Contemporary fiction Books 1240 results

Amanda Prowse

From the bestselling author of The Girl in the Corner and Swimming to Lundy, comes a hopeful and inspiring story about the possibilities that await when you dare to start again. If you're given another chance at love, shouldn't you take it? Enya's life has become small. Her husband's death has left her bereft, and though she's only in her early fifties, she's happiest looking a...

Yoko Ogawa

On sleepless nights, I open the matchbox and reread the story of the girl who gathered shooting stars. 'I read Mina's Matchbox like a besotted child, enraptured, never wanting it to end.' RUTH OZEKI, author of The Book of Form and Emptiness After the death of her father, twelve-year-old Tomoko is sent to live for a year with her uncle in the coastal town of Ashiya. It is a ye...

Cal Speet

'Oh, by the way, Gabe. I know what happened with Seamus! Everybody at Kiss does.' How did Mitchell know any details about my breakup? I felt my jaw tense. Why did everybody at the third most popular bar in The Village also know? Did Seamus tell them? My heart rate switched from a pulse to a vibration, and my limbs stiffened. Were they all talking about it and laughing at me? Di...

Jamil Jan Kochai

A finalist for the National Book Award - a luminous new collection of stories from a young writer with 'a singular, resonant voice, an American teenager raised by Old World Afghan storytellers' (New York Times) **FINALIST FOR THE 2022 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION** **NAMED A BOOK OF THE YEAR 2022 BY THE NEW YORKER AND THE ATLANTIC** PEN/Hemingway finalist Jamil Jan Kochai b...

Sanaka Hiiragi

Sanaka Hiiragi's The Lantern of Lost Memories is a healing, uplifting Japanese novel about family, love, loss and humanity, and what life is really about. One photograph, one treasured memory, one chance to go back . . . Imagine waking up in a cosy photo studio in the mountains, between this world and the next. A kind man hands you a hot drink and a stack of photographs, one ...

Daphne Du Maurier

A COMING-OF-AGE TALE OF ADVENTURE AND LOVE, FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF REBECCA 'She wrote exciting plots . . . a writer of fearless originality' GUARDIAN 'One of the last century's most original literary talents' DAILY TELEGRAPH 'Amazingly vivid' SATURDAY REVIEW 'The iron of the bridge felt hot under my hand. The sun had been upon it all day. Gripping hard with my hands...

Irvine Welsh

Choose life. Choose love? The Trainspotting crew fall for rave and romance in the blazing new novel from the No.1 bestseller. * A Guardian and Standard 'Book to Look Out For' 2025 * It is the late 1980s, the closing years of Thatcher's Britain. For the Trainspotting crew, a new era is about to begin - a time for hope, for love, for raving. Leaving heroin behind and separated...

Benjamin Wood

A mesmerising portrait of a young man confined in by his class and the ghosts of his family's past, dreaming of artistic fulfilment. It confirms Benjamin Wood as an exceptional talent in British literature. 'A huge talent' Hilary Mantel 'Benjamin Wood is a magnificent writer and I intend to read everything he has written' Douglas Stuart Thomas lives a slow, deliberate life w...

Marina Yuszczuk

A breakout, genre-blurring novel from one of the most exciting new voices of Latin America's feminist gothic. Across two different time periods, two women confront fear, loneliness, mortality, and a haunting yearning that will not let them rest. In the nineteenth century, a vampire arrives from Europe to the coast of Buenos Aires, on the run from the Church. She must adapt, int...

Mary Renault

'Mary Renault is a shining light' HILARY MANTEL 'Mary Renault's portraits of the ancient world are fierce, complex and eloquent' MADELINE MILLER The sequel to The King Must Die. The Bull from the Sea continues the story of the hero Theseus after his return from Crete. Having freed the city of Athens from the terrible tribute demanded by the ruler of Knossos - the sacrifice o...

August Thompson

A 2025 Lamda Literary Award finalist • Longlisted for The Center For Fiction's 2024 First Novel Prize • Named a Best Book of 2024 by Elle, Vogue, and Debutiful"This new novel is a real heart-squeezer. Beautiful, one of a kind and perfectly titled." —Matt Berninger, The National"Anyone's Ghost is about so very many things: the pains of growing up, friendship and pining, drugs, s...

Alison Espach

The #2 New York Times bestseller A Read With Jenna book club pick 'UTTERLY CHARMING' PANDORA SYKES 'WICKEDLY FUNNY' JENNY JACKSON 'A PERFECT NOVEL' CATHERINE NEWMAN 'THE BEST READ OF THE YEAR SO FAR' THE TIMES It's a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at a grand beachside hotel wearing her best dress and least comfortable shoes. Immediately sh...

Alan Hollinghurst

A 'Book of the Year' for The Guardian, The Observer, The Times, Daily Express, The Spectator, The Financial Times, Daily Telegraph, New Statesman and the I Featured on Radio 4's 'Book at Bedtime' 'The best novel that's been written about contemporary Britain in the past ten years. It's funny but desperately moving too' - The Sunday Times Alan Hollinghurst, the Booker Prize-w...

A. J. West

Set in the buried streets of Georgian London and the outrageous underworld of the molly houses, a carpenter hiding a double life searches for a traitor who is betraying the secrets of the mollies. The visceral, raucous, tender and utterly enchanting historical thriller by the award-winning author of The Spirit Engineer. 'Heartbreaking, beautiful, lyrical. I was captivated fr...

