Contemporary fiction Books 1240 results

Hiromi Kawakami

A tale of modern Japan and old-fashioned romance. 'Enchanting, moving and funny in equal measure, this compelling love story is expertly crafted against a backdrop of modern Japanese culture' Stylist Tsukiko is in her late 30s and living alone when one night she happens to meet one of her former high school teachers, 'Sensei', in a bar. He is at least thirty years her senior, r...

Colm Tóibín

'Beautiful . . . a thriller, a love story and much more' Roddy Doyle 'A remarkable achievement . . . [a] sheer pleasure to read' The Sunday Times Richard Garay lives alone with his mother in Buenos Aires, hiding his sexuality from her and the world. Stifled by a job he despises, he finds himself willing to take considerable risks. Set in Argentina in a time of great change, T...

Roberto Bolaño

On New Year's Eve, 1975, two hunted men leave Mexico City in a borrowed white Impala. Their quest- to track down the vanished poet Cesarea Tinajero. But, twenty years later, they are still on the run. The Savage Detectives is their remarkable journey through our darkening universe. Told, shared and mythologised by a generation of lovers, rebels and readers, their testimonies a...

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

FIGHT FOR FREEDOM. FIGHT FOR LOVE. WELCOME TO THE KILLING GROUND. 'America's new Hunger Games' SUNDAY TIMES 'So good. This one is from the heart' STEPHEN KING *SHORTLISTED FOR THE ARTHUR C. CLARKE AWARD FOR SCIENCE FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR *LONGLISTED FOR THE TIKTOK BOOK AWARDS FOR INTERNATIONAL BOOK OF THE YEAR *SHORTLISTED FOR THE WATERSTONES DEBUT FICTION PRIZE 2023 Ente...

Claire Kilroy

AS HEARD ON FRONT ROW, A SUNDAY TIMES, GUARDIAN AND FT 'SUMMER READ''My favourite book I've read this year' PANDORA SYKES 'Intense, furious, moving and often extremely funny' DAVID NICHOLLS'Astonishing' Stephanie Merritt, Observer'Very, very funny' PAUL MURRAYIn one of the most acclaimed novels of the yea[Bokinfo]. ...

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

THE EXTRAORDINARY LOST NOVEL FROM THE NOBEL PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA AND ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE Sitting alone, overlooking the still and blue lagoon, Ana Magdalena Bach surveys the men of the hotel bar. She is happily married and has no reason to escape the world she has made with her husband and children. And yet, every August, she travels he...

Jenny Hval

"As intriguing and impressive a novelist as she is a musician, Hval is a master of quiet horror and wonder."—Chris Kraus, author of I Love DickA lyrical debut novel from a musician and artist renowned for her sharp sexual and political imageryJo is in a strange new country for university and having a more peculiar time than most. In a house with no walls, shared with a woman wh...

Ann Napolitano

THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK * BARACK OBAMA SUMMER READ * MORE THAN ONE MILLION COPIES SOLD! 'BEAUTIFUL, PERCEPTIVE, WISTFUL' Miranda Cowley Heller 'ANN NAPOLITANO'S WRITING IS ASTONISHING' Marian Keyes 'RADIANT AND BRILLIANTLY CRAFTED' New York Times ------------------------------------ Best friends and sisters, the four Padavano girls brin...

Danny Ramadan

WINNER OF THE LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD FOR GAY FICTIONA devastating novel about queer love, broken relationships, the promises we're unable to keep and living with the ghosts of your pastHussam and Wassim are teenage boys living in Syria during America's 2003 invasion of Iraq. When a surprise discovery results in tragedy, their lives, and those of their families, are shattered. Wa...

Max Porter

THE #1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER THE INSPIRATION FOR THE MAJOR NETFLIX FILM 'STEVE' STARRING CILLIAN MURPHY 'Max Porter is one of my favourite writers in the world.' GEORGE SAUNDERS 'Beautiful and haunting.' KEVIN BARRY 'The strangest, most beguiling and affecting of all his books.' IAN RANKIN 'A miracle of language.' IRISH TIMES This is the story of a few strange hours in the ...

Jessica Knoll

'Cleverly constructed [. . .] psychologically astute and written with flair.' - The Sunday Times 'A compelling, almost hypnotic read' - Lisa Jewell, bestselling author of None of This is True 'Bright Young Women is Jessica Knoll at her best: an unflinching and evocative novel' - Laura Dave, New York Times bestselling author of The Last Thing He Told Me January 1978. Tallahas...

Rebecca K. Reilly

***SHORTLISTED FOR THE WATERSTONES DEBUT FICTION PRIZE 2024*** THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER 'Delightfully confident . . . a total pleasure' TIMES 'Warm, witty and utterly idiosyncratic' ALICE SLATER 'Hilarious, touching and hotly sublime' JULIA ARMFIELD 'Lovable and joyful' NEW YORK TIMES A BROTHER. A SISTER. A LOT OF EMOTION IN ONE APARTMENT. This is the story of Greta a...

Kate Morton

'Lush, rich, beautiful . . . Homecoming is Kate Morton at her very best' - Kristin Hannah Discover this breathtaking mystery of love, lies and a cold case come back to life, from the multi-million-copy bestseller, Kate Morton. Adelaide Hills, 1959. At the end of a scorching hot day, in the grounds of a grand country house, a local man makes a terrible discovery. Police are ca...

