Showing titles in Literary Fiction

1912. Leo is on a journey. Aged 13 and banished from the secluded farm of his childhood, he travels through Devon, grazing on berries and sleeping in copses. Behind him lies the past, and before him the West Country, spread out like a tapestry. But a wanderer is never alone for long, and soon Leo is taken in by gypsies. Yet he knows he cannot linger and must forge on to Penzance. Life on the estate continues as usual, yet nothing is as it was. Lottie’s father is distracted by the promise of new love, and Lottie is increasingly absorbed in the natural world. And of course, Leo is absent.

Heartbreaking and hilarious in equal measure, this novel by the author of the New York Times bestselling phenomenon A Man Called Ove will charm and delight anyone who has ever had a grandmother. Everyone remembers the smell of their grandmother's house. Everyone remembers the stories their...

When I was twelve years old God spoke to my father for the first time. God didn't say much. He told my father to be a painter and left it at that . . . ' So begins Niall Williams' magical tale about love and destiny. Nicholas Coughlan and Isabel Gore were made for each other -- but fate doesn't...

The Fortnight in September chronicles one family’s seaside holiday. Though they visit every year, the joy of the familiar is not without its challenges. R. C. Sherriff's writing is full of minute detail, capturing the sounds, smells and sights of everyday life for ordinary people. Every year...

A TLS, FINANCIAL TIMES AND TELEGRAPH BOOK OF THE YEAR 'Feels less like reading a novel and more like sitting in a car beside a dear friend . . . a profoundly moving experience' ANN PATCHETT 'Deeply human . . . a beautifully quiet and devastating book' SARAH JESSICA PARKER 'Funny, wise and...

Jim, a handsome, all-American athlete, has always been shy around girls. But when he and his best friend, Bob, partake in “awful kid stuff,” the experience forms Jim’s ideal of spiritual completion. Defying his parents’ expectations, Jim strikes out on his own, hoping to find Bob and rekindle their amorous friendship.

Ruth has returned to Edinburgh after many years of exile, left rootless by the end of her marriage and career and now the death of her father, from whom she had long been estranged. She is faced with the daunting task of clearing his house, believing he had removed all traces of her mother. Yet hidden away in a barely used top-floor room, she finds he had secretly kept a cupboard full of her possessions. Sifting through the ancient papers, Ruth discovers the diary and letters written by her ancestor from the 18th century, Thomas Erskine.

‘I love Robert Thorogood’s writing’ Peter James An original story from the creator and writer of the hit BBC One TV series, Death in Paradise, featuring on-screen favourite detective, DI Richard Poole. Supermodel Polly Carter was famed for her looks and party-girl lifestyle. Now she's dead...

It is 1916. The world has gone to war, and young Leo Sercombe, hauling coal aboard the HMS Queen Mary, is a long way from home. The wild, unchanging West Country roads of his boyhood seem very far away from life aboard a battlecruiser. Skimming through those West Country roads on her motorcycle, Lottie Prideaux defies the expectations of her class and sex as she covertly studies to be a vet. In a world torn asunder by war, everything dances in flux: how can the old ways life survive, and how can the future be imagined, in the face of such unimaginable change?

An obese woman and her lover, a dwarf, are sick of being stared at wherever they go, and so decide to reverse roles. The man goes out wearing make-up and the woman draws a moustache on her face. But while the woman wants to hide away from the world, the man meets the stares from passers-by head on, compiling his 'Dictionary of Gazes' to explore the boundaries between appearance and reality. Intertwined with the story of a bizarre freak-show organised in Istanbul in the 1880s, The Gaze is a humorous and carnivalesque exploration of what it means to look and be looked at.

A new recording of Ray Bradbury’s timeless classic Fahrenheit 451 narrated by Penn Badgley! Nearly seventy years after its original publication, Ray Bradbury’s internationally acclaimed novel Fahrenheit 451 stands as a classic of world literature set in a bleak, dystopian future. Today its...

Bloomsbury presents What You Can See From Here by Mariana Leky, read by Kristin Atherton 'Manages something only a few books achieve: it makes you happy' Munich Mercury 'A clear-eyed tonic in troubled times' Guardian On a beautiful spring day, a small village in Western Germany wakes up to an...

The Time Traveller's Wife meets David Mitchell meets Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow meets Kate & Leopold in this debut novel from an award-winning writer. There are several ways to tell a story. A boy meets a girl. The past meets the future. A finger meets a trigger. The beginning meets...

Brought to you by Penguin. From the New York Times bestselling author of Dear Edward comes a beautifully tender, heartbreaking, and moving story of four sisters over three decades Meet the Padvano girls. Best friends and sisters, they are thought of as inseparable by everyone in their close-knit...

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...

Trinidad, 1980: Dawn Bishop, aged 16, leaves her home and journeys across the sea to Venezuela. There, she gives birth to a baby girl, and leaves her with nuns to be given up for adoption. Dawn tries to carry on with her life - a move to England, a marriage, a career, two sons, a divorce - but through it all, she still thinks of the child she had in Venezuela, and of what might have been. When, forty years later, a woman from an internet forum gets in touch, saying that she might be Dawn's long-lost daughter, it stirs up a complicated mix of feelings.

THE NO. 2 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER LONGLISTED FOR THE COMEDY WOMEN IN PRINT PRIZE 2025 The Times Popular Fiction Book of the Year ‘A heartbreaker of a book’ THE TIMES 'Alarmingly relatable' MARIAN KEYES ‘Hilarious and profound’ DOLLY ALDERTON The hottest debut novel of 2023 from...

From New York Times bestselling author Mary Kay Andrews comes a spirited audiobook about starting over and taking control of your life. Eloise Foley, known to her friends as Weezie, has been through the divorce from hell. Her ex-husband Tal (aka Talmadge Evans III) was awarded their house in...

Brought to you by Penguin. Jack Kerouac's classic novel about friendship, the search for meaning, and the allure of nature A witty, moving philosophical novel, Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums is a journey of self-discovery through the lens of Zen Buddhist thought. This Penguin Modern Classics...

It’s 1938 in San Francisco: Grace, Helen, and Ruby, three young women from very different backgrounds, meet by chance at the exclusive and glamorous Forbidden City nightclub. Grace Lee, an American-born Chinese girl, has fled the Midwest with nothing but heartache, talent, and a pair of dancing shoes. Helen Fong lives with her extended family in Chinatown, where her traditional parents insist that she guard her reputation like a piece of jade. The stunning Ruby Tom challenges the boundaries of convention at every turn.