British Literary Fiction

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 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...

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...

Jane Cleveland and Prudence Bates were close friends at Oxford University, but now live very different lives. Forty-one-year-old Jane lives in the country, is married to a vicar, has a daughter she adores, and lives a very proper life in a very proper English parish. Prudence, a year shy of 30, lives in London, has an office job, and is self-sufficient and fiercely independent - until Jane decides her friend should be married. Jane has the perfect husband in mind for her former pupil: a widower named Fabian Driver.

Brought to you by Penguin. A classic espionage thriller from master storyteller Graham Greene. Carleton Myatt meets Coral Musker, a naïve English chorus girl, aboard the Orient Express as it heads across Europe to Constantinople. As their relationship develops, they find themselves caught up in...

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.

You never saw him. But he saw it all. When a vibrant young woman is murdered while on a video chat, a small-town detective wades into a circle of friends and lovers with dangerous secrets—from the acclaimed author of the “enjoyably chilling” (The New York Times Book Review) She Lies in...

Shortlisted for the Whitbread Award, award-winning author of the Elric series Michael Moorcock offers a captivating and immersive portrait of London from World War II through the 1980s through the eyes of three outpatients from a mental hospital. In this masterful exploration of the human...

A complete refreshment and uplift of energy: a hilarious, beguiling first novel for the head and the heart. Sylvie is happy only when she’s in therapy. This is because Sylvie is in love with her therapist; she thinks about her every second they’re not together (roughly 167 hours and 10...

Named one of Time’s 100 best novels in the English language, Money is “savagely hilarious. It risks, it boils with energy . . . it even manages to shock” (The Washington Post). Including a new introduction by Lorrie Moore, author of I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home Originally published...

He’s lying next to you. He’s not breathing. . . . And the killer might have been you. Detective Chief Inspector Jonah Sheens is on the trail in this explosive crime novel from the acclaimed author of She Lies in Wait and Watching from the Dark. “Secrets and self-sabotage abound in this...

A rich, heartwarming and charming debut novel that reminds us that sometimes you find love in the most unexpected places. Dan Hollis lives a happy, solitary life carving exquisite Celtic harps in his barn in the countryside of the English moors. Here he can be himself, away from social...

This novel had its birth in the death of Martin Amis's closest friend, the incomparable Christopher Hitchens, and it is within that profound and sprawling friendship that Inside Story unfurls. From their early days as young magazine staffers in London, reviewing romantic entanglements and the...

Brought to you by Penguin. This Penguin Classic is performed by Emma Naomi, best known for Bridgerton. This definitive recording includes an introduction by Marilyn Butler. With its irrepressible heroine and playful literary games, Northanger Abbey is the most youthful and optimistic of Jane...

Young Dorothy is trapped in a life of poverty and heartache. Abandoned by a mother who never loved her, she is forced to live with grandparents who care even less for her than they do for their own bratty children. Dorothy must persevere and hold on to the distant memory of her loving father with only a tin of letters and a small toy soldier to remind her of her former life of wealth and privilege. Just when Dorothy thinks life has nothing left to offer, a letter arrives, inviting her to visit her father in London. Will this be the opportunity Dorothy has been waiting for?

“Viscerally vivid…half Tarantino and half pitch-black northern realism.” —The Guardian, Named a Best Book of 2024 * “Unfolds with a pleasurable, slow-burn assurance.” —The New York Times Book Review A stunning and “spiky debut” (The Times, London) novel set in the rugged, rural...

The acclaimed winner of the Whitbread First Novel Award, by the author of The Country Life Chronically confused, terminally middle class, hopelessly romantic, Agnes Day lives with her two best friends in the London suburbs and works at an obscure trade magazine. Life and love seem to go on...

She’s part of the family now. For better—and for worse . . . When Alex met Natalie she changed his life. After the tragic death of his first wife, which left him a single parent to teenage daughter Jade, he was desperate to leave the pain of his past behind. But his newfound happiness is...

A LOCUS AWARD FINALIST ONE OF THE GUARDIAN’S BEST SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY BOOKS OF 2017 A surreal debut novel set in a world shaped by language in the tradition of Margaret Atwood and Ursula K. Le Guin. Vanja, an information assistant, is sent from her home city of Essre to the austere...