Great Compelling Contemporary Fiction (& some non-fiction)
Discover the best compelling contemporary fiction and non-fiction books. Explore gripping stories, must-read novels, and thought-provoking works in this curated list.
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American Woman
by Susan Choi
On the lam for an act of violence against the American government, 25-year-old Jenny Shimada agrees to care for three younger fugitives whom a shadowy …
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The Ordinary Seaman
by Francisco Goldman
America seen through the eyes of the huddled masses. The hero is Estaban, one of a group of Central Americans brought to New York to …
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For Rouenna
by Sigrid Nunez
In this haunting novel, a friendship springs up between a writer and a retired army nurse who seeks her out decades after their childhood in …
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The Keep
by Jennifer Egan
"Two cousins, irreversibly damaged by a childhood prank whose devastating consequences changed both their lives, reunite twenty years later to renovate a medieval castle in …
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The Wars
by Timothy Findley
Robert Ross, a sensitive nineteen-year-old Canadian officer, went to war--The War to End All Wars. He found himself in the nightmare world of trench warfare, …
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Young Men and Fire
by Norman Maclean
Tells what happened on August 5, 1949 in Man Gulch, Montana when fifteen smokejumpers came to fight a forest fire.
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Blood Meridian
by Cormac McCarthy
25th ANNIVERSARY EDITION • From the bestselling author of The Passenger and the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Road: an epic novel of the violence and …
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Burning Bright
by Tracy Chevalier
Presents a sweeping and romantic tale set against the historical backdrop of William Blake's London.
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The View from Castle Rock
by Alice Munro
A collection of stories about the Laidlaw family starting in the wilds of the Scottish Borders, their voyage to Canada, to stories set in Alice …
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In the Skin of a Lion
by Michael Ondaatje
Bristling with intelligence and shimmering with romance, this novel tests the boundary between history and myth. Patrick Lewis arrives in Toronto in the 1920s and …
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The Englishman's Boy
by Guy Vanderhaeghe
As a youth, Shorty McAdoo participated in a massacre of Indians. Fifty years later, still suffering from guilt, he is approached by a filmmaker to …
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Black Swan Green
by David Mitchell
By the New York Times bestselling author of The Bone Clocks and Cloud Atlas | Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize Selected by Time as …
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The Foreign Student
by Susan Choi
Highly acclaimed by critics, The Foreign Student is the story of a young Korean man, scarred by war, and the deeply troubled daughter of a …