An epistolary novel tells its story through correspondence, letters, telegrams, and the like. Here are some examples of contemporary epistolary novels:
| Author | Title of Work | Year | Format | Other Comments | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aravind Adiga | The White Tiger | 2008 | Letters | Written as a series of letters to "His Excellency Wen Jiabao, The Premier's Office, Beijing" | |
| Cecelia Ahern | Where Rainbows End | 2006 | E-mail, letters, and notes | ||
| Cecelia Ahern | Love, Rosie | 2005 | Letters and emails | ||
| Avi | Nothing But the Truth | 1991 | Dialogue transcripts, telephone conversations, letters, telegrams, diary entries, and memos | ||
| Mariama Bâ | So Long a Letter (Une si longue lettre) | 1980 | Considered a classical statement of the female condition in Africa | ||
| Nick Bantock | Griffin and Sabine: An Extraordinary Correspondence | 1991 | A series of postcards and letters inside envelopes | Originally the first book in a trilogy, The Griffin and Sabine Saga , Bantock wrote another trilogy in the same format to extend the story in The Morning Star Trilogy | |
| John Barth | LETTERS | 1979 | Letters from seven writers, some addressed to the "author", plus one will codicil | ||
| Wolfgang Bauer | The Feverhead | 1967 | Letters of two friends that cross all the time, ending in a mise en abyme | ||
| Matt Beaumont | e | 2000 | |||
| Saul Bellow | Herzog | 1964 | Letters | Real and imagined letters written by the protagonist Moses E. Herzog to family members, friends, and celebrities | |
| John Berger | From A to X: A Story in Letters | 2008 | Letters | Letters from A'ida to her imprisoned insurgent lover, Xavier | |
| Geraldine Brooks | March | 2005 | Letters | ||
| Emma Bull and Steven Brust | Freedom and Necessity | 1997 | Letters and diary entries | ||
| Octavia E. Butler | Parable of the Sower | 1993 | Diary entries | ||
| Octavia E. Butler | Parable of the Talents | 1998 | Diary entries | ||
| Meg Cabot | The Boy Next Door (Boy, #1) | 2002 | Emails | First in series of four books. | |
| Orson Scott Card | Ender's Shadow Saga | 1999 | emails | Each chapter begins with a correspondence between two characters with limited context, then segues into traditional narrative | |
| Kate Cary | Bloodline | 2005 | Letters, diary entries, and newspaper articles | A sequel to Dracula and thus mimicks the writing format of Bram Stoker's classic novel | |
| Stephen Chbosky | The Perks of Being a Wallflower | 1999 | Letters | ||
| Beverly Cleary | Dear Mr. Henshaw | 1983 | Letters and diary entries | ||
| Lynn Coady | The Antagonist | 2011 | Monologic epistolary novel conveyed through increasingly unanswered email messages | ||
| Douglas Coupland | Microserfs | 1995 | Diary entries maintained on a PowerBook | ||
| The Gum Thief | 2007 | Journal entries, letters, e-mails, writing exercises, and one work memo | |||
| Andrew Crumey | Mr Mee | 2001 | |||
| Mark Z. Danielewski | House of Leaves | 2000 | Fictional manuscript, letters, editorial footnotes, appendices, fictional interviews | ||
| Patrick Sheane Duncan | Dracula vs. Hitler | 2016 | Fictional author's note, manuscripts, war dispatches | ||
| Mark Dunn | Ella Minnow Pea | 2001 | |||
| Ibid: A Life | 2004 | ||||
| Alfredo Bryce Echenique | Tarzan's Tonsillitis | 2001 | First person narrative with letters | ||
| Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone | This Is How You Lose the Time War | 2019 | Communicated as letters, however the modalities are science fiction and not literal letters. | ||
| Ben Elton | Inconceivable | 1999 | Diary entries. | Dialogic comedic novel about a couple trying to conceive. They each write their thoughts as a form of therapy to help them in this goal. | |
| Helen Fielding | Bridget Jones's Diary | 1996 | Diary entries | ||
| Michael Frayn | The Trick of It | 1989 | |||
| Carlos Fuentes | La silla del águila (The Eagle's Throne) | 2002 | Letters and diary entries | Written as a series of letters between high-ranking officials in the Mexican government and persons aspiring to high office. The letters are being written (in 2020) because all telecommunications in Mexico have been disabled by the United States. | |
