Be the first to know about our latest and hottest
Local community organisations, clubs, courses and programmes 
Oprah's Fiction
Oprah's Book Club has featured all these novels, to be found in our collection and all guaranteed to be excellent reads. So go ahead and try one today!
2007
- Cormac McCarthy The road
- The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey across a burned America. It boldly imagines a future where hope has vanished, but in which the father and his son, each the other's world entirely, are sustained by love.
- Rhonda Byrne The secret
- First filmed as a DVD in 2006, this book explains ‘the secret’ to happiness, which focuses on positive thinking and self-actualisation to get what you want.
2005
- James Frey A million little pieces
- A controversial account of the author's reconstruction of his life after spending nearly a decade abusing drugs and alcohol.
- William Faulkner As I lay dying
- This story of the Bundren family fulfilling their mother's last wish, is presented in 59 separate monologues, each spoken or thought by one of 15 characters.
- William Faulkner Light in August
- Although opening with Lena Grove who is searching for her unborn baby's father, this story is essentially about Joe Christmas, a part Negro orphan who is born out of wedlock and denounced and abandoned by his grandfather. Told through the eyes of several characters, all are in some way linked to Christmas.
- William Faulkner The sound and the fury
- Set in the early 1900s in Mississippi, the downfall of the Compson family is seen through the eyes of three family members and one of their servants who is a freed slave.
2004
- Pearl S. Buck The good earth
- A Chinese peasant overcomes the forces of nature and the frailties of human nature to become a wealthy landowner.
- Gabriel Garcia Marquez One hundred years of solitude
- In the early 19th century Idealistic Jose Arcadio Buendia and his wife Ursula found a village and dynasty. Six generations of their descendants experience life in an interconnected way that represents the history of Latin America.
- Carson McCullers The heart is a lonely hunter
- A quiet sensitive girl searches for beauty in a small, but damned Southern town.
- Leo Tolstoy Anna Karenina
- A beautiful passionate Russian woman escapes the restrictions and boredom of her marriage through a love affair with a charming soldier.
2003
- John Steinbeck East of Eden
- Set in the rich farmland of California's Salinas valley, this novel follows the intertwined destinies of two families, the Trasks and the Hamiltons whose generations helplessly re-enact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry between Cain and Abel.
- Alan Paton Cry the beloved country
- A Zulu country parson arrives in Johannesburg and finds that his sister has become a prostitute and his son a murderer.
2002
- Toni Morrison Sula
- There is a bond between two women Sula and Nel, a friendship whose intensity first sustains then injures.
- Ann-Marie MacDonald Fall on your knees
- Moving from Cape Breton Island to the bleak landscape of World War I and the emerging jazz scene in New York City, this epic tale tells the story of four unforgettable sisters. This is a story of inescapable family bonds, of terrible secrets, of miracles, murder, passion and forbidden love.
2001
- Rohinton Mistry A fine balance
- This sweeping story is set in a nameless Indian city amid the political and social turbulence of the 1970s, where misfortunes multiply and a drop of good luck has to last a long time.
- Jonathan Franzen The Corrections
- After almost fifty years as a wife and mother, Enid is ready to have some fun. Unfortunately, her husband is losing his sanity to Parkinson's disease, and her three grown children have problems of their own. A comic and tragic modern tale of a family breaking down.
- Lalita Tademy Cane River
- Follows four generations of African American women from slavery to the early twentieth century as they struggle for economic security and the future of their families along the Cane River in rural Louisian.
- Malika Oufkir La Prisonniere
- (also published as "Stolen Lives: 20 years in a desert jail)
A shocking true story of resilience in the face of extreme deprivation and of the courage and humor with which one family faced their tormented fate. - Gwyn Hyman Rubio Icy Sparks
- Icy Sparks lives with a secret she calls my urges. She has loud hiccups, nervous tics and angry outbursts. As an adult, Icy relates her difficult, but ultimately hilarious and heartwarming journey, from her first symptoms as a young child to her final self-acceptance as a young woman.
- Joyce Carol Oates We were the Mulvaneys
- The Mulvaneys are a happy family, but something happens on Valentine's Day, 1976 - an incident that is hushed up in the town and never spoken of in the Mulvaney home.
2000
- Robert Morgan Gap Creek
- The story of a young woman's struggles in early 20th century Appalachia.
- Andre Dubus III House of sand and fog
- A tragic story of an immigrant familys attempt to build themselves a new life in America and have the American dream. Film version starred Ben Kingsley and Jennifer Connelly.
- Christina Schwarz Drowning Ruth
- This is a haunting novel about the ties that bind families together and the insidious secrets that can rend them apart.
