Literary Fiction – Free & Bargain Priced!
Sci Fi stories have a unique place in the world of fiction. They contain all the imaginative elements that all fiction contains, and requires – but they have one element that none others have. And that one element elevates them, in some people’s minds, to a higher status of creativity – to the status of prediction, of prophecy, and of creative theoretical science itself. The best science fiction books do more than simply spin a yarn (although there are very many great story tellers in the sci fi book world) – they stretch, imaginatively, into scientific knowledge as it stands today and imagines where that knowledge may take us tomorrow. And then they make it human – and, therefore, ‘real’.
What will I find in a ‘Literary Fiction’ Book?
Fantasy Novels contain unrealistic settings, or magic, and are often set in a medieval universe, or involve mythical or magical beings as a primary element of the plot, theme, or setting. Magic is a mainstay of fantasy, in the setting or plot, or being practiced by the characters. Fantasy stories are closely related to fairy stories and couldn’t happen in real life.
Some examples of books you’ll find in this category, are: J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings; T.H. White’s The Once and Future King; George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones…
Back in 1953, in what was still the early days of the Science Fiction genre, the great sci fi author Isaac Asimov defined it as “that branch of literature which is concerned with the impact of scientific advance upon human beings”. It is a branch of literature which has grown exponentially, hand-in-hand with the growth of human advances in science and technology and, by the 1970s its purpose, as evidenced in the new style of writing that had developed, had matured into one which wasn’t only concerned with science, but with consequences of scientific and technological advancement. Sci fi author Pamela Sargent then defined it as “the literature of ideas.”
But even that definition doesn’t go far enough. ‘Ideas’ and ‘consequences of ideas’ are now, almost too-limited a way of looking at what science fiction has become. Not only do authors project the advancement of science into the future and calculate the consequences – they assess, in advance, the moral consequences of these advances. They seek to pre-empt the kind of philosophical, moral and ethical issues that might ensue, and consider how to react. Or how our philosophical reasoning might also advance, along with technologies. As such, the best science fiction books are works of the philosophy of technology, and ethics. As new scientists, studying at university, have their work and theories swayed by the latest sci fi novel they read – so, philosophers may find themselves re-reading the self-same novels to obtain a head-start on the new frontiers of philosophy.
But not all science fiction is heavy with tech and theses on the human condition! There is something for everyone in this wide and deep genre of ideas. For pure action and adventure enthusiasts, thriller aficionados, and those wishing to, simply, be entertained – there are books and authors a plenty to go around. And you can start by looking in our list of books below…
One of the Great Classics of Literary Fiction Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
A Modern Classic of Literary Fiction: Black Swan by David Mitchell
These are our most recent Literary Fiction books, at cut-priced deals – scroll down the page for more…
Our Latest Literary Fiction Book Deals!
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David Mitchell and Neil Gaiman talk books!
Two bestselling contemporary authors, Neil Gaiman and David Mitchell, on stage together For their ever first meeting. Topics from the audience vary from philosophy and politics, to which tree they most identify with. If you like either author, or simply enjoy hearing authors discuss books, buckle in for an hour and a quarter of priceless discussion and readings. (Chaired by Erica Wagner, literary editor of The Times.)
Want to find even more Bestselling books? Take a look at our other non-fiction and reference categories:
Want to browse all 32 categories? Visit our Daily Deals and Book Bargain page for the full list!
The Turk and My Mother
Winner of the John Gardner Fiction Book Award "Fans of Amy Tan and Carol Shields will revel in the themes of remembrance, forgiveness, family devotion, and forbidden love." —Booklist Every family has its secrets. But toward the end of his life, George...
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Resistance, Revolution and Other Love Stories
Is love the most revolutionary of all acts? In this wide-ranging collection of twelve short stories, a startling array of characters explore their perspectives on love. The stories sweep from sharp realism to heady allegory, haunting fables to sci-fi thrillers,...
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One True Thing
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “[Anna Quindlen] writes passionately . . . painstakingly uncovering all the intensity, suspicion and primitive love that bonds mothers and daughters.”—The Boston Globe Ellen Gulden is enjoying...
