Showing titles in Literary Fiction

A BBC RADIO 2 BOOK CLUB PICK 'As heart-wrenching as it is achingly beautiful' Sadeqa Johnson, author of The House of Eve 'Heartbreaking and life affirming' Adrienne Brodeur, author of Little Monsters 'Courage, friendship, loyalty, hardship, love – this novel has everything' Mary Beth Keane...

Part detective novel, part psychological thriller, Surfacing is the story of a talented woman artist who goes in search of her missing father on a remote island in northern Quebec. Setting out with her lover and another young couple, she soon finds herself captivated by the isolated setting, where a marriage begins to fall apart, violence and death lurk just beneath the surface, and sex becomes a catalyst for conflict and dangerous choices. Surfacing is a work permeated with an aura of suspense, complex with layered meanings, and written in brilliant, diamond-sharp prose.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 2026 A Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year 2025 A New York Times Notable Book of 2025 A Telegraph Book of the Year 2025 A Guardian Book of the Year 2025 An Observer Book of the year 2025 'Supple, horrifying and mordantly droll' New York Times...

From the Women’s Prize-shortlisted author of First Love, The Palm House is a sharply observed, slyly funny novel of enduring friendships and small mercies. 'This goes straight onto my list of favourite modern novels’ – The Times 'One of our finest novelists of constrained fury: nobody...

For Ned, 1980 seems a blissful year. Handsome, charming, popular and talented, his life is progressing smoothly, effortlessly, happily. And when he meets the lovely Portia Fendeman his personal jigsaw appears complete. But timing is everything in life, and his life is about to change for ever. Things are going to get very bad indeed for innocent young Ned. A promise made to a dying teacher and a spiteful trick played by fellow pupils will rocket Ned from cricket captain to solitary confinement, from head boy to hell.

The new novel in Bernard Cornwell's number one bestselling series The Warrior Chronicles, on the making of England and the fate of his great hero, Uhtred of Bebbanburg. In the battle for power, there can be only one ruler.England is fractured, torn apart more by internal fighting than the threat of Viking invasion. The ruler of Mercia is dying, leaving no legitimate heir. His wife is a formidable fighter and great leader, but no woman has ever ruled over an English kingdom.

In 1942, Charlotte Gray, a young scottish woman, goes to Occupied France on a dual mission: to run an apparently simple errand for a British special oeprations group and to search for her lover, an English airman who has gone missing in action. In the small town of Lavaurette, Sebastian Faulks...

What if the perfect life you envy was rotten to the core? Three brand-new friends. Three very different families. Way too many secrets. Gisela, Sally and Kate become close when they move into the same new housing estate. But behind their shiny front doors, each has something to hide. Three lives collide in this gripping story about friendship, motherhood and marriage and the façade of perfection people present to the world.

H.H. Munro (Saki) is one of the undisputed masters of the short story. In this complete compendium, the full gamut of his subjects and themes is experienced. His stories are imbued with humorous satire, biting irony, and often the macabre, all of which have one target: the stupidities and hypocrisies of Edwardian upper-class society.

January Stirling was one of the principal dancers of London's Royal Ballet. Now he's a climate refugee bound for Tharsis, the notorious terraformed colony on Mars. It's a utopia for the naturalised population. For January, as a dangerous Earthstronger whose body is unadjusted to the weaker Martian gravity, it's a life sentence to hard labour and ferocious discrimination. But he will live....

When the bohemian, sophisticated Innes Kent turns up by chance on her doorstep, Lexie Sinclair realises she cannot wait any longer for her life to begin, and leaves for London. There, at the heart of the 1950s Soho art scene, she carves out a new life for herself, with Innes at her side. In the present day, Elina and Ted are reeling from the difficult birth of their first child.

Brought to you by Penguin. LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2024 A POWERFUL NEW NOVEL FROM THE PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING AND BOOKER-SHORTLISTED AUTHOR OF THE OVERSTORY AND BEWILDERMENT Rafi and Todd are two polar opposites at an elite high school where they bond over a three-thousand-year-old board...

Brought to you by Penguin. Some love stories are worth risking everything for. Wren leaves home and heartbreak to spend the summer with her father and step-family on their farm in Indiana, Midwestern USA. More than anything she hopes this trip will provide a chance to heal and build bridges...

It is London, 1970. Carmel McBain, in her first term at university, has cut free of her childhood roots in the north. Among the gossiping, flirtatious girls of Tonbridge Hall, she begins her experiments in life and love. But the year turns. The mini-skirt falls out of style and an era of concealment begins. Carmel's world darkens, and tragedy waits in the wings.

When Another Country appeared in 1962, it caused a literary sensation. James Baldwin's masterly story of desire, hatred and violence opens with the unforgettable character of Rufus Scott, a scavenging Harlem jazz musician adrift in New York. Self-destructive, bad and brilliant, he draws us into a Bohemian underworld pulsing with heat, music and sex, where desperate and dangerous characters betray, love and test each other to the limit.

Soon to be a major TV series starring Kenneth Branagh. On 21 June 1922, Count Alexander Rostov - recipient of the Order of Saint Andrew, member of the Jockey Club, Master of the Hunt - is escorted out of the Kremlin, across Red Square and through the elegant revolving doors of the Hotel Metropol. Deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, the Count has been sentenced to house arrest indefinitely. But instead of his usual suite, he must now live in an attic room while Russia undergoes decades of tumultuous upheaval. Can a life without luxury be the richest of all?

Over 3 million copies sold ‘Funny, touching and unpredictable’ Jojo Moyes ‘Heartwrenching and wonderful’ Nina Stibbe Winner of Costa First Novel Award, a No.1 Sunday Times bestseller and the National Book Awards Book of the Year One of the Sunday Times' 100 bestselling books of the past...

Brought to you Penguin. 'Maudie, why are all the best characters men?' Maudie closes the book with a clllump. 'We haven't read all the books yet, Miss Cristabel. I can't believe that every story is the same' Cristabel Seagrave has always wanted her life to be a story, but there are no girls in...

Brought to you by Penguin. From the No. 1 New York Times bestselling and Booker long-listed author of My Name is Lucy Barton Recalling Olive Kitteridge in its richness, structure, and complexity, Anything Is Possible explores the whole range of human emotion through the intimate dramas of people...

A Sunday Times bestseller and Richard and Judy Book Club pick. The Confession is an absorbing tale of secrets and self-discovery and the search for truth spanning three decades, from 1980s Hollywood to present-day London. From Jessie Burton, the million-copy bestselling author of The Miniaturist...