O's 2012 Summer Reading List
No matter your mood, there's a great book to suit it. Don't forget to print the full list here!
O, The Oprah Magazine |
June 25, 2012
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M.L. Stedman
352 pages
There's something irresistible about a morally complex story that makes
you root for all its flawed characters, even when they're at odds with
one another.
Maria Semple
336 pages
You don't have to know Seattle to get Maria Semple's broadly satirical novel, Where'd You Go, Bernadette.' '
Rachel Joyce
336 pages
Rachel Joyce's gorgeously poignant novel of hope and transformation.
Megan Abbott
304 pages
Count yourself lucky if you've never met (let alone parented!) teenagers
like cheerleaders Addy Hanlon and Beth Cassidy; Megan Abbott, the
author of the disturbing novel Dare Me, clearly has seen such creatures up close.
J.I. Baker
336 pages
A secret diary, a mysterious lover, the Kennedys, the Mafia—this novel about Marilyn Monroe's death will thrill your inner conspiracy theorist.
Vaddey Ratner
336 pages
The horrors committed by Cambodia's Khmer Rouge, as experienced by one extremely resilient girl. A brutal novel, lyrically told.
Liza Klaussmann
368 pages
In this enthralling novel, two cousins, both dealing with husband issues, reunite at the family beach estate. But the discovery of a murdered girl makes for a less than relaxing vacation.
G. Willow Wilson
320 pages
Passion, power, and technology converge in this imaginative novel (written before the Arab Spring) about a dissident hacker tormented by love and pursued by a repressive government.
Dawn Raffel
160 pages
You may never look at that lamp the same way again after reading this evocative memoir told through physical objects.
Chris Cleave
336 pages
A fast-paced novel centered on three world-class cyclists that juxtaposes the thrill of elite competition with the joys and sorrows of family life.
Doreen Carvajal
320 pages
In this compelling mix of memoir and reporting, a journalist travels thousands of miles, pores through centuries-old documents, and uses DNA evidence to discover the truth about her heritage.
Robert Pobi
428 pages
An FBI contractor with a gift (curse?) for reconstructing murders tries to solve a hideous double homicide as a hurricane hurtles toward town. A very suspenseful novel.
Leanne Shapton
336 pages
The author, who twice competed in the Canadian Olympic trials, reflects on a life spent underwater.
Claire Vaye Watkins
304 pages
This dazzling collection is filled with men and women who love and wound each other, playing out their intimate dramas against a vast and lonesome American landscape.
Carol Rifka Brunt
368 pages
The story of a confused (is there any other kind?) teenager.
Daniel Smith
224 pages
It's in your head...which, for some of us, is the whole problem.
A new book explains how animals are just like us.
Kurt Andersen
448 pages
A fascinating and wisely observant novel, set in the 1960s and the near future.
Monica Wood
256 pages
An American family grieves for what might have been.
Susan Fales-Hill
304 pages
A sitcom-ish tale of a mixed-race family obsessed with British royalty.
Joshua Henkin
336 pages
A story about the volatility of fresh grief and old antagonisms.
Christopher R. Beha
256 pages
A smart short novel about a young writer.
Deborah Henry
312 pages
In mid-20th-century Ireland, a good Catholic girl decides to give up her half-Jewish child for adoption.
Alix Ohlin
272 pages
A story collection filled with playfulness, warmth and plenty of insight.
Therese Bohman
224 pages
Most
thrillers conclude by exposing a killer. Drowned,
on the other hand, ends with a larger, more upsetting truth: how we expose
ourselves.
Anouk Markovits
329 pages
In
introspective but fast-moving prose, the story provides an up-close look at
life in an intensely orthodox culture.
Patrick Somerville
464 pages
Part love story, part murder mystery, part mediation on violence, part exploration of what home can and should mean, this novel roams wide and far.
Tania James
192 pages
Get ready for a collection of love stories that
absolutely doesn't include a variation on Cinderella-plus-Prince.
Francine du Plessix Gray
304 pages
Francine du Plessix
Gray's' 'The Queen's Lover portrays a wizened and seriously depressed
Marie-Antoinette in the years before her death.
Elizabeth Percer
352 pages
With a clinically depressed mother at home, isolated young Naomi
Feinstein and her father often escape to 83 Beals, in Brookline, Massachusetts,
otherwise known as the John F. Kennedy National Historic Site, where the
glamorous former president and his parents once lived as a family.
Jo Baker
352 pages
What is the legacy of four generations of loss? For Americans without a
direct link to the current conflicts overseas or who get their war news
from TV and Twitter, the question can seem like a distant concept. Oddly
enough, however, this tightly crafted English novel, tracing a family
from World War I to Iraq, brings it to life.
Alix Ohlin
272 pages
Can any of us really save another person? Or is each of us solely responsible for his or her own life? That's the question lurking behind Alix Ohlin's astute novel.
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Printed from Oprah.com on Thursday, June 20, 2013
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© 2010 OWN, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
