Past Kindle Book Deals but Still Must Read Books!
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160 past books matching Contemporary Fiction
A good pick for readers who like literary fiction with humor, mental health themes, underdog teams, and bruised but stubborn hope.
Head Fake
Literary Fiction · Contemporary Fiction
Our take
Named to Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books of 2024, Head Fake follows Mikey, a depressed young man who becomes the unlikely basketball coach for high-risk students experiencing mental illness, with a 4.6-star average from more than 1,100 Goodreads ratings. A good pick for readers who like literary fiction with humor, mental health themes, underdog teams, and bruised but stubborn hope.
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About the book
Longlisted for the 2025 PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel and Named to Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books of 2024
“Head Fake is about how laughter can save us." —Chris Rock, comedian, actor
"An absorbing, uplifting tale of finding light and self-worth in adversity’s darkest depths.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Mikey makes everything a joke, even the clinical depression he’s struggled with for years. After a run of failed jobs, he becomes the unlikely basketball coach at a high school for high-risk offenders who are experiencing mental illness. The position becomes suddenly available after the team tried to strangle their last coach.
Every instinct tells Mikey to get as far away from this school as possible. Coaching these kids, who have been arrested for who-knows-what, would be difficult for a normie. For Mikey, it could cause another breakdown and force him right back to living on the street. But he knows that if he has any chance to make his twenty-sixth birthday, he needs to keep this job, even if the school board wants him fired, and the students would rather fight each other than play ball.
This poignant, hilarious, and sometimes uncomfortable novel proves that even the most damaged of us can emerge victorious.
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Good for readers who like literary fiction built around wealth, power, unreliable storytelling, and shifting perspectives.
Trust
Literary Fiction · Contemporary Fiction
Our take
A Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times bestseller called “Exhilarating” by the New York Times, Trust follows a legendary Wall Street tycoon, his wife, and the competing narratives around their fortune, with a 3.8-star average from more than 186,000 Goodreads ratings. Good for readers who like literary fiction built around wealth, power, unreliable storytelling, and shifting perspectives.
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About the book
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION
ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES’S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2022
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 BOOKER PRIZE
“Buzzy and enthralling . . . A glorious novel about empires and erasures, husbands and wives, staggering fortunes and unspeakable misery . . . Fun as hell to read.” —Oprah Daily
"A genre-bending, time-skipping story about New York City’s elite in the roaring ’20s and Great Depression." —Vanity Fair
“A riveting story of class, capitalism, and greed.” —Esquire
"Exhilarating.” —New York Times
Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly endless wealth—all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit.
Hernan Diaz’s TRUST elegantly puts these competing narratives into conversation with one another—and in tension with the perspective of one woman bent on disentangling fact from fiction. The result is a novel that spans over a century and becomes more exhilarating with each new revelation.
At once an immersive story and a brilliant literary puzzle, TRUST engages the reader in a quest for the truth while confronting the deceptions that often live at the heart of personal relationships, the reality-warping force of capital, and the ease with which power can manipulate facts.
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Good for readers who want motherhood, female solidarity, domestic secrets, school scandals, and emotional suspense.
Things We Never Say
Literary Fiction · Contemporary Fiction · Psychological Fiction
Our take
Things We Never Say is a domestic thriller about three mothers whose PTA project leads to friendship, shared secrets, and a buried school scandal that could destroy their carefully managed lives, with a 4.2-star rating from more than 1,600 Amazon reviewers. Good for readers who want motherhood, female solidarity, domestic secrets, school scandals, and emotional suspense.
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About the book
Three mothers. Three secrets. One devastating scandal.
Anna has always been the quiet one, the soft-spoken mother who kept her head down and her secrets close. But when she's thrown together with Maggie and Rhea on a PTA project, they begin to bond over wine and gossip, and slowly share the truths behind their picture-perfect lives.
As a relationship therapist, Maggie is struggling with the painful, embarrassing reality of her floundering marriage. Rhea, despite her wealthy appearance, admits her troubled past could resurface and shatter her perfect world. But it’s Anna who harbors the darkest secret, hiding the reality of her home life to protect the reputation of her husband – the school headmaster.
