For decades, when Oprah says “read this,” the world listens. From living-room book club chats in the ‘90s to global reading communities today, her picks have always had one thing in common: they go straight for the heart. Oprah doesn’t just choose page-turners—she chooses soul-stirrers. Stories that crack something open in you, that make you rethink your past, your relationships, your faith, your boundaries, your dreams.
Her 2025 list continues that tradition. These are books about love and betrayal, longing and disappointment, growth and second chances—the messy, beautiful business of being human. If you’ve ever turned the last page of an Oprah Book Club pick and just sat there, feelings everywhere… you already know what you’re in for.
Some Bright Nowhere by Ann Packer
Some Bright Nowhere by Ann Packer
What It’s About
Some Bright Nowhere dives into the quiet tensions and unspoken truths inside a long-term marriage. Packer traces the emotional fault lines between partners who on paper “have it all,” but are drifting further and further apart. Alongside the marriage storyline, the book explores the very different ways men and women lean on, fail, and sometimes rescue their friends—especially when life doesn’t go to plan. It’s introspective, layered, and full of those small, piercing observations that make you go, “Oof… that’s real.”
Why You Should Read It
This is one of those novels that doesn’t shout—it hums under your skin. If you’re interested in how relationships actually feel over time—not just in their honeymoon phase—this book will speak to you. It’s perfect for readers who love character-driven stories, complicated emotions, and the kind of fiction that leaves you thinking about your own choices, boundaries, and loyalties long after you close the book.
Oprah’s Take
“The story is going to leave you questioning the obligations of marriage and the differences between male and female friendships.”
That’s classic Oprah—zeroing in on the questions beneath the plot. This is exactly the kind of book she loves to bring to the club: not just for the story itself, but for the conversations it ignites about commitment, expectations, and the emotional labor we carry in our closest relationships.
Get Book: Some Bright Nowhere!A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar
Category: Literary Fiction, Climate Fiction, Family Drama, Moral Dilemma
What It’s About
Set in a near-future, climate-stricken Kolkata, A Guardian and a Thief follows two families whose lives collide over the course of one tense, life-altering week. Ma, her young daughter Mishti, and her elderly father Dadu are just days away from escaping a collapsing city for a new life in Michigan—until Ma’s purse, holding their precious immigration documents, is stolen. From there, the story splits between Ma’s frantic search to recover their future and Boomba, the desperate thief whose own family is facing starvation. As food shortages worsen and fear rises, every choice feels both necessary and unforgivable.
Why You Should Read It
This is one of those novels that’s both utterly gripping and quietly devastating. Majumdar writes with the pace of a thriller but the depth of literary fiction, asking brutal questions about survival, privilege, and what “right” and “wrong” even mean when the world is falling apart. If you like books that feel eerily close to our reality—climate crisis, migration, economic inequality—while still centering fierce love and parental sacrifice, this one will sit with you long after you’re done. Critics have already called it “a literary gem with the pace of a thriller” and “a contemporary classic.”
Oprah’s Take
“Megha Majumdar is wise beyond her years. She’s able to bring in cultural conflicts and interweave the way people live and relate to each other in such a way that leaves us spellbound.”
It’s exactly the kind of story Oprah gravitates toward: morally complex, emotionally rich, rooted in real-world injustice yet powered by love and hope. A Guardian and a Thief isn’t just a novel on her list—it’s a conversation starter about what we owe each other when the world is burning.
Get Book: A Guardian and a Thief!All the Way to the River: Love, Loss and Liberation by Elizabeth Gilbert
Category: Memoir, Addiction & Recovery, Grief, Transformation
What It’s About
In All the Way to the River, Elizabeth Gilbert turns her gaze inward again—but this time, the story goes darker and deeper than Eat Pray Love. The memoir traces her life after fame: the fallout of her marriage, her passionate, complicated relationship with musician and filmmaker Rayya Elias, Rayya’s terminal illness, and the spiraling mix of love, codependency, addiction, and self-destruction that followed. Gilbert writes candidly about obsession, caretaking, relapse, rage, and the terrifying moment she realizes she’s “captive” not just to love, but to her own cravings and patterns. It’s a story of walking with someone to the edge—“all the way to the river”—and then having to find her own way back.
