Unputdownable, short-ish, not trashy books

[Europeanbanana]

I need books that will grip me so much I won't look at my phone. I don't want anything trashy or too long. Let's under under 350 pages. Any suggestions for really wonderful books that fit the bill?

Transcription by Ben Lerner
Another vote for Piranesi
Definitely going to read Small Things Like These after this thread!

Not trashy or short but Bella Mackie’s books are great!!

The Correspondent - Virginia Evans
A Town Called Solace - Mary Lawson
The Marriage Portrait - Maggie O’Farrell
The Homemade God - Rachel Joyce
The Dutch House. Ann Patchett
Fundamentally - Nussaibah Younis

Blood Orange by Harriett Tyce (one of The Traitors) but there is a lot of sex in it, so depends what you want x

All of Liane Moriarty's books, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, Whistler (Ann Patchett), The Thursday Murder Club series, Olive Kitteridge (Strout), The Virgin Suicides

The Shack, WM Paul Young. Read the book over watching the film. It stays with you.

Jeannette Walls books (The Glass Castle etc) , We Have Always Lived In The Castle (Shirley Jackson) alsoJackson's biography "A Rather Haunted Life'fascinating history.

I’m on holiday and just finished Country People by Daniel Mason. Just over 300 pages. A really enjoyable book which was quirky, funny and a joy to read.

American Dirt.. honestly it had me gripped from the very first page.
cant beat a good book 😁

Consider yourself kissed by Jessica stanley
small things like these by Claire keegan (or any by her)

'Any Human Heart', 'Gabriel's Moon' and 'Our Man in Africa' by William Boyd

The Bosch and Lincoln Lawyer books are great (apart from the first Bosch book, although you probably need to start there) and there are lots of them.

The full moon coffee shop by Mai Mochizuki.

I loved this book to start with but the number of dramatic incidents at the end seemed highly unlikely; I lost all belief. But the first half of the book was excellent, a slow build of tension. I can't really understand it; like two different authors!

Anything by Clare Chambers, Mavis Cheek or Deborah Moggach!
Been reading Liane Moriarty this summer too. They are definitely unputdownable but a bit long. Though I've still whizzed through them!
😊

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. I plan to re-read

I've enjoyed Carole Matthews books that are a bit frivolous, if thats what trashy is, but sometimes you need it. Not usually my style.

Michael Macintyre biography was fun.

Call the Midwife books are great social history.

Any of the Mma Ramotswe series by Alexander McCall Smith. Easy read, fun, meandering opinions on modern world masquerading as fiction.

Opposite of social media world.

Amazing beautiful book.

I’m just reading Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon. Absorbing and quirky. It’s aimed at young adults but I’m enjoying it!

Giovanni’s Room

Kindered by Octavia Butler.

Beloved will never leave me, it is devastating, beautiful, unforgettable.
i first read when I was 22, and at 55 I have re-read it at my lowest moments, it always grounds me and brings perspective

What We Can Know - Ian McEwan is 320 pages and quite page turn-y.

Hello! Bookseller here. Most perfect novel I read this year was The Correspondent by Virginia Evans. A gem. Surprisingly absorbing for an epistolary novel.
All the rest of my suggestions are recent, British, medium/lightweight literary fiction, all but one now out in paperback.
Both Albion and Expectation by Anna Hope are really excellent, well observed novels, Expectation pretty much nails what it is to be a woman in 21st century Britain.
A Family Matter by Claire Lynch is short and I loved her punchy writing style about family secrets. Similar to this (British, set in two timelines) Slags by Emma Jane Unsworth is fast paced, the characters hook you in and very funny too. Mercy Seat by Marcia Hutchinson was gritty and interesting.
I second the Girls by John Bowen.
Unsettled Ground by Clare Fuller from a few years back is brilliant. Her new one Hunger and Thirst is dynamite but it IS a horror (literary of course!)
2 short, fast paced, hilarious novels: a sociopaths guide to a successful marriage by M K Oliver - kinda a thriller but super clever and razor sharp funny. Natural disaster by Lisa owens- 24 hours in the life of a mum of a toddler and a baby trying to have a perfect day before returning to work.. Everything that can go wrong, does go wrong. Brilliantly observed, so real!

Flowers for Algernon.

seconding "remarkably bright creatures"!

nghi vo is known for novellas

u could also check if ur fav writers hv a short story or two in their bibliography, sometimes bigger names will lend themselves to collections to help out newcomers

wild card: u said no thrillers or intentional page-turners but "the sacrifice" by rin chupeco is more of a comedy