| Daniel Glattauer | Gut gegen Nordwind (German) | 2006 | E-mail correspondence between a man and a woman who fall in love despite never meeting | ||
| Daniel Handler | Why We Broke Up | 2011 | A letter | Illustrated by Maira Kalman | |
| Robert Irwin | Satan Wants Me | 1999 | Diary from 1967. | ||
| David Ives | Voss | 2009 | Letters | ||
| J.B. Jackson | Shagduk (De re dordica, Book 1) | 2022 | Diary entries; letters. | Diary of a librarian who in the course of investigating a professor's disappearance accidentally summons a demon. | |
| J.B. Jackson | Ursula of Ulm (De re dordica, Book 2) | 2024 | Diary entries; letters; found manuscript. | The continued adventures of a librarian who dabbled in the occult and set off a chain of alarming events. | |
| Kij Johnson | The Fox Woman | 1999 | Extracts from diaries | ||
| Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff | Illuminae (Illuminae Files, #1) | 2015 | Reports, emails, texts, audio transcripts | First in series of three books. | |
| Bel Kaufman | Up the Down Staircase | 1965 | memos, notes dropped in the trash can, student papers, lesson plans, notes from students, and letters to a friend from college | A classic mid-1960s portrayal of an urban high school that is a microcosm of the New York City school system that was also made into a film | |
| Lucy Kellaway | Who Moved My Blackberry? | 2005 | Novelisation of the author's Financial Times column featuring Martin Lukes. Most emails are from Lukes himself, so the reader deduces the content of emails he is replying to. | ||
| Daniel Keyes | Flowers for Algernon | 1966 | Journal | An expanded version of Keyes' 1959 short story of the same name. This book is the journal of mentally disabled janitor, Charlie Gordon, who temporarily becomes a super-genius during a medical experiment. Through changes in grammar and style, Charlie's mental rise and fall are presented. | |
| Michael Kimball | Dear Everybody | 2008 | Letters, diary entries, and newspaper articles | The unsent letters of Jonathon Bender, detailing his thoughts from 1966 to 1999 | |
| Stephen King | Carrie | 1976 | Traditional narrative fused with journal articles, interviews, AP ticker reports, and court transcripts | ||
| The Plant | 2000 | The story is told through various letters, and memos | Unfinished | ||
| Steve Kluger | Last Days of Summer | 1998 | Letters, postcards, progress reports, and newspaper clippings. | A series of letters during the 1940s between a twelve-year-old and a rookie baseball player | |
| Almost Like Being in Love | 2004 | The story is told primarily through diary entries, newspaper clippings, office documents, letters, e-mails, menus, Post-It notes and checklists, with only minor reliance on narrative. | |||
| Elizabeth Kostova | The Historian | 2005 | Letters | Letters, excerpts from books and academic literature, and the narrator's reconstructions of stories told to her by her father. | |
| Doris Lessing | Shikasta | 1979 | Letters and reports | Presented as reports on the state of Earth's inhabitants, to a space-faring bureaucratic civilization, authored by one of their own members - Johor, the novel's narrator/protagonist—who incarnates into society to live among humans across several lifetimes in various eras of history. Part 1 of a 5-novel cycle Canopus in Argos: Archives . | |
| Mac Lethal | Texts from Bennett | 2013 | Text messages | "A family story for the twenty-first century, based on the phenomenally popular Texts from Bennett Tumblr blog, this epistolary novel chronicles the year that Bennett and the rest of his freeloading family moved into his cousin Mac's household" through text messages exchanged between Mac and his cousin Bennett. | |
| David Llewellyn | Eleven | 2006 | Emails sent on a single day, between the hours of 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. | ||
| Tim Lucas | The Book of Renfield | 2005 | Diary entries, dialogue transcriptions | A book about the character of Renfield from Dracula and thus mimics the format of the novel. Excerpts from Bram Stoker's novel are integrated into the plot | |
