O, The Oprah Magazine has highlighted some wonderful books throughout the year, but has chosen the following as the 1o Best Books of 2013.
The Isle of Youth by Laura van den Berg – This book explores the lives of women mired in secrecy and deception. From a newlywed caught in an inscrutable marriage, to private eyes working a baffling case in South Florida, to a teenager who assists her magician mother and steals from the audience, the characters in these bewitching stories are at once vulnerable and dangerous, bighearted and ruthless, and they will do what it takes to survive.
Country Girl: A Memoir by Edna O’Brien – A rich and heady accounting of the events, people, emotions, and landscape that have imprinted upon and enhanced one lifetime.
The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert – A story of love, adventure and discovery. Spanning much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the novel follows the fortunes of the extraordinary Whittaker family as led by the enterprising Henry Whittaker—a poor-born Englishman who makes a great fortune in the South American quinine trade, eventually becoming the richest man in Philadelphia.
Vampires in the Lemon Grove by Karen Russell – A magical new collection of short stores.
The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner – The riveting story of a young artist and the worlds she encounters in New York and Rome in the mid-1970s—by turns underground, elite, and dangerous.
The Good Lord Bird by James McBride – The story of a young boy born a slave who joins John Brown’s antislavery crusade—and who must pass as a girl to survive.
The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer – The summer that Nixon resigns, six teenagers at a summer camp for the arts become inseparable. Decades later the bond remains powerful, but so much else has changed.
The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith – A brilliant mystery in a classic vein: Detective Cormoran Strike investigates a supermodel’s suicide.
Dog Songs by Mary Oliver – A collection of new and favorite poems, celebrating the dogs that have enriched the poet’s world.
The Woman Who Lost Her Soul by Bob Shacochis – In riveting prose, Shacochis builds a complex and disturbing story about the coming of age of America in a pre-9/11 world.
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