British Literary Fiction

"I do not say there is no character as well drawn in Shakespeare [as D'Artagnan]. I do say there is none that I love so wholly." --Robert Louis Stevenson "The lasting and universal popularity of The Three Musketeers shows that Dumas, by artlessly expressing his own nature in the persons of his...

In the early 60s, Tayo Ajayi sails to England from Nigeria to take up a scholarship at Oxford University. There he discovers a whole generation high on visions of a new and better world. He meets Vanessa Richardson, the beautiful daughter of a former colonial officer. Their story, which spans four decades, is a bittersweet tale of a brave but doomed affair and the universal desire to fall truly, madly, and deeply in love.

At thirty-three, nurse Heather is desperately waiting for her romantic life to begin. Then she meets handsome, strong Anthony and is sure she’s found the one. Brushing any doubts aside, she projects all her hopes for true love onto him. Meanwhile, at a yoga retreat in Spain, happy-go-lucky Joe can’t believe his luck when he meets vivacious, witty Amy. She’s the sharpest, most beautiful woman he has ever dated, and the fact that she’s interested in him feels like a dream come true.

Ten years ago, Mary Morstan’s father, an officer in an Indian regiment, vanished. Four years later, elegant pearls began to arrive, six in total, and now she holds an invitation to meet her mysterious anonymous benefactor. As Miss Morstan shares this peculiar tale with Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, she urges the detectives to accompany her. Her only clues to her father’s disappearance: a map of a fortress with the names of four strangers and an assertion that she’s been dreadfully wronged.

From the bestselling author of About a Boy, A Long Way Down and Dickens and Prince, a wise and hilarious novel about love, heartbreak, and rock and roll. “I've always loved Nick Hornby, and the way he writes characters and the way he thinks. It's funny and heartbreaking all at the same time...

Winner of the 2007 Audie Award for Literary Fiction and Finalist for Multi-Voiced Performance Instant #1 New York Times bestseller “Readers will feel the magnetic pull of this paean to words, books and the magical power of story.”—People “Eerie and fascinating.”—USA TODAY Sometimes...

A collection of short stories from the National Book Award-winning author of Mating "Powerful and original...always convincingly authentic. The ironies keep cutting in new directions." —The New York Times Whether they are Americans, Brits, or a stubborn and suicidally moral Dutchman...

A groundbreaking collection of stories, including four never-before-published tales, from the award-winning author of Perdido Street Station What William Gibson did for science fiction, China Miéville has done for fantasy, shattering old paradigms with fiercely imaginative works of startling...

Napoleon has England on edge. For the cunning and conniving Becky Sharp, it’s an opportunity to take advantage of the chaos and improve her lowly station. Her friend Amelia Sedley, a blue-blood pawn, affords Becky entrée into the moneyed class. As the guileless Amelia pines for a rakish soldier, the ruthless Becky climbs upward, setting the stage for a domestic battlefield of greed, ambition, deception, and dizzying reversals of love and fortune.

They were best friends. Now they are murderer and witness. Pearl Day has always lived in the background - companion to her childhood friend, the dazzling and unpredictable Lady Eleanor Nicholson. Their bond was forged at Alderleigh, Eleanor's crumbling country estate, but now they share a sleek...

The Lucky Ones is a profound evocation of family and the magnetic bonds that can attract or repel. The five people whose lives converge here are also haunted by family: the longing for love, the struggle to connect. Here, a young pregnant mother wrestles with an utterly changed life; a new...

Named a Best Book of the Year by The Guardian, The Observer (London), Granata, and TLS, and a finalist for a World Fantasy Award. Acclaimed master of speculative fiction, fantasy, space opera, and literary realism and one of the most celebrated living British authors M. John Harrison has crafted...

The Arrangements is a short story originally published for The New York Times Book Review, which commissioned Adichie to “write anything about this election you like.” The story focuses on Melania Trump and is a homage to Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway...

Rachel Cusk’s second novel is a ruthless, surprising story of work, gender, and control. Ralph Loman is working in an unsatisfying job at a free London newspaper when Francine Snaith, a temporary secretary for a corporate finance firm, unexpectedly crosses his path at a party. Her beauty...

The beautifully rendered fiction debut in the US of preeminent WWII historian James Holland offers a unique angle on the conflict, chronicling the impact of the war on one British family and their small village. The village of Alvesdon has been home to the Castells for generations. But the year...

""SCREAMING, CRYING, THROWING UP! Cry Havoc is a fever worth catching, a gloomy and gorgeous pleasure."" — Maggie Thrash, author of Rainbow Black A humorous dark academia novel, set in a failing English girls’ school in the 1980s, in which a teen running from her past becomes immersed in a...

A forthcoming book from Henry Holt scheduled to publish in Fall 2026...

After his father’s untimely death, Nicholas Nickleby is charged with supporting his mother and sister as he finds his way in the world. Broke, Nickleby goes to his maleficent uncle Ralph for help. The ruthless and resentful businessman appeases his nephew with a thankless position at a grim orphans’ home. Nickleby is swiftly conspired against, and the young man is forced to leave his family and London behind. Accompanied by colorful eccentrics and a rogues’ gallery of villains, Nickleby is tested at every turn on his journey home and to self-discovery.

This fine novel sets in opposition two of Thomas Hardy’s most unforgettable creations: his heroine, the sensuous, free-spirited Eustacia Vye, and the solemn, majestic stretch of upland in Dorsetshire he called Egdon Heath. The famous opening reveals the haunting power of that dark, forbidding...

James Fenimore Cooper was America's first successful popular novelist. Son of the prominent federalist William Cooper, founder of the Cooperstown settlement, James was educated at Yale in preparation for a genteel life as a federalist gentleman. After his father's death in an 1809 duel, Cooper quickly squandered his inheritance, and at thirty was on the verge of bankruptcy. He turned to writing but his first book, Precaution (1820), was a failure.