Really good literary novels?

I'll forever be confused as to exactly what literary fiction is, but I think the best way is to read some of the best. If possible, list newer ones instead of the classics, and also, I'm a huge fan of noir and thrillers in case that could help with giving me better suggestions.

Thanks for all the great suggestions, all the books have been added to my wishlist on Amazon and I plan on buying at least four to get started. I already have a long list of books waiting to be read, I always seem to get distracted from reading, but either way they'll still be there.

I know it is smart to read outside your genre that you write, but honestly I'm the kind of guy that unless something is really happening, I'll lose interest and stop reading the book. I wouldn't mind reading just a literary novel, but I do tend to go with the noir and thrillers over any other book out there.

But even sometimes, what's thought to be an excellent book in the noir genre, I might hate the hell out of simply on the storytelling side of it and I'll stop reading it too. The one book that comes to mind that I thought I was going to love was The One Percenters by John Podgursky. It sounded like my kind of novel, then about half way through, I stopped reading because it reminded me of sitting in a bar with a drunkened bitter widow yearning for his wife and simply won't shut the hell up about random crap.

Don't get me wrong, I like a depressed or dark protagonist, but not that bad of one. And like I said the storytelling aspect of it, in my opinoin, really wasn't that good and the novel didn't seem to be planned out (or thought out) and the ending was like the author simply flipped a coin. Yes I skipped the last half of the book and went straight to the ending to find out if it would interest me enough to finish the book, it didn't.

On a side note, Double Idemnity is only 115 pages, is that because shorter books were a little more popular back then? At least the few classics I have seem on the short side. I'm just wondering how many words that would average out to and if that classifies it as a novel or a novella.

Looks like a damn good book and it's on its way to my house once it ships either way. I am a fan of shorter works of fiction, don't know why. I see a huge thick book and I always walk away, probably missing out, but the thickest book I've read (half-way) is the Bible haha.

Thanks for the additional requests. Honestly when I buy books, it's 90% of the time suggested from this forum, the rest of the time, it's by the cover. I like colors!

Graz, I do love a dark protagonist. Mine tend to be more on the "for the love of God let this poor bastard die already, it's the most humane thing at this point". The ones I can't stand though are the "if this bastard doesn't do something other than piss and moan, then I'm catching this book on fire in a gypsy fashion via Jimi Hendrix's Voodoo Child."