When the three women stumble upon a scandal the school has gone to great lengths to bury, Anna is caught in an impossible dilemma. With the centennial gala approaching, she must decide how far she's willing to go to expose the truth. Because doing so could wreck all of their perfect lives in one instant…
In this gripping tale of scandal, deception, and female solidarity, three women discover the steep price of perfection and the unshakable strength of friendship. A riveting, emotional story that will captivate fans of Big Little Lies, Lucinda Berry and Jodi Picoult.
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A thoughtful fit for readers who like literary fiction about faith, marriage, friendship, family, and social change.
The Dearly Beloved
Literary Fiction · Historical Fiction · Contemporary Fiction · Women's Fiction
Our take
A Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick called “one of my favorites ever” by Jenna Bush Hager, The Dearly Beloved traces two married couples whose lives become entangled when their husbands are hired as copastors at a New York City congregation in the 1960s, with a 4.4-star rating from more than 5,700 Amazon reviewers. A thoughtful fit for readers who like literary fiction about faith, marriage, friendship, family, and social change.
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About the book
A Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick
“This gentle, gorgeously written book may be one of my favorites ever.” —Jenna Bush Hager
This “moving portrait of love and friendship set against a backdrop of social change” (The New York Times Book Review) traces two married couples whose lives become entangled when the husbands become copastors at a famed New York city congregation in the 1960s.
Charles and Lily, James and Nan. They meet in Greenwich Village in 1963 when Charles and James are jointly hired to steward the historic Third Presbyterian Church through turbulent times. Their personal differences however, threaten to tear them apart.
Charles is destined to succeed his father as an esteemed professor of history at Harvard, until an unorthodox lecture about faith leads him to ministry. How then, can he fall in love with Lily—fiercely intellectual, elegantly stern—after she tells him with certainty that she will never believe in God? And yet, how can he not?
James, the youngest son in a hardscrabble Chicago family, spent much of his youth angry at his alcoholic father and avoiding his anxious mother. Nan grew up in Mississippi, the devout and beloved daughter of a minister and a debutante. James’s escape from his desperate circumstances leads him to Nan and, despite his skepticism of hope in all its forms, her gentle, constant faith changes the course of his life.
Against the backdrop of turbulent changes facing the city and the church’s congregation, The Dearly Beloved offers a poignant meditation on faith and reason, marriage and children, forgiveness and commitment, and the ways we find meaning in our lives.
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Good for readers who like literary historical fiction about judgment, isolation, and contested truth.
Burial Rites
Literary Fiction · Contemporary Fiction · Psychological Fiction
Our take
Burial Rites follows Agnes, a woman charged with the murder of her former master and sent to an isolated Icelandic farm to await execution. As the family forced to house her begins to listen, they discover there is more to her story than the rumors suggest, with a 4.2-star rating from more than 17,100 Amazon reviewers. Good for readers who like literary historical fiction about judgment, isolation, and contested truth.
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About the book
Set against Iceland's stark landscape, Hannah Kent brings to vivid life the story of Agnes—charged with the brutal murder of her former master and sent to await execution on an isolated farm.
Set against Iceland's stark landscape, Hannah Kent brings to vivid life the story of Agnes, who, charged with the brutal murder of her former master, is sent to an isolated farm to await execution.
Horrified at the prospect of housing a convicted murderer, the family at first avoids Agnes. Only Tv=ti, a priest Agnes has mysteriously chosen to be her spiritual guardian, seeks to understand her. But as Agnes's death looms, the farmer's wife and their daughters learn there is another side to the sensational story they've heard.
Riveting and rich with lyricism, Burial Rites evokes a dramatic existence in a distant time and place, and asks the question, how can one woman hope to endure when her life depends upon the stories told by others?
Set against Iceland's stark landscape, Hannah Kent brings to vivid life the story of Agnes, who, charged with the brutal murder of her former master, is sent to an isolated farm to await execution.
Horrified at the prospect of housing a convicted murderer, the family at first avoids Agnes. Only Tv=ti, a priest Agnes has mysteriously chosen to be her spiritual guardian, seeks to understand her. But as Agnes's death looms, the farmer's wife and their daughters learn there is another side to the sensational story they've heard.
Riveting and rich with lyricism, Burial Rites evokes a dramatic existence in a distant time and place, and asks the question, how can one woman hope to endure when her life depends upon the stories told by others?
