Showing results for "grief" in Literary Fiction

In a London flat, two young boys face the unbearable sadness of their mother's sudden death. Their father, a Ted Hughes scholar and scruffy romantic, imagines a future of well-meaning visitors and emptiness. In this moment of despair they are visited by Crow - antagonist, trickster, healer, babysitter. This sentimental bird is drawn to the grieving family and threatens to stay until they no longer need him. This extraordinary debut, full of unexpected humour and emotional truth, marks the arrival of a thrilling and significant new talent.

What if you had escaped your devout family in Ireland to live your best queer life - then your brother became a candidate for sainthood? An unmissable, award-winning, moving and funny exploration of family, grief and queer identity. *SELECTED AS A RADIO 2 BOOKCLUB PICK* *SHORTLISTED FOR THE...

'Excellent' New York Times 'An instant classic. . . Hamlet but with goats everywhere' Washington Post 'Beautifully weird, eerie, unexpected - a story for our times' Kevin Barry 'A work of genius. Eradication is a beautiful and devastating novel' Luke Kennard 'A deft, unsettling exploration of...

Bloomsbury presents Apeirogon written and read by Colum McCann. LONGLISTED FOR THE 2020 BOOKER PRIZE SHORTLISTED FOR THE PRIX MÉDICIS AND THE PRIX FEMINA WINNER OF THE PRIX DE MEILLEUR LIVRE ETRANGER A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A BBC BOOK OF 2020 CHOSEN AS A BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE SUNDAY TIMES...

From the author of Lily and the Octopus comes a moving and deeply funny novel about a once-famous sitcom star who is left to care for his niece and nephew after an unexpected family tragedy. Patrick, or Gay Uncle Patrick (GUP for short), has always loved his niece, Maisie, and nephew, Grant...

Here he is, husband and father, scruffy romantic, a shambolic scholar - a man adrift in the wake of his wife's sudden, accidental death. And there are his two sons who like him struggle in their London apartment to face the unbearable sadness that has engulfed them. The father imagines a future of well-meaning visitors and emptiness, while the boys wander, savage and unsupervised. In this moment of violent despair they are visited by Crow - antagonist, trickster, goad, protector, therapist, and babysitter.

'This terrific debut from a former lawyer announces the arrival of a formidable new talent' DAILY MAIL 'A gripping page-turner and a loving exploration of what it really means to forgive' MARY BETH KEANE 'Penitence, riveting as a thriller, is a wise and profound novel' CLAIRE MESSUD Are you more...

THE MILLION-COPY JAPANESE BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE JAPAN BOOKSELLERS' AWARD MADE INTO AN AWARD-NOMINATED FILM "A love letter to those who've always felt out of step with the world." —Mikki Brammer, bestselling author of The Collected Regrets of Clover A deeply moving story about the unexpected...

AN OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK “Douglas Stuart brilliantly weaved a layered, compelling and yet so intimate a story of identity, what it means to belong, and the courage to claim your own truth.” —Oprah Winfrey “One of 2026's literary triumphs.” —Boston Globe From the Booker-winning...

“With relentless intelligence Caroline Wray’s Henry wonders how much we will do, and how far we will go, to be loved. Wray is an unsparing observer of the human heart.”—Susan Choi, National Book Award Winner A blazing contemporary reimagining of the six wives of Henry VIII, exploring how...

Hello, World! introduces a high-flying, high concept debut from a major new voice that reads like if David Mitchell wrote Greta Gerwig’s Barbie. A perfect reality. A broken family. The secrets that will unravel everything. Aleta Seppala is living what ought to be an idyllic life with her...

A major debut collection of globe-spanning stories set in the worlds of art, crime, and fantasy, by an exceptionally elegant and mischievous storyteller. “Terrific: witty, ironic, unnerving, stylish, and funny, very funny. . . . The best first collection of stories I’ve read in years.”...

The haunting tale of a desolate cottage, and the hair-thin junction between this life and the next, from best-selling National Book Award finalist Gail Godwin. After his mother's death, 11-year-old Marcus is sent to live on a small South Carolina island with his great aunt, a reclusive painter with a haunted past. Aunt Charlotte, otherwise a woman of few words, points out a ruined cottage, telling Marcus she had visited it regularly after she'd moved there 30 years ago because it matched the ruin of her own life.

July 1969. While men are walking on the moon, life in London for 16-year-old Jane takes unexpected turns. On the point of falling in love with her best friend Karl, she discovers that there's more to her father's spectacular girlfriend than at first meets the eye. In the sweltering heat of a fast-moving evening, other revelations quickly follow, reconciling Jane with her father but also reopening wounds from the past, laying bare raw emotions kept suppressed for too long. 

In “The Pleasure of Her Company,” a lonely, single woman befriends the married couple next door, hoping to learn the secret of their happiness. In "Long Distance," a man finds himself relieved of the obligation to continue an affair that is no longer compelling to him, only to be waylaid by the guilt he feels at his easy escape. And in the incandescently wise and moving title novella, a dentist, aware that his wife has fallen in love with someone else, must comfort her when she is spurned....

Troubled ex-con Zack Taylor is haunted by the accidental death of his brother years before. Zack's guilt and anger have pushed him into a shadowy, wandering life, with little purpose and few attachments. When he hears of the death of his close friend Ben Sterling, a supposed gunshot suicide, Zack finds he now has a purpose - to find out what happened. Then his purpose becomes an obsession.

You could say Kyle Jr. grew up in a dysfunctional family. That'd be an understatement. His mother's wealthy family disinherited her for marrying the working-class Kyle Sr., and she's never forgiven him (or KJ) for that. When his father's suicide turns his life upside down, KJ fills his therapist-recommended grief journal with plenty of sarcasm, excerpts from sweary, punny high-school short stories, and fourth-wall-breaking asides.