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Peter Taylor
For the first time, the complete short stories of the master chronicler of tradition and transformation in the twentieth-century American South Born and raised in Tennessee, Peter Taylor was the great chronicler of the American Upper South, capturing its...
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The Keepers of the House
A “beautifully written” Pulitzer Prize–winning novel about prejudice and a distinguished family’s secrets in the American South (The Atlantic Monthly). Seven generations of the Howland family have lived in the Alabama plantation home built...
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There There
“Powerful. . . . a revelation.” —The New York Times “With a literary authority rare in a debut novel, it places Native American voices front and center before readers’ eyes.” —NPR/Fresh Air One...
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A Widow for One Year
“A Widow For One Year will appeal to readers who like old-fashioned storytelling mixed with modern sensitivities. . . . Irving is among the few novelists who can write a novel about grief and fill it with ribald humor soaked in irony.”—USA TodayIn A Widow for One...
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The Lost Shtetl
WINNER OF THE NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD AND THE JEWISH FICTION AWARD FROM THE ASSOCIATION OF JEWISH LIBRARIESGOOD MORNING AMERICA MUST READ NEW BOOKS * NEW YORK POST BUZZ BOOKS * THE MILLIONS MOST ANTICIPATEDA remarkable debut novel—written with the fearless...
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The Keep
Award-winning author Jennifer Egan brilliantly conjures a world from which escape is impossible and where the keep –the tower, the last stand –is both everything worth protecting and the very thing that must be surrendered in order to survive. Two...
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The Mere Wife
New York Times bestselling author Maria Dahvana Headley presents a modern retelling of the literary classic Beowulf, set in American suburbia as two mothers—a housewife and a battle-hardened veteran—fight to protect those they love in The Mere Wife. From...
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All Our Yesterdays
From “one of the most distinguished writers of modern Italy” (New York Review of Books), a classic novel of society in the midst of a war. This powerful novel is set against the background of Italy from 1939 to 1944, from the anxious months before the...
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Play It as It Lays
A “scathing novel” of one woman’s path of self-destruction in 1960s Hollywood—by the New York Times–bestselling author of The White Album (The Washington Post Book World). Spare, elegant, and terrifying, Play It as It Lays is the...
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Interior Chinatown
2020 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "One of the funniest books of the year. . . . A delicious, ambitious Hollywood satire." —The Washington Post From the infinitely inventive author of How to Live Safely in a Science...
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Human Croquet
A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the YearPart fairy tale, part mystery, part coming-of-age novel, this novel tells the story of Isobel Fairfax, a girl growing up in Lythe, a typical 1960s British suburb. But Lythe was once the heart of an Elizabethan...
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Allie and Bea
An Amazon Charts bestseller.Humor and heart move the fast-paced journey of an unlikely pair coming together to form a family of their own in this touching story from New York Times bestselling author Catherine Ryan Hyde.Bea has barely been scraping by since her...
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Crime and Punishment
A celebrated new translation of Dostoevsky’s masterpiece reveals the “social problems facing our own society” (Nation). Published to great acclaim and fierce controversy in 1866, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment has left an...
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Carnegie Hill
Town & Country Magazine's Must-Read Books of Summer 2019 | She Reads' Best Books for Your Summer Roadtrip "Carnegie Hill has got to be one of the most charming, hilarious, and insightful books I've read in ages. When it comes to New York's...
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Oil and Marble
In her brilliant debut, Storey brings early 16th-century Florence alive, entering with extraordinary empathy into the minds and souls of two Renaissance masters, creating a stunning art history thriller. From 1501 to 1505, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo Buonarroti...
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Rebecca
The classic Gothic suspense novel by Daphne du Maurier -- winner of the Anthony Award for Best Novel of the Century -- is now a Netflix film starring Lily James and Armie Hammer. Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again . . . The novel begins in Monte Carlo,...
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Real Life
A FINALIST FOR THE 2020 BOOKER PRIZEAND THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE JOHN LEONARD PRIZEA NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' CHOICE “A blistering coming of age story” —O: The Oprah Magazine Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, New York...
