Contemporary fiction Books 1151 results

Fredrik Backman

"Britt-Marie can't stand mess. A disorganized cutlery drawer ranks high on her list of unforgivable sins. She begins her day at 6 a.m., because only lunatics wake up later than that. And she is not passive-aggressive. Not in the least. It's just that sometimes people interpret her helpful suggestions as criticisms, which is certainly not her intention. She is not one to judge o...

Edwidge Danticat

Discover the 20th Anniversary edition of Edwidge Danticat's unforgettable National Book Award Finalist story collection—complete with a new story.Arriving one year after the Haitian-American's first novel (Breath, Eyes, Memory) alerted critics to her compelling voice, these 10 stories, some of which have appeared in small literary journals, confirm Danticat's reputation as a re...

Colleen Hoover

A gripping tale of love, secrets, and betrayal perfect "for fans of Gillian Flynn" (Library Journal, starred review) from the beloved #1 New York Times bestselling author of Verity and It Ends with Us.When Fallon meets Ben, an aspiring novelist, their connection defies logic, sparking an instant bond that seems almost too perfect. But perfection often hides cracks, and as their...

Michael Palin

The third volume of Michael Palin's celebrated diaries. TRAVELLING TO WORK is a roller-coaster ride driven by the Palin hallmarks of curiosity and sense of adventure. Michael was not the BBC's first choice for the travel series AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS, but after its success, the public naturally wanted more. Palin, however, had other plans. There was his film AMERICAN FRI...

Emily St. John Mandel

How far would you go for someone you love? The Lola Quartet: Jack, Daniel, Sasha and Gavin, four talented musicians at the end of their high school careers. On the dream-like night of their last concert, Gavin's girlfriend Anna disappears. Ten years later Gavin sees a photograph of a little girl who looks uncannily like him and who shares Anna's surname, and suddenly he finds ...

Kenko Yoshida

'It is a most wonderful comfort to sit alone beneath a lamp, book spread before you, and commune with someone from the past whom you have never met...' Moonlight, sake, spring blossom, idle moments, a woman's hair - these exquisite reflections on life's fleeting pleasures by a thirteenth-century Japanese monk are delicately attuned to nature and the senses. Introducing Little B...

Nadia Hashimi

Afghan-American Nadia Hashimi's literary debut novel is a searing tale of powerlessness, fate, and the freedom to control one's own fate that combines the cultural flavor and emotional resonance of the works of Khaled Hosseini, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Lisa See.In Kabul, 2007, with a drug-addicted father and no brothers, Rahima and her sisters can only sporadically attend school, and...

Harper Lee

'Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird' Meet Scout, the narrator of this book. Her story is one of Deep South summers, fights at school and playing in the street. The spooky house of her mysterious neighbour, Boo Radley, sags dark and forbidding nearby. Her brother, Jem, and her friend, Dill, want to make Boo come out...

Han Kang

Yeong-hye and her husband are ordinary people. He is an office worker with moderate ambitions and mild manners; she is an uninspired but dutiful wife. The acceptable flatline of their marriage is interrupted when Yeong-hye, seeking a more 'plant-like' existence, decides to become a vegetarian, prompted by grotesque recurring nightmares. In South Korea, where vegetarianism is al...

Colleen Hoover

From bestselling author Colleen Hoover, comes a new novel about risking everything for love - and finding your heart somewhere between the truth and lies. Auburn Reed has her entire life mapped out. Her goals are in sight and there's no room for mistakes. But when she walks into a Dallas art studio in search of a job, she doesn't expect to find a deep attraction to the enigmati...

Liane Moriarty

From the bestselling author of the award-winning HBO sensation BIG LITTLE LIES comes a captivating story of family, love, and the secrets that refuse to stay in the past . . . One abandoned baby. Two sisters with a secret. A last chance to rewrite the past. NOW ON BBC ONE AND iPLAYER ______________ 70 years ago, the Munro family disappeared without a trace, leaving behind the...

Kurt Vonnegut

Since its original publication in 1968, Welcome to the Monkey House has been one of Kurt Vonnegut's most beloved works. This special edition celebrates a true master of the short-story form by including multiple variant drafts of what would eventually be the title story. In a fascinating accompanying essay, "Building the Monkey House: At Kurt Vonnegut's Writing Table," noted Vo...

Simon Rich

Having skewered the problems of falling in and out of love in 'The Last Girlfriend on Earth', Simon Rich's next book is another subject we can all relate to: parents and their kids. From the perils of raising an actual monster in Manhattan - it's pretty hard to find teachers who really understand the talents of a five-year-old with horns and a taste for blood - to Sell Out, the...

Paul Lynch

BY THE AUTHOR OF THE BOOKER PRIZE LONGLISTED PROPHET SONG. 'Paul Lynch is peerless' Donal Ryan, author of Strange Flowers Spring 1832: Donegal, north west Ireland. Coll Coyle wakes to a blood dawn and a day he does not want to face. The young father stands to lose everything on account of the cruel intentions of his landowner's heedless son. Although reluctant, Coll sets ou...

