Oprah Winfrey's Top Book Recommendations

Winner of the National Book Award for Fiction
Nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award
An American Library Association Notable Book

Jonathan Franzen's third novel, The Corrections, is a great work of art and a grandly entertaining overture to our new century: a bold, comic, tragic, deeply moving family drama that stretches from the Midwest at mid-century to Wall Street and Eastern Europe

Oprah’s 124th Book Club pick, Little Wonder, begins with a pulse-pounding scene of a mother and her son, an 11-year-old musical prodigy, arriving in Beijing on the invitation of a renowned instructor—and losing each other in the crowds of the railway station on the busiest day of the year. From there, the book expands into a sweeping tale of yearslong separation, artistic ambition, and maternal de

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John of John by Douglas Stuart is an emotionally piercing coming-of-age story that follows a closeted gay young man’s homecoming to the remote Scottish Isle of Harris, where the church looms large, his father looms larger, and the island’s intimate geography ensures that no secret can remain hidden for long. “Douglas Stuart brilliantly weaves a complex and compelling tale that ultimately showcases

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The fourth novel from the author of Where'd You Go, Bernadette tells the story of Adora Hazzard, a stoic philosopher divorcee who understands—thanks to her academic training— that the secret to happiness is never wanting more than you have. Lucky for her, what she has is pretty easy to be contented with: a daughter she adores, a cushy gig providing “moral training” to twin Upper East Side tweenage

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Tayari Jones—the author of Oprah's 78th Book Club pick, An American Marriage— makes her triumphant return to fiction with an emotionally charged Southern novel about two motherless best friends who take opposite paths in adulthood, one into polished privilege, the other into a volatile search for belonging, testing what friendship can survive, what mothers leave behind, and how far a woman will go

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In her first book in more than a decade, acclaimed and beloved author Ann Packer tells the story of a couple whose bond—built on four decades of marriage, two children, and years of navigating terminal illness—is shaken to its core when the wife requests that her best friend, not her husband, care for her in her final days. “This beautifully written story is going to get you thinking about some th

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Spanning just seven days and a little over 200 pages, A Guardian and a Thief imagines a near-future Kolkata where the effects of climate change have made everyday necessities dangerously scarce and every decision ethically fraught. Ma is just a week away from fleeing India with her 2-year-old daughter and her elderly father to join her husband in Michigan when her purse—containing the family’s vit

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The latest memoir by the bestselling author of Eat Pray Love is a heartbreaking and healing account of Gilbert’s relationship with her terminally ill best friend turned partner, Rayya Elias. With the same emotional transparency and captivating voice that made her famous, Gilbert now tells a much heavier story of addiction, grief, codependency, and the thin line between self-discovery and self-dest

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First published in 2007, Richard Russo’s sixth novel tells the story of Louis C. Lynch (cruelly nicknamed “Lucy” by his elementary school classmates), who, at 60 years old, is preparing to leave his childhood hometown for the first time to visit Venice in the hopes of reconnecting—and disentangling his complicated history—with a long-lost childhood friend. Moving between the little-known post-indu

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Set in the near future, this novel follows a world leader in AI technology and her family on a weeklong vacation as they try to recuperate—physically and psychologically—from a fatal car accident. Seventeen-year-old Charlie was in the driver’s seat of the family’s self-driving minivan when it collided with an oncoming Honda, killing the elderly couple inside. All five members of the Cassidy-Shaw f

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In his third Oprah’s Book Club selection, Wally Lamb tells the story of a father who, in the throes of his addiction, commits a heinous crime resulting in a hefty federal sentence and a personal reckoning. As Oprah puts it, this novel is “an incredible and transformative journey from the depths of despair to the healing power of being able to face the truth and eventually find forgiveness.”

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The second novel by the acclaimed writer, whom Oprah describes as “one of the best of our time and for the ages,” tells the story of a 19-year-old from a working-class immigrant family in Connecticut who finds unlikely community in the eccentric staff at his fast-food job and an unlikely home in the spare room of a dementia-stricken Lithuanian octogenarian. "Ocean Vuong's ability to be able to tak

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The Tell is an earthshattering memoir about one woman’s quest to uncover repressed childhood trauma, overcome perfectionism, and live a life of authentic joy. From the outside, Amy Griffin’s life looked perfect. She was the powerhouse founder of the investment firm G9 Ventures, the mother of four beautiful children, wife to an adoring husband—and somehow still had the energy for punishingly long d

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Charlie and Cece are madly and days away from their dream wedding on the shore of Montana’s Salish Lake when Charlie’s old friend Garrett arrives, testing the couple’s bond and changing the course of their lives forever. Following the three characters through fifty years of romance, heartbreak, friendship, and forgiveness, this novel is an ode to love in all its forms. “I promise you it’s the kind

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The latest Oprah’s Book Club selection is part of a new collaboration with Starbucks. Small Things Like These is a little book that packs a huge punch. At just 128 pages, the novella follows an Irish father and coal merchant in the weeks leading up to Christmas as he discovers a town secret that forces him to choose between protecting his own and standing up for the powerless. While the book is se

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“ Tell Me Everything has all the things: romance and mystery and secrets and even a possible murder,” says Oprah. It also has a surprise reappearance of a character readers of Oprah’s Book Club will certainly remember: the indomitable and endearing Olive Kitteridge of Oprah’s 82nd Book Club pick, Olive Again . In Tell Me Everything, Olive’s story finally intersects with those of other beloved char

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In Familiaris , David Wroblewski tells the origin story of his bestselling first novel, and Oprah’s 66th Book Club pick, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle . Beginning in 1919, the sweeping epic follows the family’s patriarch, John Sawtelle, as he embarks, with his new wife and ragtag best friends, on building a utopian dog-breeding farm in northern Wisconsin. Laced through with magic, history, philosoph

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In his 11th novel, Tóibín returns to the characters from his bestselling book Brooklyn , which was adapted into a widely acclaimed film starring Saoirse Ronan. But don’t worry; no prior reading is necessary to dive into this totally singular story. Decades after immigrating to America from Ireland, Eilis Lacey has made a life for herself on Long Island with her husband, Tony, their two children, a

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