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Harry’s Trees
USA TODAY BESTSELLER! A grieving widower, a determined girl, a courageous librarian and a mysterious book come together in an uplifting tale of love, loss, friendship and redemption. Thirty-four-year-old Harry Crane works as an analyst for the US Forest Service. When...
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The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
New York Times Best Seller Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize Named a Best Book of 2017 by NPR, Amazon, Kirkus, The Washington Post, Newsday, and the Hudson Group A dazzling, richly moving new novel by the internationally celebrated author of The God of...
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The Last Cruise
From the acclaimed PEN-Faulkner Award-winning author of The Great Man comes a riveting high-seas adventure that combines Christensen's signature wit, irony, and humanity to create a striking and unforgettable vision of our times. The 1950s vintage ocean liner...
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The Two Mrs. Grenvilles
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Murder most swank . . . required reading.”—Vanity Fair When Navy ensign Billy Grenville, heir to a vast New York fortune, sees showgirl Ann Arden on the dance floor, it is love at first sight. And much to...
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The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
New York Times Best SellerLonglisted for the Man Booker PrizeNamed a Best Book of 2017 by NPR, Amazon, Kirkus, The Washington Post, Newsday, and the Hudson GroupA dazzling, richly moving new novel by the internationally celebrated author of The God of Small Things ...
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An Unfinished Story
A grieving widow and a disenchanted writer form an unexpected bond in a novel about second chances and finding the courage to let go of the past.It’s been three years since Claire Kite lost her husband, David, an aspiring novelist, in a tragic car accident....
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The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty
Hailed by the San Francisco Chronicle as "the finest book to come out of Europe this year," The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty is acclaimed Irish playwright Sebastian Barry's lyrical tale of a fugitive everyman. Sebastian Barry's latest...
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The Lehman Trilogy
Magnificent in scope, internationally lauded, and transcendent, the novel in verse that inspired the sensational West End and Off-Broadway play of the same name. The Lehman Trilogy follows the epic rise and fall of three generations of that infamous family and...
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Keep the Aspidistra Flying
A novel by the author of 1984 about a man determined to reject middle-class values who finds living in noble poverty more difficult than expected. Gordon Comstock despises the materialism and shallowness of middle-class life—the worship of money, the striving for...
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Quentins
#1 New York Times bestselling author Maeve Binchy tells the story of a generation and a city through the history of a Dublin restaurant in this “warm-hearted” (Boston Herald) enthralling novel.Ella Brady wants to film a documentary about Quentins that will capture the...
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Ordinary People
One of the great bestseller of our time: the novel that inspired Robert Redford’s Oscar-winning film starring Donald Sutherland and Mary Tyler Moore In Ordinary People, Judith Guest’s remarkable first novel, the Jarrets are a typical American family....
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The Unnamed
The Unnamed is a dazzling novel about a marriage, family, and the unseen forces of nature and desire that seem to threaten them both. He was going to lose the house and everything in it. The rare pleasure of a bath, the copper pots hanging above the kitchen island,...
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Perfect Little World
Wilson’s ambition alone is exciting. . . . [His] writing has a Houdini-like perfection, wherein no matter how grim the variables, each lovely sentence manages to escape with all its parts intact.” —Boston GlobeThe eagerly-anticipated follow-up to...
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The Queen’s Gambit
Netflix’s most watched limited series to date! The thrilling novel of one young woman’s journey through the worlds of chess and drug addiction. When eight-year-old Beth Harmon’s parents are killed in an automobile accident,...
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Daniel Martin
A new trade paperback edition of "a masterpiece of symbolically charged realism....Fowles is the only writer in English who has the power, range, knowledge, and wisdom of a Tolstoy or James" (John Gardner, Saturday Review).The eponymous hero of John Fowles's largest...
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Picasso’s Motorcycle
France, 1940. An unexpected gift of an old motorcycle with a tragically romantic past hurls a young orphan into the thick of things as war breaks out and his life changes forever. Half-French/half-German Daniel must find a way to survive in a world that mercy seems to...
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