Eleanor Catton

Birnam Wood is on the move... A landslide has closed the Korowai Pass on New Zealand's South Island, cutting off the town of Thorndike and leaving a sizable farm abandoned. The disaster presents an opportunity for Birnam Wood, an undeclared, unregulated, sometimes-criminal, sometimes-philanthropic guerrilla gardening collective that plants crops wherever no one will notice. For...

David Nicholls

The multi-million copy bestselling novel that brilliantly captures the experiences of a generation.From beloved author David Nicholls.[Bokinfo]. ...

Various.

A riveting selection of short stories in Spanish alongside their English translations This new dual-language edition of ten stories selected from The Penguin Book of Spanish Short Stories celebrates some of the very best twentieth-century literature from Spain. Each story appears in Spanish alongside an expert English translation, providing unique cultural insight and literary...

Jennifer Saint

The heroic story of the only female Argonaut, told by Jennifer Saint, the bestselling author of ATALANTA (UK, Sunday Times, April 2023) ELEKTRA (UK, Sunday Times, May 2022) and ARIADNE (UK, Sunday Times, April 2021). 'Brilliantly evocative' Women & Home 'A spirited retelling' Times 'Beautiful and absorbing' Fabulous 'A vivid reimagining of Greek mythology' Harper's Bazaa...

Jessica Anthony

From 'one of our most thrilling and singular innovators on the page' (Laura Van Den Berg), a tightly wound, consuming tale about a 1950s American housewife, for fans of Jennifer Egan, Jonathan Franzen and Taffy Brodesser-Akner LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD 2024 A Barnes & Noble BEST BOOK of 2024 COSMOPOLITAN Novella of the Year 2024 'Clever, moving and unexpected. A ...

Jenni Daiches

'Jenni Daiches has astonishingly re-created a lost world... I wept and laughed and wished I had written it.'MIRIAM MARGOLYES 'An urgent exploration of the fragility and beauty of our shared humanity, here and elsewhere.'HANNAH HOLTSCHNEIDER, UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH About the bookRosa Roshkin is five years old when her family are murdered in a pogrom and she is forced to leave b...

Andrew Miller

? Winner of the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2025 ? Winner of the Winston Graham Historical Prize 2025 A best book of the year for the Independent, Guardian, i Newspaper and Good Housekeeping 'Tender, elegant, soulful and perfect. A novel that hits your cells and can be felt there, without your brain really knowing what's happened to it. Superb' SAMANTHA HARVEY, ...

Freya North

As the new Millennium beckons, Eadie is turning 30 with a marriage in tatters. She must travel back to where she once lived for a funeral she can't quite comprehend. As she journeys from the North to the South, from the present to the past, Eadie contemplates all that was then - and all that is now. 'You really must read this book. A rare and phenomenal life affirming read' DIN...

Antonio Lobo Antunes

António Lobo Antunes's twenty-fifth novel, Commission of Tears (2011, Comissão das Lágrimas) is set during the Angolan Civil War (1975-2002). Angola attained official independence on November 11, 1975 and, while the stage was set for transition, a combination of ethnic tensions and international pressures rendered Angola's hard-won victory problematic. As with many post-colonia...

Maggie O'farrell

'She's like no one I've ever met... She's like fire and water all at once.'Warwickshire, 1582. Agnes Hathaway, a natural healer, meets the Latin tutor, William Shakespeare. Drawn together by powerful but hidden impulses, they create a life together and make a family.As William moves to London to discover his place in the world of theatre, Agnes stays at home to raise their thre...

Phyllis Paul

Who could have been so cruel as to do away with poor Vivian Lambert? And why oh why couldn't she just stay dead?In a rustic, idyllic English village, on a summer's day, in the midst of a carefree tennis party, a fragile, needy child, left too much on her own, vanishes from her family's front garden. Years pass and the mystery persists: an enduring torment for the teenage Christ...

Alan Hollinghurst

Sunday Times Novel of the Year Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize A magnificent, century-spanning saga about a love triangle that spawns a myth, and a family mystery, across generations. In the late summer of 1913, George Sawle brings his Cambridge friend Cecil Valance, a charismatic young poet, to visit his family home. The weekend will be one of excitements and confusions ...

Gabrielle Zevin

A.J. Fikry, the grumpy owner of Island Books, is going through a hard time: his bookshop is failing, he has lost his beloved wife, and his prized possession - a rare first edition book has been stolen. Over time, he has given up on people, and even the books in his store, instead of offering solace, are yet another reminder of a world that is changing too rapidly. But one day A...

Percival Everett

A Sunday Times Fiction Book of the Year Winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction A Sunday Times Novel of the Year Shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Percival Everett's The Trees is a powerful satire of revenge and racial justice in America. 'He makes a revenge fantasy into a comic horror masterpiece.' - Los Angeles Times When the rural town of Money,...

John Le Carré

Discover the new Penguin Crime and Espionage series A Russian mole has infiltrated the British establishment - and the spymaster Smiley must dig them out... George Smiley, formerly of the Secret Intelligence Service, is contemplating his new life in retirement when he is called back on an unexpected mission. His task is to hunt down an agent implanted by Moscow Central at the v...

Toshikazu Kawaguchi

In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a café which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time.In Before the Coffee Gets Cold, we meet four visitors, each of whom is hoping to make use of the café's time-travelling offer, in order to: confront the ma...

Tanya Tagaq

"Fact can be as strange as fiction. It can also be as dark, as violent, as rapturous. In the end, there may be no difference between them. An Inuk girl grows up in Nunavut, Canada, in the 1970s. She knows joy, and friendship, and parents' love. She knows boredom, and listlessness, and bullying. She knows the tedium of the everyday world, and the raw, amoral power of the ice and...