Showing titles in Literary Fiction

Barbara Pym is one of the 20th-century's wittiest, and most underrated, novelists. Her perceptive comedies of manners, centred around the domestic lives and loves of unassuming middle-class Englishwomen, won her many devoted readers and saw her hailed as a modern-day Jane Austen. Yet she spent 15 years out of print in the 1960s and '70s, until Philip Larkin championed her work in the Times Literary Supplement. Her seventh novel was subsequently shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and writers from Jilly Cooper to Alexander McCall Smith continue to laud her talent today.

Bartholomew Port, known to all as Mew, steps into the bushes in a London park and steps out of the bushes in a Dublin one. Not only that – there are no cars; there are moving footpaths; there is no church; everything seems quite queer. Mew has arrived in a Dublin that is alive with song, with rumour, with ghosts, and with an unmistakable sense of insurgency. In this suspiciously timeless city that breathes an old revolutionary air, Mew fiercely misses his beloved Mootie, back home in London.

Number Thirty-Two was once a family home. Anna was once a mother and a wife. Now, she is in arrears and alone. With little choice but to sell up, she is forced to confront the memories of the people who once inhabited the empty rooms. With the help of an unlikely ally in her next door neighbour's son, she is finally able to piece together the tragic events of forty years ago that have inextricably linked the fates of their families and ricocheted through both of their households for decades.

When Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm published their Children's and Household Tales in 1812, followed by a second volume in 1815, they had no idea that such stories as "Rapunzel", "Hansel and Gretel", and "Cinderella" would become the most celebrated in the world. Yet few people today are familiar with the majority of tales from the two early volumes, since in the next four decades the Grimms would publish six other editions, each extensively revised in content and style.

The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (commonly known as The Pickwick Papers) is the first novel by Charles Dickens. The book became the first real publishing phenomenon, with bootleg copies, theatrical performances, Sam Weller joke books and other merchandise.

*A brand new companion to the Last Kingdom series, Uhtred’s Feast, is available to pre-order now* The tenth book in the epic and bestselling series that has gripped millions. A hero will be forged from this broken land. As seen on Netflix and BBC around the world. From the day it was stolen...

Don't miss Stacey Halls' captivating new novel THE HOUSEHOLD - available to buy now! *WINNER of the WOMEN'S PRIZE FUTURES AWARD* A Waterstones Best Book of the Year Longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize Longlisted for the Portico Prize 'Highly atmospheric and tense' Richard Osman From the...

Brought to you by Penguin. Embattled agent Bernard Samson is used to being passed over for promotion as his younger, more ambitious colleagues - including his own wife Fiona - rise up the ranks of MI6. When a valued agent in East Berlin warns the British of a mole at the heart of the Service...

'I raced through it, breathing fast and when I had finished had to reread parts of the wonderful early chapters. I don't like historical novels but this is the exception. I shall let a few months go by and then read it all over again with, I'm sure, undiminished pleasure' Ruth Rendall, Guardian...

Isabel Dalhousie, philosopher and amateur solver of other people's problems, meets an old foe, Minty Auchterlonie, at a birthday party attended by their young children. Ambitious Minty, now the head of a small investment bank, is in trouble with her shareholders. Isabel becomes involved, and is drawn into a murky world of financial concealment.

"A sparkling travelogue and a poignant journey of self-discovery all in one. . . . Alka Joshi is simply the best!" —Kate Quinn, New York Times bestselling author of The Alice Network and The Rose Code From the New York Times bestselling author of The Henna Artist, this sweeping novel of...

'The reason Homer Wells kept his name was that he came back to St Cloud's so many times, after so many failed foster homes, that the orphanage was forced to acknowledge Homer's intention to make St Cloud's his home.' Homer Wells' odyssey begins among the apple orchards of rural Maine. As the...

SUNDAY TIMES NO 1 FICTION BESTSELLER FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE HUNDRED-YEAR-OLD MAN WHO CLIMBED OUT OF THE WINDOW AND DISAPPEARED Just because the world ignores you, doesn’t mean you can’t save it . . . Nombeko Mayeki was never meant to be a hero. Born in a Soweto shack, she seemed destined for...

Brought to you by Penguin. Enter a vanished and unjust world: Jackson, Mississippi, 1962. Where black maids raise white children, but aren't trusted not to steal the silver... There's Aibileen, raising her seventeenth white child and nursing the hurt caused by her own son's tragic death; Minny...

From the moment she’s struck by lightning as a baby, it is clear Mary Anning is marked for greatness. When she uncovers unknown dinosaur fossils in the cliffs near her home, she sets the scientific world alight, challenging ideas about the world’s creation and stimulating debate over our origins. In an arena dominated by men, however, Mary is soon reduced to a serving role, facing prejudice from the academic community, vicious gossip from neighbours, and the heartbreak of forbidden love.

From the Locus and Hugo Award-winning author Ray Nayler, this haunting novel blends history and speculative wonder into a story of survival, loyalty and the fragile beauty of life in the darkest of times. 'an extraordinary science fiction novel' SFX MAGAZINE 'constantly surprising, moving and...

Brought to you by Penguin. THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES AND NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER FROM THE PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING, BOOKER-SHORTLISTED AUTHOR SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE 2025 It’s autumn in Maine, and the town lawyer Bob Burgess has become enmeshed in an unfolding murder investigation...

'An unforgettable treat' JANICE HALLETT 'Beautifully written . . . moving and suspenseful' TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT 'Gripping . . . each strand adds tension and drama' GOOD HOUSEKEEPING 'One of my favourite recent reads' BARBARA KINGSOLVER, GUARDIAN In the heart of the Maine woods, an...

Big Swiss. That's Greta's nickname for her - she is tall, and she is from Switzerland. Greta can see her now: dressed top to toe in white, that adorable gap between her two front teeth, her penetrating blue eyes. She's a head-turner: including the heads of infants and dogs. Well that's how Greta imagines seeing her; they haven't actually ever met in person. Nor has Greta actually ever been to Switzerland. Greta and Big Swiss are not in the same room, or even the same building.

It was a typical evening at a mall outside Portland, Maine. Three teenage friends waited for the movie to start. A boy flirted with the girl selling sunglasses. Mothers and children shopped together, and the manager at the video game store tended to customers. Then the shooters arrived. The chaos and carnage lasted only eight minutes before the killers were taken down. But for those who lived through it, the effects would last forever.