Rachel Kushner

* Shortlisted for the Folio Prize 2014* *Longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction* Reno mounts her motorcycle and sets a collision course for New York. In 1977 the city is alive with art, sensuality and danger. She falls in with a bohemian clique colonising downtown and the lines between reality and performance begin to bleed. A passionate affair with the scion of ...

Javier Marías

Every day, Maria Dolz stops at the same cafe. And every day she watches a couple following the same routine. Then one day they aren't there. She comes across a photograph of the man, lying stabbed in the street. When the woman returns with her children, who are then collected by a different man, a new light is shed on the death." ...

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

As teenagers in Lagos, Ifemelu and Obinze fall in love. Their Nigeria is under military dictatorship, and people are fleeing the country if they can. The self-assured Ifemelu departs for America. There she suffers defeats and triumphs, finds and loses relationships, all the while feeling the weight of something she never thought of back home: race. Obinze had hoped to join her,...

Mercè Rodoreda

Barcelona, early 1930s: Natalia is hesitant when a stranger asks her to dance at the fiesta in Diamond Square. But Joe is charming and forceful, and she takes his hand. They marry and soon have two children; for Natalia it is an awakening, both good and bad. When Joe decides to breed pigeons, the birds delight his son and daughter - and infuriate his wife. Then the Spanish Civi...

Sylvia Plath

I was supposed to be having the time of my life. When Esther Greenwood wins an internship on a New York fashion magazine in 1953, she is elated, believing she will finally realise her dream to become a writer. But in between the cocktail parties and piles of manuscripts, Esther's life begins to slide out of control. She finds herself spiralling into depression and eventually a ...

Thomas Pynchon

Discover Thomas Pynchon's brilliant writing in this postmodern literature classic. 'The greatest, wildest author of his generation' Guardian We could tell you the year is 1944, that the main character is called Tyrone Slothrop and that he has a problem because bombs are falling across Europe and crashing to the earth at the exact locations of his sexual conquests. But that does...

Philip Pullman

The Kinder- und Hausmärchen have been, Pullman reminds us, a staple for Western readers for the past two centuries. He impresses all the more by turning these classics into short, taut tales which seethe with dark energy and offer a new punch with their stripped down telling, their curtly delivered savagery and their mix of the comic and the macabre. ...

Maria Duenas

The inspiring international bestseller of a seemingly ordinary woman who uses her talent and courage to transform herself first into a prestigious couturier and then into an undercover agent for the Allies during World War II.Between youth and adulthood... At age twelve, Sira Quiroga sweeps the atelier floors where her single mother works as a seamstress. At fourteen, she quiet...

Julian Barnes

The story of a man coming to terms with the mutable past, Julian Barnes's new novel is laced with his trademark precision, dexterity and insight. It is the work of one of the world's most distinguished writers. Tony Webster and his clique first met Adrian Finn at school. Sex-hungry and book-hungry, they navigated the girl drought of gawky adolescence together, trading in affect...

James Joyce

Finnegans Wake is the book of Here Comes Everybody and Anna Livia Plurabelle and their family - their book, but in a curious way the book of us all as well as all our books. Joyce's last great work, it is not comprised of many borrowed styles, like Ulysses, but, rather, formulated as one dense, tongue-twisting soundscape. This 'language' is based on English vocabulary and synt...

John Boyne

Discover an extraordinary tale of innocence, friendship and the horrors of war. 'Some things are just sitting there, minding their own business, waiting to be discovered. Like America. And other things are probably better off left alone' Nine-year-old Bruno has a lot of things on his mind. Who is the 'Fury'? Why did he make them leave their nice home in Berlin to go to 'Out-W...

Paulo Coelho

Another stunning novel by the author of The Alchemist. Aleph marks a return to Paulo Coelho's beginnings. In a frank and surprising personal story, one of the world's most beloved authors embarks on a remarkable and transformative journey of self-discovery. Facing a grave crisis of faith, and seeking a path of spiritual renewal and growth, Paulo decides to start over: to travel...

Kingsley Amis

'His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as a mausoleum. During the night, too, he'd somehow been on a cross-country run and then been expertly beaten up by secret police. He felt bad.' Jix Dixon has a terrible job at a second-rate university. His life is full of things he could happily do without: the tedious and ridiculous Professor...

Roald Dahl

In the Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, seven tales of the bizarre and unexpected are told by the grand master of the short story, Roald Dahl. Enter a brilliant, sinister and wholly unpredictable world. Here you will find the suggestion of other-worldly goings on in a dark story about a swan and a boy; the surprising tale of a wealthy young wastrel who suddenly develops a remark...

Joan Didion

An engrossing examination of political and personal life in Central America, from the award-winning author of The Year of Magical Thinking. Writing with the economical swiftness and concentrated perception that has made her one of America's most distinguished writers, Joan Didion creates a gleaming novel of innocence and evil. Set in the ruined Central American nation of Boca...

David Lodge

'One of the very best English comic novelists of the post-war era' Time Out The plot lines of The Campus Trilogy, radiating from its hub at the redbrick University of Rummidge, trace the comic adventures of academics who move outside familiar territory. Beginning in the late 60s Changing Places follows the undistinguished English lecturer Philip Swallow and hotshot American pr...