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Good for readers who want contemporary fiction about identity, disruption, relationships, and self-reckoning.
Wish You Were Here
Literary Fiction · Contemporary Fiction · Women's Fiction
Our take
A #1 New York Times bestseller called “a powerfully evocative story of resilience and the triumph of the human spirit” by Taylor Jenkins Reid, Wish You Were Here follows Diana O’Toole as early Covid-19 signs in NYC upend her carefully planned life and strand her in the Galápagos, with a 4.3-star rating from more than 56,000 Amazon reviewers. Good for readers who want contemporary fiction about identity, disruption, relationships, and self-reckoning.
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About the book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of Small Great Things and The Book of Two Ways comes “a powerfully evocative story of resilience and the triumph of the human spirit” (Taylor Jenkins Reid, author of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Daisy Jones & The Six)
Look for Jodi Picoult’s new novel, By Any Other Name, available August 20!
Diana O’Toole is perfectly on track. She will be married by thirty, done having kids by thirty-five, and move out to the New York City suburbs, all while climbing the professional ladder in the cutthroat art auction world. She’s an associate specialist at Sotheby’s now, but her boss has hinted at a promotion if she can close a deal with a high-profile client. She’s not engaged just yet, but she knows her boyfriend, Finn, a surgical resident, is about to propose on their romantic getaway to the Galápagos—days before her thirtieth birthday. Right on time.
But then a virus that felt worlds away has appeared in the city, and on the eve of their departure, Finn breaks the news: It’s all hands on deck at the hospital. He has to stay behind. You should still go, he assures her, since it would be a shame for all of their nonrefundable trip to go to waste. And so, reluctantly, she goes.
Almost immediately, Diana’s dream vacation goes awry. Her luggage is lost, the Wi-Fi is nearly nonexistent, and the hotel they’d booked is shut down due to the pandemic. In fact, the whole island is now under quarantine, and she is stranded until the borders reopen. Completely isolated, she must venture beyond her comfort zone. Slowly, she carves out a connection with a local family when a teenager with a secret opens up to Diana, despite her father’s suspicion of outsiders.
In the Galápagos Islands, where Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection was formed, Diana finds herself examining her relationships, her choices, and herself—and wondering if when she goes home, she too will have evolved into someone completely different.
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For readers who like historical fiction with colonial upheaval, seafaring adventure, and sprawling ensemble casts.
Sea of Poppies
Literary Fiction · Asian Fiction · Contemporary Fiction
Our take
“A remarkably rich saga” by The Observer [London], A vivid saga of a ship's journey, the Ibis, through the Indian Ocean during the Opium Wars, with a diverse crew of sailors, stowaways, and more, creating an unlikely dynasty, with a 4.2-star rating from more than 4,500 Amazon reviewers. For readers who like historical fiction with colonial upheaval, seafaring adventure, and sprawling ensemble casts.
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About the book
The first in an epic trilogy, Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies is "a remarkably rich saga . . . which has plenty of action and adventure à la Dumas, but moments also of Tolstoyan penetration--and a drop or two of Dickensian sentiment" (The Observer [London]).
At the heart of this vibrant saga is a vast ship, the Ibis. Her destiny is a tumultuous voyage across the Indian Ocean shortly before the outbreak of the Opium Wars in China. In a time of colonial upheaval, fate has thrown together a diverse cast of Indians and Westerners on board, from a bankrupt raja to a widowed tribeswoman, from a mulatto American freedman to a free-spirited French orphan. As their old family ties are washed away, they, like their historical counterparts, come to view themselves as jahaj-bhais, or ship-brothers. The vast sweep of this historical adventure spans the lush poppy fields of the Ganges, the rolling high seas, and the exotic backstreets of Canton.
With a panorama of characters whose diaspora encapsulates the vexed colonial history of the East itself, Sea of Poppies is "a storm-tossed adventure worthy of Sir Walter Scott" (Vogue).
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Good for readers who like literary family fiction about sisters, grudges, generational expectations, and humor.
This Is Not About Us
Literary Fiction · Contemporary Fiction
Our take
A national bestseller called “Wise, witty . . . a deliciously readable book” by The New York Times Book Review, a family saga where two sisters, Sylvia and Helen Rubinstein, stop speaking to each other over an apple cake dispute, while their children navigate life's complexities, with a 4.0-star rating from more than 2,000 Amazon reviewers. Good for readers who like literary family fiction about sisters, grudges, generational expectations, and humor.
