Ashleys Must-read Modern Fiction #1
Discover Ashley's top modern fiction picks! Explore must-read books from Ashley's curated list of captivating contemporary reads for every book lover.
Book
Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands
by Jorge Amado
It surprises no one that the charming but wayward Vadinho dos Guimaraes–a gambler notorious for never winning—dies during Carnival. His long suffering widow Dona Flor …
Book
The Lost Estate (Le Grand Meaulnes)
by Henri Alain-Fournier
An unforgettable French masterpiece in the spirit of The Catcher in the Rye-in a dazzling new translation When Meaulnes first arrives in Sologne, everyone is …
Book
Winesburg, Ohio
by Sherwood Anderson
Winesburg, Ohio, gave birth to the American story cycle, for which William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and later writers were forever indebted. Defying the prudish …
Book
Surfacing
by Margaret Atwood
From the bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments—this story of an artist who goes in search of her missing father on a …
Book
The New York Trilogy
by Paul Auster
First published by Sun & Moon Press in three volumes in 1985 and 1986, The New York Trilogy has since been translated into many languages. …
Book
Complete Works of Isaac Babel
by Isaac Babel
"A celebration of literary genius framed by 20th-century tragedy."--Richard Bernstein, New York Times Finally in paperback, this "monumental collection; gathers all of Babel's deft and …
Book
Giovanni's Room
by James Baldwin
Set in the 1950s Paris of American expatriates, liaisons, and violence, a young man finds himself caught between desire and conventional morality. With a sharp, …
Book
Sweet Hereafter
by Russell Banks
In The Sweet Hereafter, Russell Banks tells a story that begins with a school bus accident. Using four different narrators, Banks creates a small-town morality …
Book
Regeneration Trilogy
by Pat Barker
This box set contains Regeneration, The Eye in the Door and The Ghost Road. The Eye in the Door won the 1993 Guardian Fiction Prize …
Book
Herzog
by Saul Bellow
In one of his finest achievements, Nobel Prize winner Saul Bellow presents a multifaceted portrait of a modern-day hero, a man struggling with the complexity …
Book
Ficciones. C Edited and with an Introduction by Anthony Kerrigan
by Jorge Luis Borges
Seventeen short stories.
Book
Nadja
by André Breton
"Nadja, " originally published in France in 1928, is the first and perhaps best Surrealist romance ever written, a book which defined that movement's attitude …
Book
The Master and Margarita
by Mikhail Bulgakov
A mysterious stranger appears in a Moscow park. Soon he and his retinue have astonished the locals with the magic show to end all magic …
Book
Naked Lunch
by William S. Burroughs
Since its original publication in Paris in 1959, Naked Lunch has become one of the most important novels of the twentieth century. Exerting its influence …
Book
Possession
by A. S. Byatt
BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A tale of two young scholars researching the secret love affair of two Victorian poets that's an exhilarating …
Book
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
by Italo Calvino
Introduction by Peter Washington; Translation by William Weaver Italo Calvino’s masterpiece combines a love story and a detective story into an exhilarating allegory of reading, …
Book
The Outsider
by Albert Camus
Meursault leads a bachelor life until he commits a random act of violence. His lack of emotion and failure to show remorse serve to increase …
Book
Tower of Babel
by Elias Canetti
Auto-da-Fé, Elias Canetti's only work of fiction, is a staggering achievement that puts him squarely in the ranks of major European writers such as Robert …
Book
Oscar and Lucinda
by Peter Carey
The Booker Prize-winning novel--now a major motion picture from Fox Searchlight Pictures. This sweeping, irrepressibly inventive novel, is a romance, but a romance of the …
Book
The Bloody Chamber, and Other Stories
by Angela Carter
A reissue of a collection of short stories first published ten years ago.
Book
Journey to the End of the Night
by Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Louis-Ferdinand Celine's revulsion and anger at what he considered the idiocy and hypocrisy of society explodes from nearly every page of this novel. Filled with …
Book
Soldiers of Salamis
by Javier Cercas
Facing a firing squad at the end of the Spanish Civil War, Nationalist Rafael Snchez Mazas escapes his executioners into the nearby forest, where he …
Book
The Stories of John Cheever
by John Cheever
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A seminal collection from one of the true masters of the short story. Spanning the duration of Cheever’s …
Book
Disgrace
by J. M. Coetzee
In a novel set in post-apartheid South Africa, a fifty-two-year-old college professor who has lost his job for sleeping with a student tries to relate …
Book
Cheri and The Last of Cheri
by Colette
Two volumes of Colette's most beloved works, with a new Introduction by Judith Thurman. Chéri, together with The Last of Chéri, is a classic story …
Book
A House and Its Head
by Ivy Compton-Burnett
A radical thinker, one of the rare modern heretics, said Mary McCarthy of Ivy Compton-Burnett, in whose austere, savage, and bitingly funny novels anything can …
Book
Captain Corelli's Mandolin
by Louis De Bernières
In 1941. Captain Antonio Corelli, a young Italian officer is posted to the Greek Island of Cephallonia as part of the occupying forces. Suitable for …
Book
Underworld
by Don DeLillo
A finalist for the National Book Award, Underworld is Don DeLillo’s most powerful and riveting novel—“a great American novel, a masterpiece, a thrilling page-turner” (San …
Book
Seven Gothic Tales
by Isak Dinesen
A selection of stories about romantics, adventurers and dreamers, ranging from Tuscany to Elisnore and Zanzibar: a jealous countess cannot bear her husband to admire …
Book
Once Were Warriors
by Alan Duff
Once Were Warriors is Alan Duff's harrowing vision of his country's indigenous people two hundred years after the English conquest. In prose that is both …
Book
The Lover
by Marguerite Duras
A modern classic and international bestseller with more than one million copies in print, The Lover has been celebrated by critics and readers across the …