The Oprah Magazine's Summer 2019 Reading List
by KATHERINE RILEY | Sat., Jul. 6, 2019 3:00 AM
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Summer is here! And you know one of our favorite things to do is to relax with a great beach read...or 10. We love seeing what our favorite celeb book clubs recommend each month too. Well, Oprah Winfrey has outdone them all (she is Oprah, would you expect anything less?). O, The Oprah Magazine shared its list of 32 books to read this summer—all by female authors, no less.
From thrillers to memoirs, there's something for everyone, and plenty to keep little bookworms like us busy. Happy reading!
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CITY OF GIRLS BY ELIZABETH GILBERT
The author of Eat Pray Love give us this novel about a young woman discovering that you don't have to be a good girl to be a good person.
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BIG SKY BY KATE ATKINSON
Detective Jackson Brodie returns in a new novel about secrets, sex and lies.
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THE TENTH MUSE BY CATHERINE CHUNG
This novel is a gorgeous, sweeping tale about legacy, identity, and the beautiful ways the mind can make us free.
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THE CONFESSIONS OF FRANNIE LANGTON BY SARA COLLINS
This page-turning murder mystery travels across the Atlantic and through the darkest channels of history.
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FLEISHMAN IS IN TROUBLE BY TAFFY BRODESSER-AKNER
Women's Health calls this New York Times best-seller "everything you could wish for in a satisfying summer read...Taffy Brodesser-Akner's page-turner doubles as a satirical take on modern relationships."
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MRS. EVERYTHING BY JENNIFER WEINER
A smart and timely exploration of two sisters' lives from the 1950s to the present as they struggle to find their places—and be true to themselves—in a rapidly evolving world.
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THE SUMMER DEMANDS BY DEBORAH SHAPIRO
On the verge of her 40th birthday and shaken by a recent miscarriage, Emily inherits an abandoned summer camp in Massachusetts. She and her husband move onto the property and make grand plans to revitalize the land. But they soon discover that their inheritance includes an unexpected guest.
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NO WALLS AND THE RECURRING DREAM BY ANI DIFRANCO
O magazine calls Ani DiFranco's memoir "as fierce, freewheeling, and passionate as her music."
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FURIOUS HOURS BY CASEY CEP
Southern Living sums this books up best: "A compelling hybrid of a novel, at once a true-crime thriller, courtroom drama, and miniature biography of Harper Lee."
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ASK AGAIN, YES BY MARY BETH KEANE
A moving novel about two neighboring families in a suburban town, the friendship between their children, a tragedy that reverberates over four decades, the daily intimacies of marriage, and the power of forgiveness.
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I LIKE TO WATCH BY EMILY NUSSBAUM
From The New Yorker's Pulitzer Prize-winning TV critic, comes a provocative collection of new and previously published essays arguing that we are what we watch.
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LIFELINES BY HEIDI DIEHL
A sweeping debut novel following an American artist who returns to Germany, where she fell in love and had a child decades earlier, to confront her past at her former mother-in-law's funeral.
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THE GONE DEAD BY CHANELLE BENZ
A young woman returns to her childhood home in the American South and uncovers secrets about her father's life and death.
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ROUGH MAGIC BY LARA PRIOR-PALMER
At the age of 19, author Lara Prior-Palmer discovered a website devoted to "the world's longest, toughest horse race," an annual competition of endurance and skill that involves dozens of riders racing a series of twenty-five wild ponies across 1,000 kilometers of Mongolian grassland. On a whim, she decided to enter the race. As she boarded a plane to East Asia, she was utterly unprepared for what awaited her.
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PATSY BY NICOLE DENNIS-BENN
This novel is a layered portrait of motherhood, immigration and the sacrifices we make in the name of love.
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SEARCHING FOR SYLVIE LEE BY JEAN KWOK
Both Jenna Bush Hager and Emma Roberts selected this fun mystery for their book clubs' June 2019 pick.
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THE PAPER WASP BY LAUREN ACAMPORA
This novel is a page-turning story of two women's dark friendship of twisted ambition, set against the backdrop of contemporary Hollywood.
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HOW COULD SHE BY LAUREN MECHLING
A savagely funny novel about three old friends as they navigate careers, husbands, an ex-fiancé, new suitors, and, most importantly, their relationships with one another.
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CALL YOUR DAUGHTER HOME BY DEB SPERA
Three women in South Carolina in 1924 seemingly have nothing in common, yet as they unite to stand up to the injustices that have long plagued their small town, they find strength in the bond that ties women together.
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LEAVING THE WITNESS BY AMBER SCORAH
O magazine says this "pensive, ultimately liberating memoir chronicles her formative years as a Jehovah's Witness...and captures the bewilderment of belief and the bliss of self-discovery...[Leaving the Witness] is a suture for anyone searching to reconcile their past and present selves."
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PARIS, 7 A.M. BY LIZA WIELAND
This novel imagines what happened to poet Elizabeth Bishop during three life-changing weeks she spent in Paris amidst the imminent threat of World War II.
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THE TRAVELERS BY REGINA PORTER
Entertainment Weekly writes of this novel: "American history comes to vivid, engaging life in this tale of two interconnected families (one white, one black) that spans from the 1950s to Barack Obama's first year as president."
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THE MOST FUN WE EVER HAD BY CLAIRE LOMBARDO
O magazine teases this novel best: "Two maddeningly-in-love parents, four wildly different sisters, and the secret son one of them gave up for adoption. Lombardo's satisfying multicourse feast begins when a sister—not the mother of the boy—blindsides her siblings by bringing him to lunch."
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GONE TOO LONG BY LORI ROY
People calls this novel "a gripping mystery with a timely, unnerving message—you won't be able to look away."
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DISAPPEARING EARTH BY JULIA PHILLIPS
On the shoreline of the Kamchatka peninsula at the northeastern edge of Russia, two sisters, aged 8 and 11, go missing. Echoes of the disappearance reverberate across a tightly woven community, with the fear and loss felt most deeply among its women.
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DONNA HAS LEFT THE BUILDING BY SUSAN JANE GILMAN
Donna Koczynski is an ex-punk rocker, a recovering alcoholic and the mother of two teenagers whose suburban existence detonates when she comes home early from a sales conference in Las Vegas to the surprise of a lifetime.
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MY LIFE AS A RAT BY JOYCE CAROL OATES
This poignant novel traces a young woman's life of banishment from her family to discovering her own identity and emerging from her exile as a "rat" into a transformed life.
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RULES FOR VISITING BY JESSICA FRANCIS KANE
This novel follows May Attaway, a university gardener who sets out on an odyssey to reconnect with four old friends over the course of a year.
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CONVICTION BY DENISE MINA
A true-crime podcast sets a trophy wife's present life on a collision course with her secret past. Hooked already? Us too.
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1919 BY EVE L. EWING
Eve L. Ewing explores the story of the Chicago Race Riot of 1919 through poems recounting the stories of everyday people trying to survive and thrive in the city.
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GRACE WILL LEAD US HOME BY JENNIFER BERRY HAWES
A deeply moving work of narrative nonfiction on the tragic shootings at the Mother Emanuel AME church in Charleston, South Carolina from Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jennifer Berry Hawes.
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OUTRAGES BY NAOMI WOLF
How 19th century laws gave the state new powers to criminalize love between men—and how the movement for gay rights rose from the ashes. Since the book's release, The New York Times reports that author Naomi Wolf is correcting portions of the book after an awkward radio interview in which she was alerted to major errors in it.
