Best Contemporary Fiction Authors You Should Know
Best Contemporary Fiction Authors You Should Know
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Contemporary fiction is a genre of literature that encompasses all works of fiction that are set in the present day and age. It is a broad category that includes a wide range of sub-genres such as literary fiction, romance, mystery, science fiction, and fantasy, among others. Contemporary fiction often explores current social, cultural, and political issues and reflects the values and beliefs of the modern world.
One of the defining characteristics of contemporary fiction is its focus on character development and exploration of the human condition. The stories often feature complex and relatable characters who face realistic challenges, struggles, and triumphs. The themes and subject matter of contemporary fiction are diverse and reflect the diversity of the modern world. It includes topics such as race, gender, sexuality, identity, relationships, mental health, and more.
Overall, contemporary fiction is a dynamic and constantly evolving genre that reflects the zeitgeist of the present day. It provides readers with an opportunity to engage with and explore the complexities of the world we live in through the lens of fictional narratives.
If you’re looking for contemporary fiction authors to round out your TBR, look no further…
Best Contemporary Fiction Authors
Lyn Liao Butler
Lyn Liao Butler is a Taiwanese American author of thrillers, upmarket fiction, and rom-coms. Her most recent thriller, Someone Else’s Life, was an Amazon bestseller and her second book Red Thread of Fate was a finalist in the WFWA Star Awards for 2023. Before becoming an author, she was a professional ballet and modern dancer, and is still a fitness and yoga instructor.
When not writing, she enjoys spending time with her FDNY husband, their son, two dachshunds, sewing for her Etsy shop, and trying complicated yoga poses on a stand-up paddle board. So far, she has not fallen into the water yet.
Jamie Beck
Jamie Beck is a Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author of 18 novels, which have been translated into multiple languages and have sold more than three million copies worldwide. She is a two-time Booksellers Best Award finalist, a Women’s Fiction Writers Association STAR award finalist, a National Readers Choice Award winner, and critics at Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, and Booklist have respectively called her work smart, uplifting, and entertaining.In addition to writing novels, she enjoys dancing around the kitchen while cooking and hitting the slopes in Vermont and Utah. Above all, she is a grateful wife and mother to a very patient, supportive family.
Colleen van Niekerk
Originally from Cape Town, South Africa, Colleen lives in Vancouver Canada - she likes cities by the sea with big mountains in the middle.
Shauna Robinson
Shauna Robinson’s love of books led her to try a career in publishing before deciding she’d rather write books instead. Originally from San Diego, she now lives in Virginia with her husband and their sleepy greyhound. Shauna is an introvert at heart—she spends most of her time reading, baking, and figuring out the politest way to avoid social interaction. Must Love Books is her debut novel.
Lisa Roe
Lisa Roe graduated from the S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University and spent many years as an advertising creative director and copywriter in New York City until she accepted the tougher job of stay-at-home mom and turned to writing fiction — mostly to entertain her kids, but then to tell her own stories. A classic first born, reluctant empty nester, Dr. Doolittle wannabe, and the author of WELCOME TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD, Lisa lives in New Jersey with her husband and three incorrigible dogs. She’d love you to come visit her at lisaroe.com and on Instagram at @lisaroewrites.
Mary Kay Andrews
MARY KAY ANDREWS is The New York Times bestselling author of HELLO, SUMMER, Sunset Beach, The High Tide Club, The Beach House Cookbook, The Weekenders, Beach Town, Save the Date, Ladies’ Night, Christmas Bliss, Spring Fever, Summer Rental, The Fixer Upper, Deep Dish, Blue Christmas, Savannah Breeze, Hissy Fit, Little Bitty Lies, and Savannah Blues. A former journalist for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, she lives in Atlanta, Georgia.