- Elizabeth Berg Open house
- A woman re-creates her life after divorce by opening up her house and her heart.
- Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood bible
- An evangelical Baptist minister takes his wife, four daughters and his mission from a small town in Georgia to the Belgian Congo in 1959.
- Sue Miller While I was gone
- When an old housemate settles in her small town, Jo's life begins to unravel: she begins a dangerous flirtation.
- Toni Morrison The Bluest eye
- The story of black 11 year-old Pecola Breedlove who prays for her eyes to turn blue so that she will be as beautiful as all the blond, blue-eyed children in America.
- Tawni O'Dell Back Roads
- Nineteen-year-old Harley Altmyer is trapped - father dead, mother in jail for murder, three sisters to care for, and a fiery aggressive libido that rages against his will.
- Isabel Allende Daughter of fortune
- Eliza Sommers, a young Chilean girl raised to be a proper English lady, stows away on a ship bound for California.
1999
A Manette Ansay Vinegar Hill - Young couple move back to the oppressive, unforgiving Midwest community of the title.
- Jane Hamilton A map of the world
- Alice Goodwin, a school nurse, finds herself being unjustly accused of child abuse after an accident on her property which involved a friends child. Film version starred Sigourney Weaver.
- Robert Morgan Gap Creek
- A young bride named Julie lives a hard life in 1900 Appalachia.
- Breena Clarke River, cross my heart
- Story of the drowning of a six year old child and its effects on family and residents of black community in the 1920.
- Melinda Haynes Mother of pearl
- Friendship across race lines between white teenager and black man in 1950s' South.
- Maeve Binchy Tara Road
- Ria lived on Tara Road in Dublin with her dashing husband, Danny, and their two children. She fully believed she was happily married, right up until the day Danny told her he was leaving her to be with his young, pregnant girlfriend.
Janet Fitch White oleander - Astrid finds herself bumped from foster home to foster home after her mother is charged with murder. Film version starred Michelle Pfeiffer, Alison Lohman and Renee Zellweger.
- Bret Lott Jewel
- Moving tale of backwoods' woman's devotion to child who's both burden and blessing.
- Bernhard Schlink The reader
- German lawyer discovers woman he loves was once an Auschwitz prison guard; very powerful novel about German war guilt.
- Anita Shreve The pilot's wife
- When her husband is killed in a crash, pilot's wife learns more about his past.
1998
Chris Bohjalian Midwives - Respected midwife is accused of murder when a woman in her care dies.
- Billie Letts Where the heart is
- Pregnant girl abandoned in small Midwest town where she's rescued by the kindness of strangers; film version with Ashley Judd, Natalie Portman and Sally Field.
- Wally Lamb I know this much is true
- Big ambitious novel about man from dysfunctional family who has to take care of his own life and that of his schizophrenic twin brother.
- Pearl Cleage What looks like crazy on an ordinary day
- Black woman who's HIV positive tries for happiness with man who has a past to overcome.
- Toni Morrison Paradise
- Four unconventional women in small all-black Oklahoma town in the 1970.
- Alice Hoffman Here on Earth
- Woman returns to childhood home with daughter and resumes passionate affair with her manipulative first love.
- Anna Quindlen Black and blue
- Victim of domestic violence helped by social agency to relocate to new town with new identity.
1997
- Ernest J Gaines A lesson before dying
- Young black man unjustly accused of murder in 1940s' Louisiana.
- Kaye Gibbons A virtuous woman
- Touching tale of couple who meet when she's 20 and he's 40 and stay together.
- Kaye Gibbons Ellen Foster
- 11 year old girl, motherless with abusive father, searches for a place to belong.
- Wally Lamb She's come undone
- Tough times of overweight woman who overcomes terrible trauma with humour and courage.
- Ursula Hegi Stones from the river
- Dwarf woman's experiences in Germany during and after the war.
- Sheri Reynolds The rapture of Canaan
- Teenager faces unwed motherhood in midst of a rural fundamentalist community.
- Mary McGarry Morris Songs in ordinary time
- Small town divorcee becomes the prey of a travelling con man.
1996
- Jacquelyn Mitchard The deep end of the ocean
- Every parents worst nightmare one day the Cappadora familys middle son vanishes. Film version starred Michelle Pfeiffer.
- Toni Morrison Song of Solomon
- A black man, heir to a fortune, makes voyage of self discovery.
- Jane Hamilton The frogs are still singing
- Ruth recounts her life, achievements and struggles growing up in small town America (also published as The book of Ruth).
Oprah's Book Club - Current and past picks of the books recommended by the Oprah Book Club. Part of Oprah.com.