Why You Should Read It
This is not a soft, inspirational glow-up memoir; it’s raw, messy, and sometimes excruciating—exactly why it’s so powerful. Gilbert excavates her own darkness with honesty and skill, turning chaos into something sharply observed and deeply human. If you’ve ever stayed too long in a toxic dynamic, struggled with addiction (your own or someone else’s), or tried to love someone through their worst moments, this book will feel almost uncomfortably close. But it also offers something rare: a hard-won sense of liberation, self-responsibility, and compassion that doesn’t erase the damage but learns from it.
Oprah’s Take
“It’s a journey of forgiveness and healing that could only be written by a writer as exceptional as this one.”
For Oprah, this isn’t just another memoir—it’s a spiritual x-ray of what happens when love, ego, addiction, and grief collide. It’s exactly the kind of book she chooses for her club: brave, uncomfortable, transformational. All the Way to the River invites readers not just to witness Gilbert’s reckoning, but to reflect on their own—where they may still be captive, and what it might mean to finally let go and walk themselves back to shore.
Get Book: All the Way to the River!Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo
Category: Literary Fiction, Small-Town Life, Family & Identity
What It’s About
Bridge of Sighs follows Louis “Lucy” Lynch, a middle-aged man who has spent his entire life in the fading upstate New York town of Thomaston. He runs a modest convenience store, is devoted to his wife Sarah, and seems, on the surface, perfectly content. But as Lucy prepares for a long-awaited trip to Italy, memories of his childhood, his complicated family, and his intense friendship with the charismatic, damaged Bobby Noonan begin to surface. The novel moves between past and present, slowly revealing how class, loyalty, secrets, and small choices shape the people we become—and the lives we end up living.
Why You Should Read It
This is a slow, immersive, character-rich novel—ideal if you love stories that take their time and reward your attention. Russo has a gift for making “ordinary” lives feel epic in their emotional stakes. You get small-town gossip, family tensions, first loves, painful misunderstandings, and the kind of quiet regrets and small graces that feel incredibly true to life. If you enjoy books that leave you feeling like you’ve actually lived alongside the characters, this is one to sink into.
Oprah’s Take
“This book is written by the one and only Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Empire Falls and Nobody’s Fool. He is a master at capturing the ordinary moments that reveal some of the deepest truths, especially in small town novels.”
That’s exactly why this fits her list: Bridge of Sighs isn’t loud or flashy—but it’s emotionally precise. It reflects Oprah’s love for stories that uncover truth in everyday lives, inviting readers to look again at their own histories, hometowns, and the people they once thought they had fully figured out.
Get Book: Bridge of Sighs!Culpability by Bruce Holsinger
Category: Literary Fiction, Techno-Thriller, Family Drama, Oprah’s Book Club Pick
What It’s About
Culpability opens with a nightmare scenario for the Cassidy-Shaw family: their AI-operated, self-driving minivan collides with another car, killing the elderly couple inside while the family walks away with minor injuries. In the aftermath, they retreat to a beach house on the Chesapeake Bay—parents Noah and Lorelei, teen son Charlie, and younger daughters Alice and Izzy—where grief, guilt, secrets, and surveillance swirl together. Was Charlie at fault for grabbing the wheel? Did the autonomous system fail? Is Lorelei, a high-profile AI ethicist, hiding something? As digital forensics, chatbots, drones, and smart systems close in around them, the novel keeps circling one question: when humans and machines share control, who is really responsible?
Why You Should Read It
This is both a page-turner and a thought experiment. Holsinger blends the tension of a family thriller with a deeply relevant exploration of AI, privilege, and moral responsibility. If you’ve ever wondered what happens when we outsource more and more of our choices to algorithms—cars, apps, “friends,” recommendations—this book will hit a nerve. It’s perfect for book clubs: you’ll end up arguing over every character’s decisions, the legal and ethical grey areas, and what you would have done in their place. Reviewers have called it “timely,” “unbelievably gripping,” and “a profound meditation on blame in the age of AI.”
Oprah’s Take
“The novel is so prescient, it could be now or anytime in the future.”