Laura Hankin
Laura Hankin is an author, screenwriter, and performer who writes novels that you can read on a beach but also for a book club. Her books include THE DAYDREAMS, one of the "Best Beach Reads of 2023" (Harper's Bazaar, Cosmopolitan, and more), HAPPY & YOU KNOW IT, a Book of the Month and Library Reads selection, and A SPECIAL PLACE FOR WOMEN, as seen on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. She has some TV/film projects in development, and her musical comedy has been featured in outlets like The Washington Post and The New York Times. She’s based in Washington, DC, where she once fell off a treadmill twice in one day.
Emily Giffin
EMILY GIFFIN is a graduate of Wake Forest University and the University of Virginia School of Law. The #1 New York Times bestselling author of ten novels, Something Borrowed, Something Blue, Baby Proof, Love the One You're With, Heart of the Matter, Where We Belong, The One & Only, First Comes Love, All We Ever Wanted, and The Lies That Bind, she currently lives in Atlanta with her husband and three children. Her eleventh novel, Meant to Be, releases on May 31, 2022.
Jane L. Rosen
Jane L. Rosen is an author, screenwriter, and Huffington Post contributor. She lives in New York City and Fire Island with her husband and three daughters
Khristin Wierman
Khristin Wierman spent twenty years rising through the marketing ranks of Fortune 500 companies, building a career that was lucrative, ego-boosting, and a little bit soul-crushing. So she quit. And had no idea what to do with her life. Writing novels ensued. She was born and raised in a small East Texas town—which means she came into this world a Dallas Cowboys fan and ardently believes “y’all” is a legitimate pronoun. Some things she enjoys are playing golf with her husband and stepson, poker, yoga, chocolate, the Golden State Warriors, and the daily adventure of life with an adorably imperfect cat named Rocco. She lives in San Francisco, California. Learn more at khristinwierman.com
Elyssa Friedland
Elyssa Friedland is the author of four novels and a forthcoming picture book. A graduate of Yale University, where she currently teaches, and Columbia Law School, Elyssa lives in New York City with her husband and children.
Holly Bourne
Holly Bourne is a bestselling and critically acclaimed author in the UK.
Holly started her writing career as a news journalist and was was nominated for Best Print Journalist of the Year. She then spent six years working as an advisorfor a youth charity – helping young people with their relationships and mental health. Inspired by what she saw, Holly started writing fiction that helps people make sense of their lives.
Alongside her writing, Holly has a keen interest in women’s rights and is an advocate for reducing the stigma of mental health problems. She has helped create online apps that teach young people about sexual consent, and works with Women’s Aid to spread awareness of abusive relationships.
Alli Frank and Asha Youmans
Alli Frank
Alli has worked in education for over twenty years, from an overcrowded, cacophonous public high school to a pristine private girl’s school. She has been a teacher, curriculum leader, college counselor, assistant head, school co-founder, sometimes pastor, often mayor, and de facto parent therapist. A graduate of Cornell and Stanford University, Alli lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and two daughters. She is the co-author of Tiny Imperfections, Never Meant to Meet You and The Better Half and an essayist in Moms Don’t Have Time to: A Quarantine Anthology.
Asha Youmans
The daughter of an educational pioneer and Children’s Hospital administrator, after graduating UC Berkeley Asha spent the next twenty years teaching elementary school. Asha continues to work in schools in the Pacific Northwest believing children keep her youthful, as do her husband and two sons. She is the co-author of Tiny Imperfections, Never Meant to Meet You and The Better Half.
Julia Brewer Daily
Julia Brewer Daily is a Texan with a southern accent. She holds a B.S. in English and a M.S. degree in Education from the University of Southern Mississippi.
She has been a Communications Adjunct Professor at Belhaven University, Jackson, Mississippi, and Public Relations Director of the Mississippi Department of Education and Millsaps College, a liberal arts college in Jackson, MS.
She was the founding director of the Greater Belhaven Market, a producers’ only market in a historic neighborhood in Jackson, and even shadowed Martha Stewart.
As the Executive Director of the Craftsmen’s Guild of Mississippi (300 artisans from 19 states) which operates the Mississippi Craft Center, she wrote their stories to introduce them to the public.