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About the book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A kaleidoscopic portrait of a modern American family—steadfast, complicated, begrudging, and loving—from the bestselling author of Isola
“Wise, witty . . . a deliciously readable book [about] the delicate minutiae of family life, played beautifully, boldly, brightly in a major key.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)
“Goodman’s mature and deftly written book suggests that, in family as in art, there is no such thing as uncomplicated happiness.”—The Wall Street Journal
Was this just a brief skirmish, or the beginning of a thirty-year feud? In the Rubinstein family, it could go either way.
When their beloved sister passes away, Sylvia and Helen Rubinstein are unmoored. A misunderstanding about apple cake turns into a decade of stubborn silence. Busy with their own lives—divorces, dating, career setbacks, college applications, bat mitzvahs and ballet recitals—their children do not want to get involved. As for their grandchildren? Impossible.
With This Is Not About Us, master storyteller Allegra Goodman—whose prior collection was heralded as “one of the most astute and engaging books about American family life” (The Boston Globe)—returns to the form and subject that endeared her to legions of readers. Sharply observed and laced with humor, This Is Not About Us is a story of growing up and growing old, the weight of parental expectations, and the complex connection between sisters—a big-hearted book about the love that binds a family across generations.
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Good for readers who want family drama, legal tension, and questions of guilt shaped by misunderstanding.
House Rules
Literary Fiction · Contemporary Fiction · Domestic Fiction
Our take
Called “complex, compassionate, and smart” by The Washington Post, House Rules follows Jacob Hunt, a teen with Asperger’s whose fascination with forensic analysis draws police attention after a murder rocks his small town, with a 4.4-star rating from more than 12,200 Amazon reviewers. Good for readers who want family drama, legal tension, and questions of guilt shaped by misunderstanding.
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About the book
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Small Great Things and the modern classics My Sister’s Keeper, The Storyteller, and more, comes a “complex, compassionate, and smart” (The Washington Post) novel about a family torn apart by a murder accusation.
When your son can’t look you in the eye…does that mean he’s guilty?
Jacob Hunt is a teen with Asperger’s syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder. He’s hopeless at reading social cues or expressing himself well to others, though he is brilliant in many ways. He has a special focus on one subject—forensic analysis. A police scanner in his room clues him in to crime scenes, and he’s always showing up and telling the cops what to do. And he’s usually right.
But when Jacob’s small hometown is rocked by a terrible murder, law enforcement comes to him. Jacob’s behaviors are hallmark Asperger’s, but they look a lot like guilt to the local police. Suddenly the Hunt family, who only want to fit in, are thrust directly in the spotlight. For Jacob’s mother, it’s a brutal reminder of the intolerance and misunderstanding that always threaten her family. For his brother, it’s another indication why nothing is normal because of Jacob.
And for the frightened small town, the soul-searing question looms: Did Jacob commit murder?
House Rules is “a provocative story in which [Picoult] explores the pain of trying to comprehend the people we love—and reminds us that the truth often travels in disguise” (People).
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Good for readers who like literary fiction built around family history, exile, and objects heavy with meaning.
Great House
Literary Fiction · Historical Fiction · Contemporary Fiction · Psychological Fiction
Our take
A New York Times bestseller called “Masterful…Evocative and moving” by NPR, Great House follows a mysterious desk connecting multiple narratives across time and space, from a Chilean poet's disappearance to Nazi plunder in Budapest, exploring themes of loss, memory, and inheritance, with a 3.9-star rating from more than 700 Amazon reviewers. Good for readers who like literary fiction built around family history, exile, and objects heavy with meaning.
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About the book
New York Times Bestseller • Finalist for the National Book Award • Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award • A Best Book of the Year as chosen by the New York Times (Notable), Seattle Times, San Francisco Chronicle, The Atlantic, St. Louis Post Dispatch, The Oregonian, and Book Page.
