Among the many books we've read over the years, these ones have particularly caught our imagination.

Fiction

Segun Afolabi Goodbye Lucille
Monica Ali Brick Lane
Nadeen Aslam Maps for Lost Lovers
Richard Beard Dry Bones
Amy Bloom Away
Gavin James Bower Dazed and Aroused
Joanna Briscoe Sleep With Me
Giles Coren Winkler
Douglas Coupland Hey Nostradamus
Jim Crace The Pesthouse
Patrick deWitt Ablutions
Michael Dibdin Medusa
John Harris Dunning Salem Brownstone: All Along the Watchtowers
Dave Eggers The Wild Things
Joshua Ferris The Unnamed
Penelope Fitzgerald The Blue Flower
Jonathan Franzen The Corrections
Jonathan Sarfran Froer Eating Animals
Sarah Hall Haweswater
Sarah Hall The Carhullan Army
Sarah Hall The Electric Michelangelo
William Golding To the Ends of the Earth
Andrew Sean Greer The Story of a Marriage
Zoe Heller Notes on a Scandal
Zoe Heller The Believers
Peter Hobbs The Short Day Dying
Alan Hollinghurst The Line of Beauty
Susanna Jones The Earthquake Bird
Manju Kapur A Married Woman
Chris Killen The Bird Room
Rheinhard Kleist I See a Darkness
Malcolm Knox Jamaica
J Robert Lennon Mailman
Jonathan Lethem Chronic City
Paul Lyalls Catching the Cascade
David Lodge Author, Author (and Colm Toibin's The Master)
Cormac McCarthy The Road
Jon McGregor Even the Dogs
Thomas McGuane The Cadence of Grass
Jay McInerney Last of the Savages
Jan Mark Useful Idiots
Andrew Martin The Blackpool Highflyer
Andrew Martin The Bobby Dazzlers
Valerie Martin Property
Clare Messud The Emperor's Children
Jenni Mills Crow Stone
Richard Milward Ten Storey Love Song
CE Morgan All the Living
Peter Murphy John the Revelator
Paul Murray Skippy Dies
Joseph O'Connor Redemption Falls
Andrew O'Hagan Be Near Me
Sonia Overall A Likeness
Bruce Paley Giraffes in My Hair
Nii Ayikwei Parkes Tail of the Blue Bird
David Peace The Damned Utd
Matthew Pearl The Dante Club
Walker Percy The Moviegoer
Karen Powell Catching the Light
John Preston The Dig
Philip Roth Indignation
James Salter Cassada
Jane Smiley Good Faith
Mark Haskell Smith Moist
Bryan Talbor Grandville
Donna Tartt The Little Friend
Mirian Toews A Complicated Kindness
Cathi Unsworth Bad Penny Blues
Willy Vlautin Northline
Erica Wagner Seizure
Chris Ware Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth
Paul Watkins In the Blue Light of African Dreams
Bill Watterson The Complete Calvin and Hobbes
Mark Wernham Martin Martin's on the Other Side
Tim Winton Breath
Luke Wright High Performance
Richard Yates Revolutionary Road

Translated fiction

Chinghiz Aïtmatov Jamilia
David Albahari Götz and Meyer
Natacha Appanah The Last Brother
Machado de Assis A Chapter of Hats
Alaa al-Aswany The Yacoubian Building
Gerbrand Bakker The Twin
Eileen Chang Lust, Caution
Philippe Claudel Brodeck's Report
Lucian Dan Teodorovici Our Circus Presents...
Gyorgy Dragoman The White King
Faïza Guene Dreams from the Endz
WF Hermans Beyond Sleep
WF Hermans The Darkroom of Damocles
Alexander Ikonnikov Lizka and her Men
Gert Jonke Homage to Czerny
Ismail Kadare Agamemnon's Daughter
Etgar Keret The Nimrod Flip-Out
Natsuo Kirino Grotesque
Natsuo Kirino Out
Andrey Kurkov Death and the Penguin
Carmen Laforet Nada
Asa Larsson The Savage Altar
Bjorn Larsson Long John Silver
Eric Laurrent Do Not Touch
Erwin Mortier Shutterspeed
Eshkol Nevo Homesick
Alan Pauls The Past
Per Petterson Out Stealing Horses
Maria Peura At the Edge of Light
Anne B Ragde Berlin Poplars
Evelio Rosero The Armies
Elke Schmitter Mrs Sartoris
Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö The Man Who Went Up In Smoke
Josef Skvorecky The Engineer of Human Souls
Ngugi Wa Thiong'o Wizard of the Crow
Iliya Troyanov The Collector of Worlds
Juan Gabriel Vasquez The Informers
Ernst Weiss Franziska
Shotaro Yasuoka The Glass Slipper and Other Stories

