Showing titles in Literary Fiction

A timely and timeless reimagining of the story of Dionysus, Greek God of ecstasy and madness, revelry and ruin, for readers of The Song of Achilles and Elektra. Raised in a Greek legion, Phaidros has been taught to fight for the homeland he's never seen and to follow his commander's orders at...

John Fowles’s The Magus was a literary landmark of the 1960s. Nicholas Urfe goes to a Greek island to teach at a private school and becomes enmeshed in curious happenings at the home of a mysterious Greek recluse, Maurice Conchis. Are these events, involving attractive young English sisters, just psychological games, or an elaborate joke, or more? Reality shifts as the story unfolds. The Magus reflected the issues of the 1960s perfectly, and it continues to create tension and concern today.

Brought to you by Penguin. This audiobook is read by Olivia Vinall, and Elif Shafak reads the Note to Reader at the end of the story. This is the story of one lost poem, two great rivers, and three remarkable lives – all connected by a single drop of water. In the ruins of Nineveh, that...

Author of the National Book Award-winning All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy is one of the most provocative American stylists to emerge in the last century. The striking novel Blood Meridian offers an unflinching narrative of the brutality that accompanied the push west on the 1850s Texas frontier.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2026 SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2025 A moment is all it takes to shatter a family. The echoes last a lifetime... One evening, ten-year-old Louisa and her father, Serk, take a walk out on the breakwater. They are spending the summer in a coastal...

Form-defining short stories. First published in 1914, James Joyce defined what the short story could be with his collection The Dubliners. A mixture of prose and poetry, each story can be listened to independently, or as a collection. From childhood to maturity, we see what life - and ultimately death - can be, via an extraordinary cast of characters, all of whom experience an epiphany. There’s Father Flynn, the priest; Evelyn, the shop girl who dreams of escape; Mrs Mooney, the butcher’s daughter, who runs a boarding house.

Bloomsbury presents Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke, read by Richard Armitage with Neil Gaiman and an introduction by V E Schwab. The 20th anniversary edition of the fantasy classic. ‘The book I wish I'd written’ R F Kuang ‘Susanna Clarke writes with an intelligence and...

Vernice and Annie are 'cradle friends', born days apart in Honeysuckle, Louisiana, both destined never to know their mothers. The girls are inseparable, bound by a friendship far deeper than sisterhood. But this is the American south in the 1950s. Black girls like Vernice and Annie have to fight for every opportunity they can, and neither one can build the future they hope for in Honeysuckle.

In a world submerged by rising seas, can the secrets of the past be discovered? The breathtaking Sunday Times bestseller. 2014: A great poem is read aloud and never heard again. For generations, people speculate about its message. 2119: With the UK’s lowlands submerged by rising seas, those...

Napoleon has been defeated at Waterloo, and the ensuing peace brings with it both the desertion of nearly half of Captain Aubrey's crew and the sudden dimming of Aubrey's career prospects in a peacetime navy. When the Surprise is nearly sunk on her way to South America - where Aubrey and Stephen Maturin are to help Chile assert her independence from Spain - the delay occasioned by repairs reaps a harvest of strange consequences.

Brought to you by Penguin. 'I've done my damndest to rip a reader's nerves to rags, I don't want him satisfied.' Shocking and controversial when it was first published, The Grapes of Wrath is Steinbeck's Pultizer Prize-winning epic of the Joad family, forced to travel west from Dust Bowl era...

She was in her senior year of college when star students Sam and Yash swept her into an intoxicating world of academic fervour, rapid-fire banter and raucous card games. Their lives became quickly intertwined – with friendship but also with unpredictable passions and the intimations of first love. Decades later, she is successful writer, living a comfortable life with her husband and children, when a surprise visit brings the past crashing into the present, forcing her to confront the decisions and deceptions of her youth.

Another gripping thriller from Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling author Alice Feeney! 'One of my favourite thriller writers' Harlan Coben 'I'm a huge Feeney fan' Chris Whitaker * * * * * Aimee Sinclair: the actress everyone thinks they know but can’t remember where from. But I know...

When Clara meets Elias, she isn't looking for love. Widowed and wary of being hurt again, she has built a careful life of work and quiet independence. Yet from the moment they meet, something genuine sparks between them – something neither has felt in years. They fall into step easily, sharing secrets, laughter and the sense of being seen. When a new job takes her to another part of the country, she ends the relationship before he can – certain that love like theirs cannot last.

Brought to you by Penguin. THE #1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER Welcome to Rook Hall. The stage is set. The players are ready. By night’s end, a murderer will be revealed. Ex-detective Jackson Brodie is staving off a bad case of midlife malaise when he is called to a sleepy Yorkshire town, and the...

Ged, the greatest sorcerer in all Earthsea, was called Sparrowhawk in his reckless youth. Hungry for power and knowledge, Sparrowhawk tampered with long-held secrets and loosed a terrible shadow upon the world. This is the tale of his testing, how he mastered the mighty words of power, tamed an ancient dragon, and crossed death's threshold to restore the balance.  

'Truly extraordinary books are rare, and this is one of them' – Roddy Doyle 'His [Dominic Hofman] performance is terrific: variously wry, poignant and thoughtful as he imbues Jim with the humanity and agency denied to him by Twain' – The Guardian, Audiobook of the Week James is a profound...

It has been two years since the events in Shantaram, and since Lin lost two people he had come to love: his father figure, Khaderbhai, and his soul mate, Karla, married to a handsome Indian media tycoon. Lin returns from a smuggling trip to a city that seems to have changed too much, too soon. Many of his old friends are long gone, the new mafia leadership has become entangled in increasingly violent and dangerous intrigues, and a fabled holy man challenges everything that Lin thought he'd learned about love and life.

Meet Grace Bernard. Daughter, sister, colleague, friend, serial killer. Grace has lost everything. And now she wants revenge.

A definitive collection of eight full-cast BBC Radio productions, featuring stellar talent including Alex Jennings, Michael Kitchen, Ben Miles and Bernard Cribbins ‘Great value for money and a fine celebration of one of the most important English authors of the second half of the Twentieth...