Very Good Mainstream Fiction
Explore a curated list of the best mainstream fiction books. Discover captivating stories, bestselling authors, and must-read novels for every fiction lover.
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Cage of Stars
by Jacquelyn Mitchard
The author of "The Deep End of the Ocean" delivers a compelling, emotionally charged tale of tragedy, revenge, and redemption, set in a close-knit Mormon community, whose peace is shattered by two brutal murders.
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Once Upon a Day
by Lisa Tucker
From the internationally acclaimed, bestselling author of "Shout Down the Moon" and "The Song Readers" comes a wise, humorous, and deeply compassionate story about the risks and rewards of loving when a single day can change one's life.
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We are All Welcome Here
by Elizabeth Berg
The bestselling author of "The Art of Mending" and "The Year of Pleasures" follows the story of three women in 1965, Tupelo, Mississippi, each struggling against overwhelming odds for her own kind of freedom.
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A Wedding in December
by Anita Shreve
At an inn in the Berkshire Mountains, seven former schoolmates gather to celebrate a wedding--a reunion that becomes the occasion of astonishing revelations as the friends collectively recall a long-ago night that indelibly marked each of their lives. Written with the fluent narrative artistry that distinguishes all of Anita Shreve's bestselling novels, A Wedding in December acutely probes the mysteries of the human heart and the endless allure of paths not taken.
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Can't Wait to Get to Heaven
by Fannie Flagg
Strange things begin to happen when Mrs. Shimfessle, an eighty-year-old woman, falls out of a fig tree in her own front yard, in an entertaining new novel about one woman's offbeat experiences in the hereafter. 200,000 first printing.
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Sandcastles
by Luanne Rice
Painter and art instructor Honor Dillon has made a peaceful life for herself with her three daughters, until the wedding of her eldest daughter, Regis, brings her former love--and Regis' father--John back into her life from his self-imposed exile.
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The Pact
by Jodi Picoult
From Jodi Picoult, one of the most powerful writers in contemporary fiction, comes a riveting, timely, heartbreaking, and terrifying novel of families in anguish -- and friendships ripped apart by inconceivable violence. Until the phone calls came at 3:00 A.M. on a November morning, the Golds and their neighbors, the Hartes, had been inseparable. It was no surprise to anyone when their teenage children, Chris and Emily, began showing signs that their relationship was moving beyond that of lifelong friends. But now seventeen-year-old Emily has been shot to death by her beloved and devoted Chris as part of an apparent suicide pact -- leaving two devastated families stranded in the dark and dense predawn, desperate for answers about an unthinkable act and the children they never really knew.
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Susannah's Garden
by Debbie Macomber
What she discovers is that things are not always as they once seemed. Some paths are dead ends. But some gardens remain beautiful . . .
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Gilead
by Marilynne Robinson
In 1956, toward the end of his life, Reverend John Ames begins a letter to his young son, sharing the story of his life and explaining how his faith influenced his choices and actions.
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Close Range
by Annie Proulx
A collection of short stories, which includes the short story, Brokeback Mountain.
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Between the Bridge and the River
by Craig Ferguson
Bawdy, joyous, messy, hysterically funny, and guaranteed to offendregardless of religion, race, national origin, sexual orientation, or professionBetween the Bridge and the River is the debut novel by Craig Ferguson, host of CBS's The Late Late Show. Two childhood friends from Scotland and two illegitimate half-brothers from the American South suffer and enjoy all manner of bizarre experiences which, as it turns out, are somehow interconnectedand, surprisingly enough, meaningful. An eclectic cast of characters includes Carl Jung, Fatty Arbuckle, Virgil, Marat, Socrates, and Tony Randall. Love, greed, hope, revenge, organized religion, and Hollywood are alternately tickled and throttled. Impossible to summarize and impossible to stop reading, this is a romantic comic odyssey that actually deliversand rewards.
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Fan-Tan
by Marlon Brando
While serving time in a Hong King prison in 1927, Anatole Doultry saves the life of a Chinese prisoner whose employer is Madame Lai Choi San, a beautiful and powerful Asian gangster who will make him wealthy if he will join her in an act of piracy.
