The Best Oprah's Book Club 2025

1. The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois, (Hardcover)

An instant New York Times, Washington Post and USA Today Bestseller - AN OPRAH BOOK CLUB SELECTION - ONE OF THE ATLANTIC'S "GREAT AMERICAN NOVELS" - BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2021 - WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR FICTION A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: New York Times - Time - Washington Post - Oprah Daily - People - Boston Globe - BookPage - Booklist - Kirkus - Atlanta Journal-Constitution - Chicago Public Library Finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel - Longlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction - Finalist for the Kirkus Prize for Fiction - Nominee for the NAACP Image Award "Epic. . . . I was just enraptured by the lineage and the story of this modern African-American family. . . . I've never read anything quite like it. It just consumed me." --Oprah Winfrey The NAACP Image Award-winning poet makes her fiction debut with this magisterial epic--an intimate yet sweeping novel with all the luminescence and force of Homegoing; Sing, Unburied, Sing; and The Water Dancer--that chronicles the journey of one American family, from the centuries of the colonial slave trade through the Civil War to our own tumultuous era. The great scholar, W. E. B. Du Bois, once wrote about the Problem of race in America, and what he called "Double Consciousness," a sensitivity that every African American possesses in order to survive. Since childhood, Ailey Pearl Garfield has understood Du Bois's words all too well. Bearing the names of two formidable Black Americans--the revered choreographer Alvin Ailey and her great grandmother Pearl, the descendant of enslaved Georgians and tenant farmers--Ailey carries Du Bois's Problem on her shoulders. Ailey is reared in the north in the City but spends summers in the small Georgia town of Chicasetta, where her mother's family has lived since their ancestors arrived from Africa in bondage. From an early age, Ailey fights a battle for belonging that's made all the more difficult by a hovering trauma, as well as the whispers of women--her mother, Belle, her sister, Lydia, and a maternal line reaching back two centuries--that urge Ailey to succeed in their stead. To come to terms with her own identity, Ailey embarks on a journey through her family's past, uncovering the shocking tales of generations of ancestors--Indigenous, Black, and white--in the deep South. In doing so Ailey must learn to embrace her full heritage, a legacy of oppression and resistance, bondage and independence, cruelty and resilience that is the story--and the song--of America itself.

The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois, (Hardcover) Author: Harper ISBN: 9780062942937 Format: Hardcover Publication Date: 2021-08-24 Page Count: 816

2. A Tale of Two Cities (Paperback)

It was the time of the French Revolution -- a time of great change and great danger. It was a time when injustice was met by a lust for vengeance, and rarely was a distinction made between the innocent and the guilty. Against this tumultuous historical backdrop, Dickens' great story of unsurpassed adventure and courage unfolds. Unjustly imprisoned for 18 years in the Bastille, Dr. Alexandre Manette is reunited with his daughter, Lucie, and safely transported from France to England. It would seem that they could take up the threads of their lives in peace. As fate would have it though, the pair are summoned to the Old Bailey to testify against a young Frenchman -- Charles Darnay -- falsely accused of treason. Strangely enough, Darnay bears an uncanny resemblance to another man in the courtroom, the dissolute lawyer's clerk Sydney Carton. It is a coincidence that saves Darnay from certain doom more than once. Brilliantly plotted, the novel is rich in drama, romance, and heroics that culminate in a daring prison escape in the shadow of the guillotine.

Dover Thrift Editions: Classic Novels A Tale of Two Cities, (Paperback) Author: Dover Publications ISBN: 9780486406510 Format: Paperback Publication Date: 1998-12-31 Page Count: 304