Literary Fiction Psychological

Albert Honig's most constant companions have always been his bees. A never-married octogenarian, he makes a modest living as a beekeeper, as his father and his father's father did before him. Deeply acquainted with the workings of the hives, Albert is less versed in the ways of people, especially his friend Claire, whose presence and absence in his life have never been reconciled. When Claire is killed in a seemingly senseless accident during a burglary gone wrong, Albert is haunted by the loss and by the secrets and silence that hovered between them for so long. As he pieces together the memories of their shared history, he will come to learn the painful truths about Claire's life.

Emma Bovary is not content to be the mere dutiful wife of a French country doctor. She yearns for excitement and a sense of romance that pulls at her so strongly she is powerless to resist, even though pursuing her dreams will exact a terrible price. Learn why Gustave Flaubert's compelling heroine has enchanted and puzzled readers for centuries.

From the #1 bestselling author of The Historian comes a mesmerizing novel that spans the past and the present—and unearths the troubled history of a gorgeous but haunted country. A young American woman, Alexandra Boyd, has traveled to Sofia, Bulgaria, hoping that life abroad will salve the...

“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...

In Like Life's eight exquisite stories, Lorrie Moore's characters stumble through their daily existence. These men and women, unsettled and adrift and often frightened, can't quite understand how they arrived at their present situations. Harry has been reworking a play for years in his apartment near Times Square in New York. Jane is biding her time at a cheese shop in a Midwest mall. Dennis, unhappily divorced, buries himself in self-help books about healthful food and healthy relationships.

As a forensic psychiatrist at New York's leading institution of its kind, Dr. Lily Dominick has evaluated the mental states of some of the country's most dangerous psychotics. But the strangely compelling client she interviewed today - a man with no name, accused of the most twisted crime - struck her as somehow different from the others, despite the two impossible claims he made.

It is 1978, and John Lennon has escaped New York City to try to find the island off the west coast of Ireland he bought nine years prior. Leaving behind domesticity, his approaching 40s, his inability to create, and his memories of his parents, he sets off to find calm in the comfortable silence of isolation. But when he puts himself in the hands of a shape-shifting driver full of Irish charm and dark whimsy, what ensues can only be termed a magical mystery tour.

In this book (which may or may not be fiction), Philip Roth meets a man who may or may not be Philip Roth. Because someone with that name has been touring Israel, promoting a bizarre reverse exodus of the Jews. Roth is intent on stopping him, even if that means impersonating his own impersonator. With excruciating suspense, unfettered philosophical speculation, and a wild cast of characters, Operation Shylock barrels across the frontier between fact and fiction, seriousness and high comedy, history and nightmare.

Black Flies is the story of paramedic Ollie Cross and his first year on the job in mid-'90s New York. It is a ground's-eye view of life on the streets: the shoot-outs, the bad cops, the unhinged medics, the hopeless patients, the dark humor in bizarre circumstances, and one medic's struggle to balance his desire to help against his own growing callousness. This story features lives that hang in the balance, including a single job with a misdiagnosed newborn that sends Cross and his partner into a life-changing struggle between good and evil.

Laura is a nurse in a paediatric unit. On long, quiet shifts, she and her colleagues, clad in their different shades of blue, care for sick babies, handling their exquisitely frangible bodies, carefully calibrating the mysterious machines that keep them alive. Laura may be burned out. Her hands have been raw from washing as long as she can remember. When she sleeps, she dreams of water; when she wakes, she finds herself lying next to a man who doesn't love her any more. And there is a strange figure dancing in the corner of her vision, always just beyond her reach.

After drinking an elixir that bestows immortality upon him, a young Indian named Flapping Eagle spends the next 700 years sailing the seas with the blessing - and ultimately the burden - of living forever. Eventually, weary of the sameness of life, he journeys to the mountainous Calf Island to regain his mortality. There he meets other immortals obsessed with their own stasis and sets out to scale the island's peak, from which the mysterious and corrosive Grimus Effect emits.

Esther Nilson is an intellectual woman who values debate and political discourse almost as much as she values life itself. Until she is asked to give a lecture on famed artist Hugo Rask, and falls hopelessly in love with him. She abandons her relationships, her home, her friends and her self esteem, as her world begins to revolve around the existence of Hugo Rask. They strike up a casual relationship, but she sees it as much more

In this "thought-provoking" thriller from the author of the Reese Witherspoon book club pick and national bestseller Conviction, a woman in crisis finds herself on the hunt for her own mother's murderer (People). Dr. Margo Dunlop is at a crossroads. Her adoptive mom just passed away, and Margo...

An exploration of relationships, marriage, passion, beauty and the price of love. Zoë Howard is 17 when her brother, Russell, introduces her to Stephen Quayle. Aloof and harsh, Stephen is unlike anyone she has ever met, 'a weird, irascible character out of some dense Russian novel'. His sister, Anna, is shy and thoughtful, 'a little orphan'. Zoe and Russell, Stephen and Anna: they may come from different social worlds, but all four will spend their lives moving in and out of each other's shadow.

Inner-suburban Melbourne in the 1970s: a world of communal living, drugs, music and love - Garner captures the fluid relationships of a community of friends. Helen Garner’s gritty, lyrical first novel divided the critics on its publication in 1977. Today, Monkey Grip is regarded as a masterpiece - the novel that shines a light on a time and a place and a way of living never before presented in Australian literature: communal households, music, friendships, children, love, drugs and sex.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER The best-selling author of The River returns with a heart-racing thriller about a young man who is hired by an elite fishing lodge in Colorado, where he uncovers a plot of shocking menace amid the natural beauty of sun-drenched streams and forests. “Peter Heller is the...

On an isolated beach set against a lonely windswept coastline, a pale figure sits serenely against a sand dune staring out to sea. His hands are folded neatly in his lap, his ankles are crossed and there is a faint smile on his otherwise lifeless face. Months later, after a fruitless investigation, the nameless stranger is buried in an unmarked grave. But the mystery of his life and death lingers on, drawing the nearby villagers into its wake. From strandings to shipwrecks, it is not the first time that strangeness has washed up on their shores.

From the attic of Lyntons, a dilapidated English country mansion, Frances Jellico sees them - Cara first - dark and beautiful - then Peter - striking and serious. The couple is spending the summer of 1969 in the rooms below hers while Frances is researching the architecture in the surrounding gardens. But she's distracted. Beneath a floorboard in her bathroom, she finds a peephole that gives her access to her neighbors’ private lives.

When Shea Walker, a sunny, easygoing mom, is found dead in a bathtub with a stomach full of booze and pills, the shocking discovery shatters the complacency of her comfortable suburban community. Kat Burrows, Shea's longtime friend and former neighbor, is hit hardest. How could a woman she thought she knew so well come to such a sordid end? What could lead happy, well-adjusted, responsible Shea to accidentally overdose on alcohol and narcotics? Or, worse, drive her to suicide?

Thirteen-year-old Lizzie Hood and her next-door neighbor Evie Verver are inseparable, best friends who swap clothes, bathing suits, and field-hockey sticks and between whom—presumably—there are no secrets. Then one afternoon, Evie disappears, and as a rabid, giddy panic spreads through the balmy suburban community, everyone turns to Lizzie for answers. Was Evie unhappy, troubled, or upset? Had she mentioned being followed? Would she have gotten into the car of a stranger?