-old Gordon—handsome, sensitive, and eager for direction—takes a bus ...

Lisa Ridzén

WINNER OF THE SWEDISH BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2024 SHORTLISTED for ADLIBRIS BEST DEBUT and for BEST FICTION of the Year 'The kind of book you give to someone when you're really trying to say "I've been thinking about you" but don't know how.' Fredrik Backman, bestselling author of A Man Called Ove 'A book that will echo in your soul' Garth Stein 'As if Fredrik Backman's Ove h...

Ocean Vuong

THE MILLION-COPY BESTSELLER AND TIKTOK SENSATION A Most Anticipated Book in Guardian, Financial Times, Sunday Times Style, BBC, GQ, New York Times and AnOther Desperate college dropout Hai is ready to make a devastating choice until a chance meeting with elderly widow Grazina changes the course of his life, in this achingly beautiful novel about chosen family and second chanc...

Allen Bratton

'One of the most exciting new novels' FINANCIAL TIMES 'Very funny... Its deeply felt pages flew by' GUARDIAN 'Sexy, compassionate, uncommonly imaginative: I've never read anything quite like it' Oisín McKenna, author of Evenings and Weekends London, 2014. Hal Lancaster - twenty-two, gay, Catholic, chops lines of cocaine with his myWaitrose card - is the reluctant heir of his...

William Rayfet Hunter

AN OBSERVER BEST NEW NOVELIST 2025 WINNER OF THE #MERKY BOOKS 2022 NEW WRITERS' PRIZE 'This summer's hottest read' SUNDAY TIMES 'You won't want to put it down' BRITISH VOGUE 'Sticky, twisting and dangerous' REBECCA K REILLY It's summer and a young man walks through the gates of a luxurious mansion in the South of France. At the dinner table, the Blake siblings await him- ...

Claire Lynch

No one need know about her mother's deviation A mother following her heart A father with the law on his side A child caught in the middle 'I'll be thinking about it forever' Barbara Kingsolver 'Powerful ...smart and often heartbreaking' Guardian 'A brilliant book... Full of heart, sympathy and sadness' Sara Pascoe 'I was caught up from the first page' Clare Chambers 'I am in ...

Ocean Vuong

THE MILLION-COPY BESTSELLER AND TIKTOK SENSATION A Most Anticipated Book in Guardian, Financial Times, Sunday Times Style, BBC, GQ, New York Times and AnOther Desperate college dropout Hai is ready to make a devastating choice until a chance meeting with elderly widow Grazina changes the course of his life, in this achingly beautiful novel about chosen family and second chanc...

Jeanine Cummins

From the internationally bestselling author of American Dirt, comes a classic novel of a family in crisis 'A riveting tale of three generations, this is storytelling at its finest' JOHN BOYNE, author of The Heart's Invisible Furies 'I loved this book... a big, sweeping story of family and identity, and what it means to belong' EDEL COFFEY, author of Breaking Point and In Her ...

Mai Mochizuki

Your NEXT BIG READ if you love BEFORE THE COFFEE GETS COLD 'Lose yourself in a world of talking cats with this cult bestseller' GLAMOUR 'Feel-good fiction for those needing a redirection' BOOKLIST NO.1 BESTSELLER TRANSLATED INTO 20 LANGUAGES Under a glittering full moon, a Kyoto coffee shop with no fixed location or hours appears only where and when it's needed. It's run by...

Jessica Stanley

'LIKELY TO BE ONE OF THE BIG LOVE STORIES OF 2025' THE SUNDAY TIMES, Books to Look Out for in 2025 'I DIDN'T WANT IT TO END' LIANE MORIARTY, internationally bestselling author of BIG LITTLE LIES 'AS WARM AS A DAVID NICHOLLS NOVEL' STYLIST 'JOYFUL . . . I LOVED IT!' GOOD HOUSEKEEPING, Books to Watch in 2025 'CLEVER, JOYFUL AND SO FUNNY' NINA STIBBE, author of LOVE, NINA 'DEEPLY ...