Romantic Reads
Whether you like a love story that reads like a thriller or prefer poetry to
prose, these page-turners have a little something for everyone.
O, The Oprah Magazine |
February 10, 2011
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Jojo Moyes
384 pages
An unlikely love story involving a fallen Master of the Universe and the down-to-earth caretaker who revives him
Benjamin Nugent
224 pages
In this tragicomedy, two 15-year-old classmates see their parents exchange an illicit kiss and vow never to cheat on anyone.
Aria Beth Sloss
304 pages
Rebecca Madden, the shy narrator of Aria Beth Sloss's sharply imagined debut novel is ignored by her classmates at Windridge, until Alexandra Carrington, the beautiful and brash new girl, plucks Rebecca out of obscurity to be her best friend.
Nayana Currimbhoy
512 pages
Cultures clash, love blooms, and a teacher is murdered in this novel about a sheltered young woman in 1970s India teaching at a British-run boarding school.
Evelyn Toynton
304 pages
Two Jewish refugees escape the horrors of Hitler's Germany as children. They meet again in America, where they fall in love with their adopted country—and with each other.
Patricia Marx
256 pages
A funny boy-meets-girl novel in witty, quick bits that read like your best friend's best tweets.
Liane Moriarty
432 pages
Employing the old amnesia trick from countless novels and films, Liane Moriarty's What Alice Forgot centers on a woman who goes to the gym, hits her head, and loses all memory of the past decade, which was apparently quite eventful.
Kathryn Harrison
336 pages
Romance blooms as the Romanov Empire crumbles, in a mesmerizing novel narrated by the daughter of infamous Russian mystic Rasputin.
Madeline Miller
384 pages
In this fictional retelling of the Trojan War, military heroics are subsumed into a timeless love story.
Robert Olmstead
304 pages
Working-class boy meets rich girl, and forbidden passion flares, in this thought-provoking, unabashedly romantic novel set in the 1950s.
W. Somerset Maugham
704 pages
An almost-hundred-year-old novel asks perennial, modern questions.
Jamie M. Saul
304 pages
In this engaging novel, a Manhattan man finds romance—and a few other surprises—when he goes to settle the estate of an old friend.
Hilma Wolitzer
304 pages
For a 60-something widower, dating doesn't get easier with age.
Jeffrey Eugenides
416 pages
It's the Reagan years, and the hypereducated students at Brown University in Jeffrey Eugenides's The Marriage Plot (FSG) are hungry for revolutionary ideas to replace the "wholesome, patriotic" values of their parents' generation.
Meira Chand
488 pages
Sheila Kohler
256 pages
Cathleen Medwick reviews Becoming Jane Eyre by Sheila Kohler, a novel chronicling the inner life of Charlotte Bronte.
Susan Vreeland
432 pages
The author of Girl in Hyacinth Blue here imagines a woman torn between art and love in a novel based on the real-life creator of the iconic Tiffany lamps.
Lauren Belfer
544 pages
Lauren Belfer's panoramic new novel, A Fierce Radiance, is a love story wrapped around a spy story with a pivotal medical breakthrough at its center.
Nick Laird
256 pages
Cathleen Medwick reviews Glover's Mistake by Nick Laird, a satirical novel about a love triangle, made unique by Laird's savvy portrayal of the cultural elite and insights into the deft deceptions of love.
Isabel Gillies
272 pages
Patricia Volk reviews Happens Every Day by Isabel Gillies, an all-too-true story of love and betrayal.
Gabriel García Márquez
368 pages
Learn more about the book and the author.
200 pages
Mamie Healey reviews Love Poetry Out Loud edited by Robert Alden Rubin for O, The Oprah Magazine.
Maxim Biller
224 pages
Francine Prose reviews Love Today by Maxim Biller for O, The Oprah Magazine
Helen Simonson
368 pages
Helen Simonson's delightful debut novel, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, is as much a gently p.c. look at the British class system tucked inside a sly comedy of manners as it is a love story.
Orhan Pamuk
560 pages
Cathleen Medwick review The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk for O, The Oprah Magazine
Elizabeth Kostova
576 pages
Cathleen Medwick reviews The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova, a novel about obsessive love, marrying history with mystery.
Gary Shteyngart
352 pages
Gary Shteyngart's postapocalyptic black comedy, Super Sad True Love Story, poses the question: Can two people come together as the world is falling apart?
Amy Bloom
224 pages
Cathleen Medwick reviews Where the God of Love Hangs Out by Amy Bloom, the author's new collection of short fiction about real-life passion--greedy, misguided, rueful, hopeful, generous to a fault.
Jonathan Lethem
240 pages
Vince Passaro reviews You Don't Love Me Yet by Jonathan Lethem for O, The Oprah Magazine
Julie Orringer
624 pages
An old-fashioned romantic drama, Julie Orringer's The Invisible Bridge is as rich in historical detail as it is human in its cast of sympathetic characters.
Leanne Shapton
144 pages
This on-again, off-again long-distance romance is told in the form of a painstakingly assembled faux auction catalog, resulting in not her version of the story, not his version of the story, but theirs.
Victor Hugo
528 pages
The primary star of this 500-plus-page novel is Paris, which is such an obvious and exquisite setting for romance.
Craig Thompson
592 pages
This graphic novel first breaks your heart with the illustrated story of Craig's lonely, isolated childhood in rural Wisconsin—complete with frigid winters, no money, a sexually abusive male babysitter and daily smackdowns from the bullies (and teachers) at school.
Annie Proulx
64 pages
Told in spare, simple prose, this slim novella explores how two good cowboy buddies discover not just that they're more than friends but that they're meant to spend the rest of their lives together.
Natalie Babbitt
160 pages
In this exquisitely written children's novel (which just happens to be perfect for adults too), little Winnie Foster falls for handsome Jesse Tuck—a 17-year-old who's stuck in time, having drunk from a real-life fountain of youth.
Erich Segal
224 pages
Erich Segal's slender novel begins when preppy Harvard jock Oliver and working-class Radcliffe brain Jenny meet in a library, then blossoms from sweet courtship into epic romance.
David Nicholls
448 pages
Not your average boy-meets-girl fairy tale, this novel about growing up, moving on and never letting go resonates with just about everyone who's had to struggle to find themselves as well as find somebody to spend their life with.
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© 2010 OWN, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
