Social novels

#1 New York Times bestselling author Fredrik Backman, who 'captures the messy essence of being human' (The Washington Post), returns with an unforgettably funny, deeply moving tale of four teenagers whose friendship creates a bond so powerful that it changes a stranger’s life twenty-five years later.   Most people don’t even notice them—three tiny...

Imagine waking up in a cosy photo studio in the mountains, between this world and the next. A kind man hands you a hot drink and a stack of photographs, one from every day of your life. Then, you are asked to pick one photograph from each year to be...

I won't describe what I look like. Whatever you're thinking, it's probably worse. August Pullman was born with a facial difference that, up until now, has prevented him from going to a mainstream school. Starting 5th grade at Beecher Prep, he wants nothing more than to be treated as an...

Phoebe Stone arrives at a grand beachside hotel in Rhode Island wearing her best dress and least comfortable shoes. Immediately she is mistaken for one of the wedding people - but she's actually the only guest at the Cornwall Inn who isn't here for the big event.When the bride discovers...

Sometimes you need to get lost to find your way. Marnie is stuck. Stuck working alone in her London flat, stuck battling the long afternoons and a life that often feels like it's passing her by. Michael is coming undone. Reeling from his wife's departure, increasingly reclusive, taking himself on...

Follow the bank of the Koitogawa river until you reach the beach. From there a path of white seashells will lead you to the Chibineko Kitchen. Step inside, they'll be expecting you. Nagi Hayakawa is facing an impossible choice. Should she agree to marry her boyfriend, despite being ill...

One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to...

Eve is a successful novelist who wakes up one day in a hospital bed with no memory of how she got there. Her husband, never far from her side, explains that she has had an operation to remove the large, malignant tumour growing in her brain. As Eve learns...

London, June 2019. Maggie is 30, pregnant and broke. Faced with moving back to the home town she fought to escape, she’s wondering if having a baby with boyfriend Ed will be the last spontaneous act of her life. Ed, meanwhile, is harbouring secret dreams of his own. Phil...

Through chance, luck and choice, one man's life takes him from a modest apartment in Hungary to the elite society of London - in this captivating new novel about the forces that make and break our livesFifteen-year-old Istvan lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. New...

The Mississippi River, 1861. When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a new owner in New Orleans and separated from his wife and daughter forever, he flees to nearby Jackson’s Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his...

Los Angeles, 1964. For two decades, Del and Dinah Newman and their sons, Guy and Shep, have ruled television as America’s Favorite Family. Millions of viewers tune in every week to watch them play flawless, black-and-white versions of themselves. But now the Sixties are in full swing, and the Newmans’...

An exhilarating tale of twisted desire, histories and homes, and the unexpected shape of revenge - for readers of Patricia Highsmith, Sarah Waters and Ian McEwan's Atonement. It is fifteen years after the Second World War, and Isabel has built herself a solitary life of discipline and strict routine...

Steph Harper is on the run. When she was five, her mother ran – with Steph and her younger sister in tow – from an abusive husband into the arms of a small Cherokee community, where she hoped they might finally belong.But Steph soon sets her sights as far away as...

A stunning collector’s edition box set celebrating the tenth anniversary of this incomparable, bestselling literary phenomenon, now divided into four smaller volumes and featuring original artwork.   In Hanya Yanagihara's profoundly moving novel, four classmates from a small Massachusetts college move to New York in search of fame and fortune. Broke, adrift,...

Can two very different women put aside their differences to save the bookstore they love? The Japanese bestseller that kicked off a seven-book series - adapted for TV and 200,000 copies soldRiko Nishioka is assistant manager of the flagship Pegasus bookstore in Kichijoji. After working her way up from a...

No thinking person can or does genuinely keep out of politics, in an age like the present oneUnfailingly wise and often startlingly prophetic, George Orwell’s essays are masterpieces of plain English prose. This stirring new collection brings together his most cherished pieces with lesser-known gems, ranging over everything from tree...

The Night Library is no ordinary library. Within it are found the rarest and most unusual collections – the books of deceased famous writers:  the books they wrote the books that inspired them the books they loved All Otaha Higuchi wants to do is work with books. However, the exhausting nature of her work at...

A publishing event ten years in the making―a searing, exquisite new novel by the best-selling and award-winning author of Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists―the story of four women and their loves, longings, and desires.Chiamaka is a Nigerian travel writer living in America. Alone in the midst of the...

No one really understands how we suffer. One day, when we’re adults, we may come to recall this suffering, this misery, as silly and laughable, but how are we to get through the long, hateful period until then? No one bothers to teach us that.     Osamu Dazai was a master...

A global phenomenon, The Alchemist has been read and loved by over 62 million readers, topping bestseller lists in 74 countries worldwide. Now this magical fable is beautifully repackaged in an edition that lovers of Paulo Coelho will want to treasure forever. Every few decades a book is published...

It demands great spiritual resilience not to hate the hater whose foot is on your neck, and an even greater miracle of perception and charity not to teach your child to hate’Told in the form of two intensely personal 'letters', The Fire Next Time is an excoriating condemnation of the terrible legacy...

A special student edition of Orwell's timeless fable, with an introduction and study notesWhen the downtrodden animals of Manor Farm overthrow their master Mr Jones and take over the farm themselves, they imagine it is the beginning of a life of freedom and equality. But gradually a cunning, ruthless élite...

Sometimes you need to run, to find out where you really belong . . . Baby Saul has had it with just about everything. She's fed up with her job and her colleagues, her love life is permanently casual, and underpinning everything is the grief of losing her much-loved dad....

Be Careful What You Wish For, the fourth instalment in Jeffrey Archer's The Clifton Chronicles, opens with Harry Clifton and his wife Emma rushing to hospital to learn the fate of their son Sebastian, who has been involved in a fatal car accident. But who died, Sebastian or his best...

I couldn t put it down, and I didn't want to either EMILY HENRY A page-turning pleasure stylish, sharp and breathtakingly smart DAISY BUCHANAN Everything comes at a price. But not everything can be paid for Millie wants to graduate, get a job and buy a house. She s slowly saving up...

When the stakes are high, how low will you go? Ayesha Scott has a perfect life. Home is an art-filled Cornish castle with her stratospherically wealthy, titled husband and their beloved daughter. But behind every realised dream lurks an unexploded nightmare and in the course of one day Ayesha discovers...

Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties—successful, competent, and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two...

Sometimes we must look to the past to survive the future. A novel about what really matters in life from the bestselling author of Captain Corelli's Mandolin Q wants a simpler and safer life. His work as a quantum cryptographer for the government has led him to believe a...

Long Island is Colm Tóibín’s masterpiece: an exquisite, exhilarating novel that asks whether it is possible to truly return to the past and renew the great love that seemed gone forever. A man with an Irish accent knocks on Eilis Fiorello’s door on Long Island and in that moment everything...