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Adverbs
by Daniel Handler
Hello. I am Daniel Handler, the author of this book. Did you know that authors often write the summaries that appear on their book's dust jacket? You might want to think about that the next time you read something like, "A dazzling page-turner, this novel shows an internationally acclaimed storyteller at the height of his astonishing powers." Adverbs is a novel about love -- a bunch of different people, in and out of different kinds of love. At the start of the novel, Andrea is in love with David -- or maybe it's Joe -- who instead falls in love with Peter in a taxi. At the end of the novel, it's Joe who's in the taxi, falling in love with Andrea, although it might not be Andrea, or in any case it might not be the same Andrea, as Andrea is a very common name. So is Allison, who is married to Adrian in the middle of the novel, although in the middle of the ocean she considers a fling with Keith and also with Steve, whom she meets in an automobile, unless it's not the same Allison who meets the Snow Queen in a casino, or the same Steve who meets Eddie in the middle of the forest. . . . It might sound confusing, but that's love, and as the author -- me -- says, "It is not the nouns. The miracle is the adverbs, the way things are done." This novel is about people trying to find love in the ways it is done before the volcano erupts and the miracle ends. Yes, there's a volcano in the novel. In my opinion a volcano automatically makes a story more interesting.
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The Dew Breaker
by Edwidge Danticat
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A "brilliant book, undoubtedly the best one yet by an enormously talented writer” (The Washington Post Book World), about love, remorse, and hope; of personal and political rebellions; and of the compromises we make to move beyond the most intimate brushes with history. In this award-winning, bestselling work of fiction that moves between Haiti in the 1960s and New York in the present day, we meet an unusual man who is harboring a vital, dangerous secret. He is a quiet man, a good father and husband, a fixture in his Brooklyn neighborhood, a landlord and barber with a terrifying scar across his face. As the book unfolds, we enter the lives of those around him, and his secret is slowly revealed. Edwidge Danticat’s brilliant exploration of the “dew breaker”—or torturer—is an unforgettable story from one of America’s most essential writers.
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Abide with Me
by Elizabeth Strout
After the tragic death of his young wife, Reverend Tyler Caskey, a New England minister, struggles to hold together his own life, his family, and his town, while dealing with his personal anger, grief, and loss of faith.
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The English Teacher
by Lily King
A single mother has sheltered her son for many years at the private school where she works as an English teacher, but she is beginning to unravel as secrets from her past catch up with her.
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Un Lugar Llamado Nada
by Amy Tan
Een groep Amerikaanse toeristen op kunstreis in Myanmar verdwijnt spoorloos. Hun kort voor de reis vermoorde reisleidster reist als geest met hen mee en vertelt wat hen overkomt.
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Memories of My Melancholy Whores
by Gabriel GarcĂa Márquez
A cause for celebration, this is the Nobel laureate's first work of fiction in ten years--a masterpiece by the master storyteller of our time.
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Purity of Blood
by Arturo PĂ©rez-Reverte
"In the second adventure of Arturo Perez-Reverte's Captain Alatriste series, the courageous swordsman-for-hire considers rejoining his old regiment to fight at Breda - but there is a job to do first. A desperate father, Don Vicente de la Cruz, hires Alatriste to rescue his daughter from a convent where a powerful priest is said to be using the girl as his personal concubine. And he can't complain, because the priest has threatened to reveal the man's family to be "not of pure blood" - of Jewish descent - which will all but destroy the family name." "Alatriste agrees to help, and several nights later, under the cloak of darkness, a rescue is attempted - but things go very badly, and Alatriste soon discovers that he has become entangled in a religious and political conspiracy that leads all the way to the highest levels of the Inquisition."--BOOK JACKET.
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History of Love
by Nicole Krauss
Sixty years after a book's publication, its author remembers his lost love and missing son, while a teenage girl named for one of the book's characters seeks her namesake, as well as a cure for her widowed mother's loneliness.
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Goodnight Nobody
by Jennifer Weiner
A young mother moves to a postcard-perfect Connecticut town where she unravels crime while her children are in nursery school. Investigating a death, she discovers disturbing truths.
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The Palace of Dreams
by Ismail Kadare
When it was first published in the author's native country, THE PALACE OF DREAMS was immediately banned. The novel revolves around a secret ministry whose task is not just to spy on its citizens, but to collect and interpret their dreams. An entire nation's unconscious is thus tapped and meticulously laid bare in the form of images and symbols of the dreaming mind.
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Captive of My Desires
by Johanna Lindsey
Charming rogue Drew Anderson finally meets his match when James Malory introduces the daughter of his old pirate friend to London society in this latest in Lindsey's wildly popular Malory family series.