Leigh Newman

Dec 10, 2024 | oprahdaily.com | Charley Burlock |Leigh Newman

Li ZhangOur editors handpick the products that we feature. We may earn commission from the links on this page. Sometimes, you want a book that plays on your heartstrings like a steel guitar. These novels and memoirs go straight for the emotional jugular, capturing grief, lust, betrayal, and love in all their complexities and contradictions. But let’s be clear: these are not simply tearjerkers. The books on this list bring on all the feels. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll underline half the sentences.

Dec 10, 2024 | oprahdaily.com | Charley Burlock |Marion Winik |Leigh Newman

Li ZhangOur editors handpick the products that we feature. We may earn commission from the links on this page. While 2024’s news cycle didn’t supply much comic relief, its fiction certainly did. From sharp-clawed satires to absurdist sexual romps, these novels serve up humor with a heaping side of insight. Steering clear of the cheap laughs, the books on this list locate the comedy already pulsing beneath everyday life—and push it to its illogical conclusion.

Dec 10, 2024 | oprahdaily.com | Charley Burlock |Leigh Newman |Marion Winik

Li ZhangOur editors handpick the products that we feature. We may earn commission from the links on this page. Craving some food for thought? 2024 served up some soon-to-be classics: fiction and nonfiction that expanded our minds, fueled our cocktail party convos, and (most importantly) didn’t feel like homework to read. Fast-paced and insightful, the books on this list made us rethink some of our most basic assumptions about how the world works—and our places in it.

Dec 10, 2024 | oprahdaily.com | Charley Burlock |Leigh Newman |Marion Winik

1The Waters, by Bonnie Jo Campbell Hermine “Herself” Zook has spent her life on an island in the Great Massasauga Swamp, known as “The Waters,” brewing potent medicines from the land’s plants as well as raising three girls and, now, a granddaughter, Dorothy, nicknamed Donkey. But when Donkey’s estranged mother returns home, she brings secrets that jeopardize the whole community. Immersive and witchy, a story to savor.

Nov 26, 2024 | oprahdaily.com | Leigh Newman

Getty Images / Oprah DailyMy mother is a loving, complicated woman who has a loving, complicated best friend who in this essay…we’ll call Jane Bolton. Both are addicted to twinsets and travel. The only hitch in their relationship is that her best friend has unlimited resources…and my mother doesn’t. Whenever they chat on the phone, something invariably comes up about the QE2 transatlantic crossing or the Paul Gauguin ship around Tahiti.