British Literary Fiction

Bournville is a rich and poignant new novel from the bestselling, Costa award-winning author of Middle England. It is the story of a woman, of a nation's love affair with chocolate, of Britain itself.

The setting itself is elemental P. D. James: the bleak coast of East Anglia, where atop a sweep of low cliffs stands the small theological college of St. Anselm’s. On the shore not far away, smothered beneath a fall of sand, lies the body of one of the school’s young ordinands. He is the son...

The internationally bestselling author of The Woman on the Ledge returns with a twisty thriller about a missing child and three adults whose shared secrets and hidden history could prove deadly. “I need to report a crime. My baby has been stolen.” All Lauren wants is a new life in Spain...

From the Nobel Prize winner, a coming-of-age story that illuminates the harshness and beauty of an Africa on the brink of colonization Shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Award, Paradise was characterized by the Nobel Prize committee as Abdulrazak Gurnah’s “breakthrough”...

From Peter Mayle, a wonderful new novel steeped in wine—and the business of wine?and set in, bien sûr, Provence. Max Skinner is not exactly setting the London financial world on fire?and when his supervisor steals his biggest client, it’s definitely time to inspect the vineyard in Provence...

In this piercing story of innocence betrayed set in the 30s, the orphaned Portia is stranded in the sophisticated and politely treacherous world of her wealthy half-brother's home in London. There she encounters the attractive, carefree cad Eddie. To him, Portia is at once child and woman, and her fears her gushing love. To her, Eddie is the only reason to be alive. But when Eddie follows Portia to a sea-side resort, the flash of a cigarette lighter in a darkened cinema illuminates a stunning romantic betrayal.

Anne Quirk's life is built on stories - both the lies she was told by the man she loved and the fictions she told herself to survive. Nobody remembers Anne now, but this elderly woman was an artistic pioneer in her youth, a creator of groundbreaking documentary photographs. Her beloved grandson, Luke, now a captain with the Royal Western Fusiliers in the British army, has inherited her habit of transforming reality.

In 1889, satirist Jerome K. Jerome fully intended to write a serious travel guide when he and his two best friends embarked on a boating trip up the river Thames to Oxford. But his musings on landmarks and local history were soon hijacked by his own digressive, waggish voice. And so, what began as a peaceful and edifying two-week exploration soon floated upriver into farce - aided, quite naturally, by a portly ration of cheese, some very bad weather, and a dog named Montmorency.

A PBS NewsHour/New York Times Book Club Pick A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK Named a best book of the year by the New York Times, NPR, Huffington Post, The A.V. Club, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Guardian, Refinery29, Town & Country, Harper's Bazaar, NYLON, BookRiot. “Kitamura’s prose...

In the vein of Downton Abbey, Jane Austen's beloved but unfinished masterpiece--often considered her most modern and exciting novel--gets a spectacular second act in this tie-in to a major new limited television series. Written only months before Austen's death in 1817, Sanditon tells the story...

Young, ardent Dorothea Brooke defies her sister by wedding the much older Reverend Edward Casaubon, blindly hoping to assist in his scholarly pursuits. Tertius Lydgate, a progressive doctor, new and unwelcome in provincial Middlemarch, is charmed into marriage with the selfish and shallow Rosamond Vincy, a disastrous mismatch of his own. Soon blatant stubbornness, unruly jealousy, blind idealism, and calculated blackmail threaten to upend the Midlands village and lay waste to happy endings.

Six friends. One killer. Who do you trust? A teen girl is missing after a night of partying; thirty years later, the discovery of her body reopens a cold case in “a scorching portrait of friendship and its betrayal.” (Nicci French). “This enjoyably chilling suspense tale . . . conveys...

For a fellow like Captain Alan Lewrie, Royal Navy, who despises the French worse than the Devil hates Holy Water, it's hellish-hard to gain a reputation for saving them, not once but twice, when the French refugees from Haiti surrender to England rather than the vengeful ex-slave armies in November of 1803! After that, it could be "all claret and cruising" in the Caribbean, but for a home-bound sugar convoy, one so frustrating as to make even the happy-go-lucky Alan Lewrie tear his hair out, kick furniture, and curse like...well, like a sailor!

From Peter Mayle, a wonderful new novel steeped in wine—and the business of wine?and set in, bien sûr, Provence. Max Skinner is not exactly setting the London financial world on fire?and when his supervisor steals his biggest client, it’s definitely time to inspect the vineyard in Provence...

Three men search for some version of home; their lives move inexorably toward a reckoning that will draw them all together. For Farouk, family is all. He has protected his wife and daughter as best he can from the war and hatred that has torn Syria apart. If they stay, they will lose their freedom. Lampy is distracted; he has too much going on in his small town life in Ireland. He has the city girl for a bit of fun, but she's not Chloe. The game was always the lifeblood coursing through John's veins: manipulating people for his enjoyment. But it was never enough.

Edward St. Aubyn's Patrick Melrose novels were some of the most celebrated works of fiction of the past decade. Ecstatic praise came from a wide range of admirers, from literary superstars such as Zadie Smith, Francine Prose, Jeffrey Eugenides, and Michael Chabon to pop-culture icons such as Anthony Bourdain and January Jones. Now St. Aubyn returns with a hilariously smart send-up of a certain major British literary award in this witty audiobook.

“Stunning: so clever, so gripping, so timely.” — Lucy Foley When four influential members are poisoned at London’s most exclusive private club, a young waitress is charged with their murder. Her personal life and upbringing are dissected, and five men begin to question how well they...

By the New York Times bestselling author of The Bone Clocks and Cloud Atlas | Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize Selected by Time as One of the Ten Best Books of the Year | A New York Times Notable Book | Named One of the Best Books of the Year by The Washington Post Book World, The Christian...

Normally dead bodies in a graveyard are buried - but not this one. When a woman is found strangled in a North London cemetery with an old newspaper clipping clutched in her hand, Inspector Witherspoon is surprised to find that he and the victim have crossed paths before. Alice Robinson was a respectable widow who ran a quiet Islington lodging house. None of her lodgers have any apparent motive to murder their landlady.

Things are looking up for Major Matthew Hervey: news of a handsome legacy should allow him to purchase command of his beloved regiment, the 6th Light Dragoons. He is resolved to marry, and, rather to his surprise, the object of his affections - the widow of the late Sir Ivo Lankester - has readily consented. But he hasn't reckoned with the opportunism of a fellow officer with ready cash in hand.