She is a member of the Writers’ League of Texas, the Women Fiction Writers’ Association, the San Antonio Writers’ Guild, and the Women’s National Book Association.
Daily is an adopted child from a maternity home hospital in New Orleans. She searched and found her birth mother and through a DNA test, her birth father’s family, as well. A lifelong southerner, she now resides on a ranch in Fredericksburg, Texas, with her husband Emmerson and Labrador retrievers, Memphis Belle and Texas Star.
Paulette Stout
Paulette Stout is the fearless author of Love, Only Better, a contemporary romance and bedroom rallying cry for women everywhere.
Born in Manhattan, Paulette is the gold-star wordsmith and owner of her content marketing agency, Media Goddess Inc., where she crafts content for her list of global clients. Prior to MGI, Paulette led content and design teams at several tech companies, and one educational publisher where her elimination of the Oxford comma caused a near riot.
Paulette’s prior career as a media buyer/planner in New York earned her three industry awards, including a MediaWeek All-Star. She earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Communications from Cornell University and her MBA in Marketing from the Lubin School of Business, Pace University.
You can usually find Paulette at her writing desk in Acton, Massachusetts, rearranging words into pleasing patterns while wearing grammar t-shirts.
Viola Shipman
WADE ROUSE is the internationally bestselling author of twelve books, which have been translated into 20 languages. Wade chose his grandmother’s name, Viola Shipman, as a pen name to honor the woman whose heirlooms and family stories inspire his fiction. Wade hosts the popular Facebook Live literary happy hour, “Wine & Words with Wade,” every Thursday at 6:30 p.m. EST on the Viola Shipman author page where he talks writing, inspiration and welcomes bestselling authors and publishing insiders.
Wade has three books publishing in 2021: The Clover Girls (May 18), a novel about four very different girls who become best friends at summer camp in the 1980s before adult life tears them apart ("Like a true friendship, The Clover Girls is a novel you will forever savor and treasure."-Mary Alice Monroe, New York Times bestselling author; "The Clover Girls is Viola Shipman’s most beautiful novel, and her most important."-New York Times best-selling author Nancy Thayer); The Secret of Snow (Oct. 26), a story of a fired southern California meteorologist who returns home to Michigan in the winter for a new start and to confront the memories of a sister she lost; and Christmas Angels (Oct.), a holiday novella about a recently single young decorator and a widower centered on the magic of heirloom angels. Wade will publish two new novels in 2022 as well as his first memoir in a decade (all of his books are published by HarperCollins).
Wade’s previous novels include The Charm Bracelet, a 2017 Michigan Notable Book of the Year; The Hope Chest; The Recipe Box; The Summer Cottage, the #1 bestselling novel in Michigan in 2019; and The Heirloom Garden.
NYT bestselling author Dorothea Benton Frank said: “Every now and then a new voice in fiction arrives to completely charm, entertain and remind us what matters. Viola Shipman is that voice.” Library Journal writes that Wade has “hit upon the perfect formula to tell heartwarming, intergenerational family stories by weaving together the lives, loves and history of family through cherished heirlooms.”
Wade's novels have hit the bestseller lists in Germany, Italy, Spain, Russia, Sweden and the Czech Republic. In addition, his books have been selected multiple times as Must-Reads by NBC’s Today Show, featured in the Washington Post, USA Today and on Chelsea Lately and chosen three times as Indie Next Picks by the nation’s independent booksellers.
His writing has appeared in a diverse range of publications and media, including Coastal Living, Time, All Things Considered, People, Good Housekeeping, Salon, Forbes, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest and Publisher’s Weekly.
Also a noted humorist of four memoirs, Wade was a finalist for the Goodreads Choice Awards in Humor (he lost to Tina Fey) and was named by Writer’s Digest as “The #2 Writer, Dead or Alive, We’d Like to Have Drinks With” (Wade was sandwiched between Ernest Hemingway and Hunter Thompson).
