12 Classic Oprah Book Club Picks Guaranteed to Get Your Club Talking

In this astounding multigenerational saga, the four Piper sisters grapple with the one secret at the center of their family that threatens to destroy them all. Beginning on the windswept coast of Nova Scotia at the start of the century, the story of these four sisters spans across decades and oceans. From the coal-mining communities of their home country to the war-torn battlefields of World War I, and finally to the glittering streets of 1920s New York City, follow along as the sisters struggle to hold on to one another. 

A Pulitzer Prize–winning modern classic, THE GOOD EARTH is a portrait of a vanishing China in the 1920s during the reign of the last emperor. Hardworking farmer Wang Lung and his devoted wife O-Lan lead a simple, honest life. Little do they know that their day-to-day life exists along the edge of impending social upheaval and political change that will rock the country they know and love, as well as the distant world beyond.  

Dolores Price may only be thirteen, but she’s seen her fair share of tragedy. Despite the wounds that fester in her heart and body, Dolores has maintained her eccentric wit and humor. Her uncertain mother provides Dolores comfort in the form of junk food and endless television. By the time Dolores reaches young adulthood, now at 257 lb., the world around her still seems cruel, but this time she’s determined to face the outside world and win. 

In this heartfelt testament to motherhood, 40-year-old Jewel is surprised to find that she is pregnant with her sixth and final child. It’s 1943 and while the country prepares for war, Jewel and her husband in the backwoods of Mississippi prepare for the new bundle of joy. But when Brenda Kay is born with Down syndrome and Jewel refuses to institutionalize her, the family must cope with the unimaginable choices that challenge a mother and daughter’s unbreakable bond. 

An extraordinary literary debut, MOTHER OF PEARL depicts an unlikely connection between two outcasts in 1950s small-town Mississippi. Even Grade is a twenty-eight-year-old Black man who grew up as an ostracized orphan. Valuable Korner is the fifteen-year-old white bastard daughter of a local sex worker. In their determination to discover their own identities and a sense of belonging, the two must orbit each other in order to find a way forward together.  

March Murray stayed away from her small hometown in Massachusetts—and the troubled life she led there—for nineteen years, building a distant life in California. But now she’s back and it isn’t long before she encounters Hollis, the boy she once would have sacrificed everything for. Soon, their passionate romance resumes, but March is all-to-aware of the reasons she left in the first place, reasons inextricable from Hollis.  

From beloved storyteller Anna Quindlen comes a heartbreaking tale of second chances and recovery. Fran stayed with her abusive husband Bobby for years, partially because she still loved him and partially because she wanted her son to have a father. But after one explosive night, she sees a new look in her ten-year-old son’s eyes and makes a harrowing escape. While she builds a new, anonymous life in the city with her son, Fran knows it’s only a matter of time before Bobby finds her. 

The Mulvaneys seem to have it all, but after one unthinkable incident in 1976, the family splinters. Years later, the family’s youngest son attempts to piece the family back together in order to trace and reveal the secret that pulled them all apart. A moving and hopeful portrait of a family in ruins, WE WERE THE MULVANEYS is an American classic from the prolific and unmatched writer Joyce Carol Oates. 

In 1923, teenaged Hattie Shepherd leaves her hometown in Georgia to start a new life in Philadelphia as part of the Great Migration. After marrying the wrong man, Hattie gives birth to a pair of twins who die in infancy, followed by nine more children. In this dazzling multigenerational saga, twelve stories illuminate the lives of Hattie and her children in a tapestry of unexpected strength and unbounded love. 

In this piercing portrait of an American family, four generations of Black women in Louisiana lead their families through decades of social and political upheaval. Starting with Elisabeth, a slave owned by a Creole family, CANE RIVER traces one family’s legacy as they survive the Civil War, the false promises of emancipation, and the Jim Crow to pre-Civil Rights South. Filled with strong, undeniable female characters, Lalita Tademy’s beautifully wrought novel is as intimate as it is all-encompassing. 

Bestselling author Isabel Allende’s DAUGHTER OF FORTUNE follows orphan Eliza Sommers as she pursues personal freedom in the face of immense change. While growing up in the British colony of Valparaíso, Chile, Eliza falls in love with and becomes pregnant by a lowly clerk. When gold is discovered in northern California, her beloved is one of the many who rush to make their fortune. Eliza follows him, but soon discovers that she must make her own way amidst the cutthroat society forming in San Francisco.  

In this startling collection of short stories, Uwem Akpan crafts heartrending and lyrical tales that humanize those faced with daily poverty and violence. A boy, determined to scrounge enough money for schoolbooks, looks for help from his loving but desperate family. A pair of siblings witness tragedy in the relationship between their parents. From Kenya to Rwanda, Ethiopia to Nigeria, these stories traverse the continent of Africa to tell intimate tales of families faced with impossible choices and harrowing conditions.