Find out more about translated fiction

Short stories

Machado de Assis A Chapter of Hats
William Boyd The Dream Lover
Michael Chabon McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales
Eileen Chang Lust, Caution
Charles d'Ambrosio The Dead Fish Museum
Gerard Donovan Country of the Grand
Dave Eggers (ed.) McSweeney's 30
Peter Hobbs I Could Ride All Day in My Cool Blue Train
Panos Karnezis Little Infamies
Cate Kennedy Dark Roots
Sana Krasikov One More Year
Margo Lanagan Black Juice
James Lasdun It's Beginning to Hurt
Nancy Lee Dead Girls
J Robert Lennon Pieces for the Left Hand
Thomas McGuane Gallatin Canyon
David Means The Secret Goldfish
Daniyal Mueenuddin In Other Rooms, Other Wonders
Alice Munro Too Much Happiness
Gina Ochsner People I Wanted To Be
Patrick O'Keeffe The Hill Road
Julie Orringer How to Breathe Underwater
Donald Ray Pollock Knockemstiff
Simon Robson The Separate Heart
Karen Russell St Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves
James Salter Last Night
George Saunders The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil
Wells Tower Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned
David Vann Legend of a Suicide
Tim Winton The Turning
Gerard Woodward Caravan Thieves
Shotaro Yasuoka The Glass Slipper and Other Stories

Find out more about short stories

Non-fiction

Anne Applebaum Gulag
Richard Askwith Feet in the Clouds
Phil Baines Penguin by Design
Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding Pocket Book of Boosh
Antony Beevor and Luba Vinogradova A Writer at War: Vasily Grossman with the Red Army 1941-1945
Mary Borden The Forbidden Zone
Charlie Brooker The Hell of it All
Angus Cargill (ed.) Hang the DJ
Sloane Crosley I Was Told There's Be Cake
Joseph E Ellis Founding Brothers
Joseph E Ellis His Excellency George Washington
Fergus Fleming Barrow's Boys
Barry Forshaw The Rough Guide to Crime Fiction
Jonathan Franzen The Discomfort Zone
Michael Frayn Travels with a Typewriter
Vic Gatrell City of Laughter: Sex and Satire in Eighteenth-Century London
Stephen Glover (ed.) The Penguin Book of Journalism
Rebecca Gowers The Swamp of Death
Kitty Hauser Bloody Old Britain
Nicolette Jones The Plimsoll Sensation
Tim Key Instructions, Guidelines, Tuteledge, Suggestions, Other Suggestions, and Examples Etc: An Attempted Book by Tim Key (And Descriptions/ Conversations/ A Piece About A Moth)
Valerie Brown Lester Phiz: The Man Who Drew Dickens
Jeremy Lewis Penguin Special
Robert Macfarlane Mountains of the Mind
John McGahern Memoir
Alexander Masters Stuart: A Life Backwards
Tim Moore Do Not Pass Go
Joe Sacco Footnotes in Gaza
Ariane Sherine (ed.) The Atheist's Guide to Christmas
David Simons and Ed Burns The Corner
Zadie Smith Changing My Mind
Mark Roseman The Past in Hiding
Ian Thomson Bonjour Blanc
Sarah Vowell The Partly-Cloudy Patriot
David Wild How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Neil Diamond
Gary Younge Stranger in a Strange Land