Best Literary Fiction Novels & Stories

He returned his attention to the bookshelf at the rear of his office, the one he’d been browsing when he’d first heard the strange sounds outside, only being made by the cats, after all. The top shelf held purely “literary works.” Poetry collections of Blake, Yeats, Robert Frost, and Shakespeare. Prose collections of Zora Neal Hurston, Hemingway, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Flannery O’Connor, and folktales collected by the Brothers Grimm. Novels, from The Man in the Iron Mask to Madame Bovary, to Villette and Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, to A Passage to India by E. M. Forster.

Most novelists struggle to have their debut novel published, but once published they often continue to be published, although very few become literary celebrities, thus gaining prestige or a considerable income from their work. Every novel worthy of the name is like another planet, whether large or small, which has its own laws just as it has its own flora and fauna. Thus, Faulkner's technique is certainly the best one with which to paint Faulkner's world, and Kafka's nightmare has produced its own myths that make it communicable. Benjamin Constant, Stendhal, Eugène Fromentin, Jacques Rivière, Radiguet, all used different techniques, took different liberties, and set themselves different tas

I leaned in a fraction of an inch, a teasing glint in my eyes, "I prefer classic literature. Russian realism, psychological thrillers. Dostoyevsky, Fitzgerald, Hemingway. I like substance." "Substance?!" Ruby mocked, completely offended. "Are you implying my romance novels don't have substance? Excuse you, but enemies-to-lovers tropes require intense psychological maneuvering! The angst! The tension! It's art, Alexander. Your little Russian thrillers have nothing on a slow-burn romance."

Sprinted to the door, I pulled it open, not expecting it to open, but it did, causing my heart to swell in joy. Ambling to the shelf, my eyes darted round the various book covers. Fiction was my favorite book to read because the best thing about reading was to be able to escape from your life, to be able to read hundreds or even thousands of other lives. Non-fiction does not have that power, it does not change you the way fiction does. To me, if you are not affected somehow, even if it is the slightest change, you are not reading the right book. I would love to think that every novel I have read has become a part of me and created who I am in a sense.

"So did you go swapping favorite passages from Naughty Nora's latest rampant CP anthologies while dry humping in public across the 'Literature and Theory' aisle?" I felt heat bloom in my cheeks despite myself at his ridiculous extrapolations. "I was just explaining... and it's not her it's her secretary. Some complex themes you'd miss with your typically crude mindset, asshole. Believe it or not, literary fiction can encompass polemical threads beyond mindless objectification." Jake waved a dismissive hand through the air, lips still twitching over my defensive retort about artistic integrity. "Sure, sure. I get it - you were psychoanalyzing the liberating illustrations of feminine desire an