"Masterful…Evocative and moving." —NPR
For twenty-five years, a reclusive American novelist has been writing at the desk she inherited from a young Chilean poet who disappeared at the hands of Pinochet's secret police; one day a girl claiming to be the poet's daughter arrives to take it away, sending the writer's life reeling. Across the ocean, in the leafy suburbs of London, a man caring for his dying wife discovers, among her papers, a lock of hair that unravels a terrible secret. In Jerusalem, an antiques dealer slowly reassembles his father's study, plundered by the Nazis in Budapest in 1944.
Connecting these stories is a desk of many drawers that exerts a power over those who possess it or have given it away. As the narrators of Great House make their confessions, the desk takes on more and more meaning, and comes finally to stand for all that has been taken from them, and all that binds them to what has disappeared. Great House is a story haunted by questions: What do we pass on to our children and how do they absorb our dreams and losses? How do we respond to disappearance, destruction, and change?
Nicole Krauss has written a soaring, powerful novel about memory struggling to create a meaningful permanence in the face of inevitable loss.
"This is a novel about the long journey of a magnificent desk as it travels through the twentieth century from one owner to the next. It is also a novel about love, exile, the defilements of war, and the restorative power of language." —National Book Award citation
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A storage warehouse becomes the unlikely center of six lives already buckling under secrets, fear, and survival.
Metropolis
Literary Fiction · Thriller · Contemporary Fiction · Psychological Fiction · Psychological Thriller
Our take
A storage warehouse becomes the unlikely center of six lives already buckling under secrets, fear, and survival. In Metropolis, a fall down an elevator shaft draws together a street photographer, an undocumented student, an abused mother, a compromised manager, a lawyer in hiding, and a haunted owner. B. A. Shapiro builds a character-driven mystery about hidden lives, fragile safety, and the cost of what people keep locked away.
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About the book
The New York Times bestselling author of The Art Forger delivers a spellbinding and moving novel about what we hang on to, what we might need to let go, and how unexpected events can lead us to deeper truths.
Six people, six secrets, six different backgrounds. They would never have met if not for their connection to the Metropolis Storage Warehouse in Cambridge, Massachusetts. When someone falls down an elevator shaft at the facility, each becomes caught up in an intensifying chain of events.
We meet Serge, an unstable but brilliant street photographer who lives in his storage unit, which overflows with thousands of undeveloped pictures; Marta, an undocumented immigrant finishing her dissertation and hiding from ICE; Liddy, an abused wife and mother, who recreates her children’s bedroom in her unit; Jason, a former corporate lawyer now practicing in the facility; Rose, the office manager, who takes illegal kickbacks to let renters live in the building; and Zach, the building’s owner and an ex-drug dealer, who scans Serge’s photos as he searches for clues to the accident.
But was it an accident? A murder attempt? Suicide? As her characters dip in and out of one another’s lives trying to find answers and battling societal forces beyond their control, B. A. Shapiro both questions the myth of the American dream and builds tension to an exhilarating climax. Taut and emotional, Metropolis is impossible to put down and impossible to forget.
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It fits literary fiction readers who want passion and ideas intertwined, with a story shaped by intimacy, history, comedy, and tragedy.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Literary Fiction · Contemporary Fiction · Psychological Fiction
Our take
Love, desire, and political upheaval turn private choices into questions that refuse easy answers. The Unbearable Lightness of Being follows two couples whose relationships unfold against the Prague Spring, where infidelity, loyalty, freedom, and consequence blur into philosophical tension. It fits literary fiction readers who want passion and ideas intertwined, with a story shaped by intimacy, history, comedy, and tragedy.
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About the book
International Bestseller • Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction
“Far more than a conventional novel. It is a meditation on life, on the erotic, on the nature of men and women and love . . . full of telling details, truths large and small, to which just about every reader will respond.” — People
In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, acclaimed author Milan Kundera tells the story of two couples: a young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing, and one of his mistresses and her humbly faithful lover. Set against the backdrop of the Prague Spring, this unforgettable work of philosophical fiction explores a world in which lives are shaped by irrevocable choices and by fortuitous events, a world in which everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance, its weight. Hence, we feel "the unbearable lightness of being" not only as the consequence of our pristine actions but also in the public sphere, and the two inevitably intertwine.
This magnificent novel is a story of passion and politics, infidelity and ideas, and encompasses the extremes of comedy and tragedy, illuminating all aspects of human existence.
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