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This is an interesting period, because of course the War loomed large throughout. There is a vast number of contemporary novels of the War itself, and then there was a post-War wave of memoirs as well as novels inspired by the writers' war experiences. Even when not part of the novel, the war often colours the background, with protagonists who are veterans.
There were numerous 40s and 50s action thrillers such as The Angry Mountain by Hammond Innes, which takes place after the war, with a disabled ex-WW2 pilot as the protagonist. There was the sudden emergence from the magazines of SF novels in book form. Lots of crime novels, some of them very dark, as by David Goodis, Jim Thompson and Cornell Woolrich, plus the emergence of John D MacDonald, who, before he created Travis McGee, wrote dozens of stand alone crime novels such as The Brass Cupcake.
As for "mainstream fiction" of the period, I read a lot of it long ago, and it's nearly all vanished from my memory. Some lingers: Steinbeck's Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday, Giovanni Guareschi's Don Camillo stories, Meyer Levin's Compulsion, Burdick and Lederer's The Ugly American. Was "Not as a Stranger" by Morton Thompson in the 50s? I vaguely recall that one.
Try googling "Novels of the 1950s" and see what was hot at the time.
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