Wade earned his B.A. from Drury University and his master’s in journalism from Northwestern University. He divides his time between Saugatuck, Michigan, and Palm Springs, California, and is also an acclaimed writing teacher who has mentored numerous students to become published authors.
Samantha Verant
Samantha Vérant is a travel addict, a self-professed oenophile, and a determined, if occasionally unconventional, at home French chef. She lives in southwestern France, where she's able to explore all of her passions, and where she's married to a sexy French rocket scientist she met in 1989, but ignored for twenty years.
Amy Poeppel
Amy Poeppel is the author of Small Admissions, Limelight, and Musical Chairs. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Rumpus, Working Mother, and Points In Case. She and her husband have three kids and divide their time between Frankfurt, Germany, New York City, and Connecticut.
Juliette Fay
Born in Binghamton, New York, Juliette and her family soon moved to Massachusetts where poor television reception fueled her love of books. Haunting the local library for favorites like The Boxcar Children and Julie of the Wolves, she nurtured a happily nerdish interior life.
Juliette graduated from Boston College with a double major in human development and theology, which qualified her for thinking deeply about the state of humanity, but not for much else. She joined the Jesuit Volunteer Corps and worked at an emergency shelter in Seattle, Washington, started a day care for homeless families, and volunteered at children’s ward in a Guatemalan hospital for the poor. Returning to Boston, she taught at a school for autistic children.
Ali Brady
Ali Brady is the pen name of writing BFFs Alison Hammer and Bradeigh Godfrey. The Beach Trap is their first book together. Alison lives in Chicago and works as a VP creative director at an advertising agency. She’s the author of You and Me and Us and Little Pieces of Me. Bradeigh lives with her family in Utah, where she works as a physician. She’s the author of the psychological thriller, Impostor.
Steven Rowley
Steven Rowley is the New York Times bestselling author of Lily and the Octopus, a Washington Post Notable Book of 2016, The Editor, named by NPR as one of the Best Books of 2019, The Guncle, a Goodreads Choice Awards finalist for 2021 Novel of the Year and winner of The 22nd Thurber Prize for American Humor, and The Celebrants, a TODAY Show Read With Jenna Book Club pick. His fiction has been published in twenty languages. All of his books are in development for feature film or television adaptation.
Kristan Higgins
Kristan Higgins is the New York Times, USA TODAY and Publishers Weekly bestselling author of more than twenty novels, which have been translated into more than two dozen languages and have sold millions of copies worldwide. Her books have received dozens of awards and accolades, including starred reviews from Entertainment Weekly, People, Kirkus, The New York Journal of Books, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and Booklist.
Rea Frey
Rea Frey is the multi-published bestselling author of Not Her Daughter, Because You're Mine, Until I Find You, and Secrets of Our House. She is also the CEO and Founder of Writeway, where aspiring writers become published authors. To learn more, visit reafrey.com or writewayco.com.
Jacquelyn Mitchard
Jacquelyn Mitchard is the New York Times bestselling author of 24 books for adults, teenagers and children.Her first novel, 'The Deep End of the Ocean,' was the first selection of the Oprah Winfrey Book Club. A native of Chicago, she lives in Massachusetts with her family.
Gervais Hagerty
Gervais grew up behind Rainbow Row and spent her childhood riding her bike in the drawing room and hunting for pottery shards in the backyard. As a debutante, she got written up for twirling before the seated dinner. She dropped out of her sorority but is a proud graduate of Vanderbilt University. Gervais bopped around the west coast in her early twenties, eventually moving back east to report and produce the news for local radio and television broadcasts. After earning her MBA at The Citadel—The Military College of South Carolina—she was invited to teach communications to cadets. Gervais loved teaching—especially the uniform, complete with a beret!—but in 2020, she finally caved to a strong and bizarre urge to write books. IN POLITE COMPANY is her first novel.
