What are your favourite books that aren't highbrow or fluffy?

[purplefig]

My maternity leave is starting soon and I'd like to have a list of books I can delve into. (Should that opportunity presents itself!)

I'm not after anything too highbrow, but equally not total fluff either. I'm thinking along the lines of...

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine - Gail Honeyman
The Secret History - Donna Tartt
Notes on a Scandal - Zoe Heller
Casual Vacancy - JK Rowling
Normal People - Sally Rooney
Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier

Any suggestions?

Another fan of British detective fiction here. Ann Cleves' Sheltland books if you haven't already seen them on the telly

The heart's invisible furies,
A history of Loneliness
This thing of darkness,
Shardlake series (CJ Sansom)
A closed and common orbit
The 7 deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
Daisy Jones & the six
The underground railway
The familiars
Erebus
The siege of krishnapur
The lost man
Back when we were grownups
The testaments
Animals
Us against you
The corset
The psychopath Test
Dark matter
The house between tides

That's the best of last year's reading!

The Testaments is an easy read but not fluff, definitely. Intersting if you read or saw Handmaid's Tale.

All Kate Atkinson fits your description. Have you read Donna Tartt's Goldfinch? That is phenomenal and veyr long - keeps you busy.

Tinkly, your daughter's views on The Great Gatsby have made me laugh - sorry!

Just finished Ann Patchett's 'The Dutch House' and LOVED it.

Tom Hanks reads the Audible version of it, too - may re-'read' it just to hear him tell the story!

Another I couldn't put down was Posession.

I loved that, keep meaning to read more AS Byatt.

Curtis Sittenfeld: American Wife, Prep, and her rewrite of Pride & Prejudice
William Boyd: Love is Blind (just finished it, and thought it wonderful)
William Shaw's Tozer and Breen 1960s detective novels
Quentin Jardine, if you like crime. Page-turner police procedurals set in Scotland, and a couple of stand-alones. He's very prolific. The Skinner series alone is up to 30+ novels and are mostly consecutive so it helps to read them in order.

Educated by Tara Westover

The Shipping News E Annie Proulx

A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley, also Moo.

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

Three Hours by Rosamund Lupton
The Five by Hallie Rubenhold. The latter is beyond brilliant.

The lost art of keeping secrets is a nice page turner not too fluffy and not highbrow

There are a few fantastic authors who were in vogue a few years ago but who hardly anyone seems to talk about now - Alison Lurie, Barbara Trapido, Margaret Drabble and the late (and wonderful) Carol Shields. All incredibly readable but not fluff. So not unlike Margaret Atwood and Anne Tyler if you like them. Another favourite who doesn't get mentioned very often is Elinor Lipman - gently comic literary fiction. Love her.

Would also go along with Jane Gardam and Barbara Kingsolver. Excellent reads.

And if you like detective fiction, then definitely the Cormoran Strike and Jackson Brodie books.

The Secret River by Kate Grenville
The Lost Man by Jane Harper
The Address by Fiona Davies
Jodi Picoult nearly all her books
The Bronze Horseman by Paullina Simons

Any of John Boyne's books for adults. Also The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton.

The Bernicia Chronicles by Matthew Harffy, a series of 6 (so far) books set in 7th Century Britain about a young farmer who becomes a warlord and earl.

The Ravenstow Trilogy by Elizabeth Chadwick, about a family living in the Welsh Marches 1098-1141.

Anything by Sharon Penman, but especially When Christ and His Saints Slept, Here Be Dragons and The Sunne In Splendour

Ken Follett - The Pillars of the Earth is one of my favourite books (but the other 2 in the Kingsbridge Trilogy are really good too). He also wrote The Century Trilogy which I really enjoyed.

Someone has mentioned Stella Newman, think that fits your brief perfectly. Start with Pearshaped, her first novel (and best one imho)

Jennifer Weiner's books fit what you are looking for.

'The Best of Everything' by Rona Jaffe. 50s office girls / housewife life in all its glory. I love it, as a piece of social commentary but thoroughly readable.

The Merrily Watkins "spiritual detective" novels by Phil Rickman. Set in Hereford and the Marches, wonderfully atmospheric.

Oh yes enjoyed Jennifer Weiner. And Marian Keyes.

I’m reading Dorothy Whipple Someone At A Distance at the moment. I loved They Were Sisters.

Elizabeth Gilbert’s Signature of All Things was brilliant.

Gerald Durrell - My Family and Other Animals. I love all of his books but this is the best known.
Anything by Bill Bryson but Notes From a Big Country might work well on maternity leave. It’s a series of articles he wrote reflecting on life in the States and Britain and the differences after he left Britain and returned to the US. Easy to pick up, read a bit, and put down.

And then fiction.
I love A Map of Love - Adhaf Soueif
Kate Morton - there’s loads of them but my favourite is The Forgotten Garden
Saplings - Noel Streatfeild. A darker version of Ballet Shoes for grown ups.

Yy to the chronicles of st Mary’s and the rivers of London series.

Andy Weir, The Martian and Artemis, both really good. The Martian is loads better as a book than a film.