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  1. Genres
  2. ›Literary Fiction

Best Literary Fiction Books

Character-driven literary works

1,050 summaries

Showing 841–864 of 1,050

  1. Tree of Codes

    Jonathan Safran Foer

    ★ 3.9 (4k) average on GoodreadsCreativity

    Jonathan Safran Foer carves a new story from Bruno Schulz's *The Street of Crocodiles*, creating a physical book that explores the universal anxiety of life's final day.

  2. Love and Summer

    William Trevor

    ★ 3.6 (4k) average on GoodreadsHistorical Fiction

    In a quiet Irish town, a young farmer's wife, Ellie, finds her life changed by a mysterious photographer, Florian, sparking a passionate summer affair against the backdrop of watchful villagers.

  3. Quarantine

    Greg Egan

    ★ 3.7 (4k) average on GoodreadsHistorical Fiction

    When an impenetrable gray shield quarantines Earth, sparking global chaos and new religions, a bio-enhanced PI must find a girl who vanished from a mental institution by walking through walls, challenging the nature of their cosmic prison.

  4. The Ebony Tower

    John Fowles

    ★ 3.7 (3k) average on GoodreadsRomance

    In the French countryside, an aging artist, surrounded by his two young muses, confronts a visiting journalist about beauty, art, and desire.

  5. So Far from God

    Ana Castillo

    ★ 3.9 (3k) average on GoodreadsFantasy

    In the New Mexico village of Tome, Sofia and her four daughters live lives where the sacred and the everyday, the miraculous and the normal, are woven together.

  6. The Lesser Bohemians

    Eimear McBride

    ★ 3.9 (3k) average on GoodreadsRomance

    In 1990s London, a young Irish drama student's search for belonging and fame leads to an intense, age-gap romance that changes her understanding of love.

  7. Three Lives

    Gertrude Stein

    ★ 3.1 (3k) average on Goodreads

    Gertrude Stein's "Three Lives" shows the inner lives of three ordinary working-class women, turning their simple existences into a look at human consciousness and an easy way into her new literary style.

  8. Run with the Horsemen

    Ferrol Sams

    ★ 4.3 (3k) average on GoodreadsHistorical Fiction

    In Depression-era Georgia, a sensitive boy named Porter navigates adolescence, from farm life to school antics, while his eccentric family shapes him into a man strong enough to 'run with the horsemen' amidst life's painful truths.

  9. Maggie

    Charles Martin

    ★ 4.3 (3k) average on GoodreadsRomance

    A husband's world reignites when his wife wakes from a coma, forcing them to face their son's death and rebuild their future.

  10. Amongst Women

    John McGahern

    ★ 3.9 (3k) average on GoodreadsHistorical Fiction

    After Irish independence, a tyrannical widower on a struggling farm fights a losing battle to control his five children as the modern world approaches.

  11. Affliction

    Russell Banks

    ★ 4.0 (3k) average on GoodreadsThriller

    In desolate New Hampshire, a former high-school football star turned bitter well-digger and part-time cop descends into violence, exposing the inherited trauma of a small-town macho legacy, seen through his younger brother's haunted eyes.

  12. Morality Play

    Barry Unsworth

    ★ 3.8 (3k) average on GoodreadsHistorical Fiction

    In a snowbound 14th-century English village, a group of actors staging a play about a recent murder become entangled in a dangerous conspiracy that blurs the lines between performance and reality.

  13. The Bells

    Richard Harvell

    ★ 4.0 (3k) average on GoodreadsFantasy

    A castrated opera singer, haunted by the secret of his son's parentage, narrates his extraordinary life from a Swiss belfry to the grand stages of Europe, where his divine voice is both his salvation and his curse.

  14. The Ravishing of Lol Stein

    Marguerite Duras

    ★ 3.6 (3k) average on Goodreads

    Haunted by the public loss of her fiancé years ago, a beautiful woman orchestrates and spies on an affair between her friend and a lover, seeking to reclaim or re-enact her own forgotten pain through their stolen moments.

  15. Victory

    Joseph Conrad

    ★ 3.9 (3k) average on Goodreads

    A reclusive idealist's quest for detached peace on a remote island shatters when his rescue of a vulnerable woman from a predatory world inadvertently summons a maelstrom of human evil and forces him to confront the very emotions he sought to escape.

  16. Theft

    Peter Carey

    ★ 3.4 (3k) average on GoodreadsCreativity

    A disgraced Australian artist, caught in a web of forgery and a volatile romance, faces the true cost of creation and the redemptive power of love as he travels from rural Australia to urban galleries worldwide.

  17. This Side of Brightness

    Colum McCann

    ★ 3.9 (3k) average on GoodreadsHistorical Fiction

    An African American sandhog's dangerous work connecting Brooklyn and Manhattan beneath the East River creates a multi-generational family story of connection and conflict, uniting diverse men in shared peril.

  18. The Pickup

    Nadine Gordimer

    ★ 3.6 (3k) average on GoodreadsRomance

    A rebellious white woman and an undocumented Arab mechanic begin a passionate, cross-continental love affair in post-apartheid South Africa, challenging their ideas of who they are, where they belong, and how far they will go to escape their pasts.

  19. A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali

    Gil Courtemanche

    ★ 4.0 (3k) average on GoodreadsHistorical Fiction

    In 1994 Kigali, a cynical foreign journalist falls for a Tutsi waitress at the Mille-Collines hotel, their affair leading to a desperate fight for survival as the Rwandan genocide erupts.

  20. The White Bone

    Barbara Gowdy

    ★ 3.8 (3k) average on GoodreadsFantasy

    Threatened by humans, a young, clairvoyant elephant calf named Mud goes on a dangerous quest to find the mythical 'White Bone,' believed to be the key to her herd's survival.

  21. Dance of the Happy Shades

    Alice Munro

    ★ 4.1 (3k) average on Goodreads

    Alice Munro writes about women in rural Ontario, showing their hidden desires and quiet struggles with love, betrayal, and self-discovery in everyday life.

  22. Chronicle of a Blood Merchant

    Yu Hua

    ★ 4.1 (3k) average on GoodreadsHistorical Fiction

    During Mao's Cultural Revolution, a cart-pusher learns the true cost of survival and the complicated strength of family, both by blood and by choice, in a world that threatens to take everything from him.

  23. In a Strange Room

    Damon Galgut

    ★ 3.6 (3k) average on GoodreadsLifestyle

    A young man travels three continents, seeking love and belonging, only to find his attempts at connection repeatedly fall apart into longing, desire, and disaster.

  24. The Last Crossing

    Guy Vanderhaeghe

    ★ 3.9 (3k) average on GoodreadsHistorical Fiction

    In the 1870s American West, two brothers search for their missing sibling, a grieving woman seeks vengeance, and their Métis guide leads them on a journey of love, loss, and self-discovery across a brutal landscape.

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