| John Marsden | Letters from the Inside | 1991 | Letter | The story is told in the form of letters exchanged between 15-year-old girls, Mandy and Tracey, who begin writing after Tracey places an ad in fictional magazine GDY | |
| David Mitchell | Cloud Atlas | 2004 | Journal, letter, books (thriller, autobiography), interview transcript, oral history | Nested narrative set across various time periods with each manuscript being 'read' at some point by the next narrator. Made into a film in 2012. | |
| Hubert Monteilhet | Les Mantes Religieuses ( The Praying Mantises ) | 1960 | Made into a BBC television film in 1982 | ||
| Le Retour des Cendres ( Return From the Ashes ) | 1962 | Made into a film starring Maximilian Schell in 1965 | |||
| Vladimir Nabokov | Ada | 1969 | |||
| Luis López Nieves | Voltaire's Heart (Spanish) | 2005 | |||
| Amélie Nothomb | Life Form | 2010 | Letters | Fictional correspondence between the author and a U.S. soldier, reflects on how writing creates reality. | |
| Amos Oz | Black Box | 1986 | |||
| Tim Parks | Home Thoughts | 1999 | |||
| C.D. Payne | Youth in Revolt | 1993 | Journal entries | ||
| Christopher Priest | The Prestige | 1995 | Letters and diary entries | ||
| Christopher Priest | The Islanders | 2011 | Gazetteer | ||
| Bob Randall | The Fan | 1977 | Letters and telegrams | Deals with the subject of stalking, but was written years before it became a criminal offense; the title character, Douglas Breen, is shown, in his letters, to be an unreliable narrator and an erotomaniac who turns the blame for things he does onto others | |
| Luane Rice and Joseph Monninger | The Letters | 2008 | Letters | ||
| Rosie Rushton and Nina Schindler | P.S. He's Mine! | 2001 | |||
| H. F. Saint | Memoirs of an Invisible Man | 1987 | Narrative manuscript | This entire novel is put forth as a letter or manuscript, the first-person narrative of the author/protagonist, written down and left for someone to find, to learn of what has befallen him | |
| Maria Semple | Where'd You Go, Bernadette | 2012 | Emails, memos, transcripts, etc. | ||
| Lionel Shriver | We Need to Talk About Kevin | 2003 | Letters | This book consists of letters from Eva, the mother of Kevin, to her husband Franklin | |
| Gary Shteyngart | Super Sad True Love Story | 2010 | Diary entries and digital communication records | The book takes alternating narratives through protagonist Lenny Abramov's diary and his love interest's "GlobalTeens" account (an instant messaging technology) | |
| Lee Smith | Fair and Tender Ladies | 1988 | Letters | ||
| Lemony Snicket | The Beatrice Letters | 2006 | Letters and notes | The book explains some of the mysteries surrounding the Baudelaires. The letters are between Lemony and Beatrice. As in The Unauthorized Autobiography pictures and letters allow readers to guess about the author's life. | |
| Carl Steadman | Two Solitudes | 1995 | |||
| Caroline Stevermer and Patricia Wrede | Sorcery and Cecelia or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot | 1988 | Letters | "Being the Correspondence of Two Young Ladies of Quality Regarding Various Magical Scandals in London and the Country" (set in a Regency England where magic works) | |
| The Grand Tour | 2004 | Diary extracts and testimony | "Being a Revelation of Matters of High Confidentiality and Greatest Importance, Including Extracts from the Intimate Diary of a Noblewoman and the Sworn Testimony of a Lady of Quality" (immediate sequel to the work above) | ||
| The Mislaid Magician or Ten Years After | 2006 | Letters | "Being the Private Correspondence Between Two Prominent Families Regarding a Scandal Touching the Highest Levels of Government and the Security of the Realm" (takes place ten years after the previous two books) | ||
| Sue Townsend | Adrian Mole series | 1982–2009 | Diary entries | ||
| Alice Walker | The Color Purple | 1983 | Letters and diary entries | ||
| Thomas Wharton | Every Blade of Grass | 2014 | Letters interspersed with narrative and images | A man and woman who live a continent apart write letters to one another about their discoveries of the wonders of nature | |
| Max Brooks | World War Z | 2006 | Collection of individual accounts | Narrated by an agent of the United Nations Postwar Commission after a zombie plague |