Literary Fiction Psychological

“Drifts is a dazzling and enjoyable book. Kate Zambreno has invented a new form. It is a kind of absolute present, real life captured in closeup. I've never read truer pages on the subject of pregnancy. No writer has come so close to achieving a total grasp of life: the entanglement of...

Four years in, Stevie and Nate’s true-crime podcast, All the Gory Details, is forced onto hiatus when their conclusions in their first-ever episode, about the unsolved murder of teenager Lauren in their hometown seventeen years ago, are proven wrong. Their mistake ruined a life, and Stevie and Nate are still reeling from the consequences. Still, when a fresh murder frighteningly similar to Lauren’s is brought to their attention, Nate is adamant that they should resurrect the podcast.

A powerful tale of the love—and jealousy— between mothers and daughters by Agatha Christie, written under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. Agatha Christie, famous for her ingenious crime novels, also wrote about crimes of the heart. Written under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott, Christie’s...

This magnificent novel is about the murder of a miserly, aged pawnbroker and her younger sister by a radical, destitute St. Petersburg student named Raskolnikov, and the emotional, mental, and physical effects that follow. It is a remarkable masterpiece about a man's turbulent inner life and his relationship to others and to society at large. Dostoevsky explored the human condition on many levels in this great piece, and among the main themes the novel explores is the rather strange theory that criminals have a spiritual need to be punished - that indeed they demand it.

The first novel Nabokov wrote while living in America, and the most overtly political novel he ever wrote, Bend Sinister is a modern classic. While it is filled with veiled puns and characteristically delightful wordplay, it is, first and foremost, a haunting and compelling narrative about a civilized man caught in the tyranny of a police state. Professor Adam Krug, the country's foremost philosopher, offers the only hope of resistance to Paduk, dictator and leader of the Party of the Average Man.

A beautifully written, evocative literary page-turner about a brilliant nineteenth-century female pianist from Poland lost to history and another woman’s quest to ensure she is not forgotten—with a shocking twist of a finale. Clara Bishop hasn’t touched a piano since a concert hall fire...

After several years living abroad, the fictional protagonist of Galatea 2.2 - Richard Powers - returns to the US as Humanist-in-Residence at the enormous Center for the Study of Advanced Sciences. There he runs afoul of Philip Lentz, a cognitive neurologist intent upon modeling the human brain. Lentz involves Powers in an outlandish and irresistible project: to train a neural net on a canonical list of Great Books. Through repeated tutorials, the device grows gradually more worldly, until it demands to know its own name, sex, race, and reason for existing.

“Extraordinary . . . [Bolaño’s] greatest work.” —James Wood, The New York Times Book Review “A marvelous river of feeling, a brilliant meditation, an enthralling fantasy—By Night in Chile is the real thing, and the rarest: a contemporary novel destined to have a permanent place in...

Shirley Jackson's third novel, a chilling descent into multiple personalities Elizabeth is a demure twenty-three-year-old wiling her life away at a dull museum job, living with her neurotic aunt, and subsisting off her dead mother’s inheritance. When Elizabeth begins to suffer terrible...

Discover the award-winning debut novel by the New York Times bestselling author of The Immortalists, a “majestic collision of sci-fi thriller and love story” (Bustle) about a young woman struggling with questions of love, trust, and ethics as the line between dreams and reality...

First published in 1948, Nothing but the Night marked the auspicious beginning of John Williams' career as a novelist. In the person of Arthur Maxley, Williams investigates the terror and the waywardness of a man who has suffered an early traumatic experience. As a child, Maxley witnessed a scene of such violence and of such a nature that the evocation of Greek tragedy is inescapable. Now, years later, we move through a single significant day in the grown Arthur Maxley's life, the day when he is to meet his father, who has been absent for many years.

Hitchcock's Rear Window meets Messud's The Woman Upstairs in this unnerving, superbly crafted novel which takes readers deep into the mind of a serial stalker and, through him, the lives of his unsuspecting victims. Try it yourself. Go out, pick somebody and watch them. Take your phone and a...

A BELLETRIST BOOK CLUB PICK “Halperin’s radiant second novel walks the fine line between the longing for couplehood and the torture of codependency. . . . Let the rapturous intimacy and gut-churning ups and downs begin!” —Leigh Haber, The New York Times Book Review “I read this book...

A cautionary tale of social climbing by Agatha Christie, written under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. Agatha Christie, famous for her ingenious crime novels, also wrote about crimes of the heart. Written under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott, Christie’s tales of romantic suspense further explore...

A simmering, provocative novel about a couple whose affair with a young Greek woman over the course of a summer in Athens threatens to crack their relationship wide open “The type of book you’ll want to gulp down in one breathless sitting . . . A summer in Athens? Check. Millennial malaise?...

Women are being murdered in upstate New York, their bodies found mysteriously hanging in chains. With the FBI called in, given the bizarre nature of the murders - and the lack of any clues - there is only one agent they can turn to: Special Agent Riley Paige. Riley, reeling from her last case, is reluctant to take on a new one, since she is still convinced a former serial killer is out there, stalking her. She knows, though, that her ability to enter a serial killer's mind and her obsessive nature is what will be needed to crack this case.

“A rollercoaster of terror, marked by whip-fast twists and turns.”—The New York Times “Pulled me in from the first page... Put this one high on your summer list.”—Stephen King When a small-town family is pushed to the brink, how far will they go to protect one of their own?...

When Tim Madden, an unsuccessful writer living on Cape Cod, awakes with a gruesome hangover, a painful tattoo on his upper arm, and a severed female head in his marijuana stash, he has almost no memory of the night before. As he reconstructs the missing hours, Madden runs afoul of retired prizefighters, sex addicts, mediums, former cons, a world-weary ex-girlfriend, and his own father, old now but still a Herculean figure.

A desperate young man plans the perfect crime - the murder of a despicable pawnbroker, an old woman no one loves and no one will mourn. Is it not just, he reasons, for a man of genius to commit such a crime - to transgress moral law - if it will ultimately benefit humanity? So begins one of the greatest novels ever written: a powerful psychological study, a terrifying murder mystery, and a fascinating detective thriller infused with philosophical, religious, and social commentary.

Larry Cole has everything a man could want. He loves his wife and is devoted to their two small sons. His career as an architect is both creatively satisfying and financially rewarding. His house in suburban Pinecrest Manor is attractive and comfortable. But then Larry sees a new neighbor standing at the school bus stop. Margaret Gault is young, blond, beautiful - and married. She’s everything Larry didn’t realize was missing from his life, and he must have her. Maggie tells Larry she’s never been in love. But this isn’t about love. It’s about need and desire. And lies.