Aisling Rawle

** A BBC RADIO 2 BOOK CLUB PICK ** 'Lord of the Flies meets Love Island - dark, thrilling, and delightfully twisted' LOUISE O'NEILL 'So gripping and propulsive that it beats reality TV at its own game. Why watch TV when Aisling Rawle does it better?' TORREY PETERS 'THIS is the book to read this summer... 10 out of 10' CECELIA AHERN --------------------------------------------...

Aisha Muharrar

'THE FUNNIEST BOOK YOU'LL EVER READ ABOUT GRIEF' MAGGIE SHIPSTEAD 'PERFECTLY CAPTURES THE MESSINESS, HEARTACHE AND BEAUTY OF GRIEF' RED MAGAZINE 'For years I'd known exactly who I was to Gabe. It was a long story but I could tell it confidently, like a bartender sharing a recipe for her signature cocktail. Now things were so jumbled, I didn't know where to begin...' When Juli...

Rufi Thorpe

SOON TO BE A MAJOR A24 TV SHOW STARRING NICOLE KIDMAN AND ELLE FANNING 'Gorgeous' Pandora Sykes 'Inappropriately funny' The Times 'I was immediately hooked' Jacqueline Wilson 'Enormously entertaining and lovable' Nick Hornby, New York Times 'Very funny' India Knight, Sunday Times STYLE 'Funny' Celeste Ng 'A gas!' RuPaul As the child of an ex-pro wrestler and a Hooters w...

Garth Greenwell

Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction 'My book of the year . . . Rarely has illness made for such a compelling read' - John Boyne, author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas 'Marvelous: exceptionally vivid, real, and true' - Colm Tóibín, author of Long Island 'Fundamentally about the beauty of life' - Alice Winn, author of In Memoriam 'Exquisite. Utterly mesmerizing' - Ma...

Xenobe Purvis

'Extraordinary . . . clever, strange and beautifully written' THE TIMES 'Prompts thoughts of both THE CRUCIBLE and THE VIRGIN SUICIDES . . . Purvis is an exquisitely accomplished wordsmith.' DAILY TELEGRAPH 'A taut, tense tale, impeccably told' FINANCIAL TIMES 'Feverish, finely wrought and unforgettable.' DAILY MAIL 'An unflinchingly strange and savage novel - a rare and tw...

Renato Cisneros

Matías Roeder, a young man with an Italian father, German mother, and a sense of stagnation he is desperate to escape from, hops a boat from Peru to New York with vague plans but a firm intention to never go home again. This familiar story of migration--the odd jobs, the romances, the Bowery bars--goes sideways when Japan bombs Pearl Harbor and he joins the US Air Force as part...

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...

August Thompson

'This new novel is a real heart-squeezer' - Matt Berninger of The National 'Genuinely powerful' - The Irish Times 'Electric' - Vogue IT TOOK THREE CAR CRASHES TO KILL JAKE The first crash. New Hampshire. Teenagers Theron and Jake meet in the heat of the summer. Jake is everything Theron wants to be - hot, cool, interesting. Drunk in Jake's van on their last night together, th...

Aysegül Savas

Asya and Manu are looking at apartments, envisioning their future in a foreign city. Removed from the web of family and its obligations, what traditions and rituals should they establish together? As they dream about the possibilities of each new listing, Asya, a documentary filmmaker, spends her days gathering footage from the neighbourhood park like an anthropologist obser...

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. ...

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...

Kim Jiyun

*THE HEARTWARMING KOREAN BESTSELLER* *A new book from Shanna Tan, translator of Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop* Situated at the heart of a rapidly gentrifying district of Seoul, the Yeonnam-dong Smiley Laundromat is a place where the extraordinary stories of ordinary residents unfold. It is already a haven of tranquility and reflection for locals, but when someone leave...

Sheena Kalayil

Secrets, lies and love as the DDR collapses. It is 1989, and in a small Baltic city in East Germany, the Deutsche Demokratische Republik, three young people from vastly different backgrounds become friends. Armando is a factory worker from Mozambique, Lolita is a medical student from India, and Theo is an East Berliner who dreams of being a writer.When Armando and Lolita make a...

Lauren Elkin

'Scaffolding is like a perfect French movie of a novel...elegant, original and often very funny' Kevin Barry, New Statesman Books of the Year Two couples inhabit the same apartment in Paris, almost fifty years apart... 2019. When David takes a job in London, Anna is left alone in their Paris apartment. It's August and the city is deserted but when Clémentine moves into the bu...

Annie Garthwaite

JULY 24 TIMES BOOK OF THE MONTHFrom the critically acclaimed author of CECILY comes an intimate and gripping novel perfect for fans of Hilary Mantel, Madeline Miller and Maggie O'Farrell. 'A triumph' The Times'Electrifying' Daily Mail'History at its most powerful' Jennifer Saint 1461. Through blood and battle Edward has gained England's throne - king by right and conquest - eig...

Gabriela Cabezón Cámara

**Winner of the National Book Award for Translated Literature** A sumptuous and surreal historical reimagining of one of South America's best-known trans men, Antonio de Erauso The new novel from the International Booker-shortlisted author of The Adventures of China Iron 'Luminous' SAMANTA SCHWEBLIN 'Bold and compassionate' Financial Times From deep in the wilds of the New...