As Oprah’s Book Club pick, Culpability fits her love of stories that live right on the edge of our current reality—forcing us to look harder at the world we’ve already built. It taps straight into her ongoing curiosity about AI, ethics, and how technology shapes our humanity, making it one of the most “of-this-moment” selections on her 2025 list.
Get Book: Culpability!The River Is Waiting by Wally Lamb
Category: Literary Fiction, Grief, Redemption, Family Drama, Oprah’s Book Club Pick
What It’s About
The River Is Waiting follows Corby, a struggling young father whose single reckless choice leads to an unimaginable tragedy—and lands him in prison. The novel tracks his journey from that devastating moment through years of guilt, anger, grief, and slow, painful reckoning. Along the way, Lamb weaves in the perspectives of those around him—family, loved ones, and others wounded by the fallout—creating a layered portrait of how one terrible moment can fracture many lives. At its heart, the story asks: Can someone who’s done the worst thing still be worthy of forgiveness, and is healing ever truly possible after the unthinkable?
Why You Should Read It
This is not a light read—it’s a gut punch. But Wally Lamb has always been a master at writing about broken people with deep compassion, and The River Is Waiting is no exception. If you’re drawn to emotionally intense fiction that doesn’t look away from pain yet still finds a path toward grace, this one will stay with you. It’s especially powerful for readers interested in themes of accountability, mental health, family bonds, and what it really means to rebuild a life after everything has gone wrong. Reviewers describe it as “heart-stopping,” “devastating,” and “deeply moving”—the kind of book you finish and need a moment just to breathe.
Oprah’s Take
“Wally Lamb takes us on [an] incredible and transformative journey from the depths of despair to the healing power of being able to face the truth—and eventually find forgiveness.”
That line captures exactly why Oprah keeps returning to Lamb’s work: he doesn’t offer easy redemption, but hard, earned, honest healing. The River Is Waiting fits perfectly into her 2025 list as a book that doesn’t just move you—it invites you to think about the places in your own life where truth-telling and forgiveness might be waiting, too.
Get Book: The River Is Waiting!The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong
Category: Literary Fiction, Working-Class America, Queer Fiction, Chosen Family
What It’s About
Set in the fictional town of East Gladness, Connecticut, The Emperor of Gladness follows Hai, a 19-year-old Vietnamese American on the verge of ending his life. Just as he’s about to jump from a bridge, he’s interrupted by Grazina, an 81-year-old Lithuanian widow living with dementia. That unexpected encounter pulls him back from the edge—and into an unlikely arrangement as Grazina’s caretaker.
From there, the book opens into a series of intimate, vivid episodes: Hai and Grazina sharing a cramped apartment, his job at a local diner, the fragile, funny, and deeply human bonds he forms with other workers on the economic margins. Vuong threads together family trauma, war memories, addiction, class struggle, and quiet acts of care, showing how people who have almost nothing still manage to give each other the courage to keep going. It’s a story about survival, chosen family, and the ways love and responsibility are negotiated in a world that often looks away from its most vulnerable.
Why You Should Read It
If you loved On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, this novel feels like its spiritual sibling—but more expansive, funnier in places, and just as devastating. Vuong writes about waitressing shifts, rehab, rent stress, and elder care with the same intensity other writers reserve for war and royalty. The book asks big questions—about who gets to be seen as “important,” what makes a life meaningful, and how violence (personal, historical, economic) lingers in the body and in families across generations—without ever losing sight of the small, tender details of everyday life. Critics have called it “heartbreaking and heartwarming yet unsentimental” and “a bold, remarkable novel that captures the hopes and disillusionments of people living in today’s America.”
Oprah’s Take
Chosen as the 114th Oprah’s Book Club pick, this novel completely captivated her. As she put it,
“Ocean Vuong’s ability to […] take characters that have ordinary lives and give extraordinary meaning to those lives makes us each think of our lives differently. He is a brilliant writer, a poet and a master of words.”
For Oprah, The Emperor of Gladness is exactly the kind of book that defines her 2025 list: not flashy or high-concept for its own sake, but full of people who might be invisible in most stories—and absolutely unforgettable in this one.
Get Book: The Emperor of Gladness!Matriarch: A Memoir by Tina Knowles
Category: Memoir, Motherhood, Black Womanhood, Family & Legacy
What It’s About
Matriarch is Tina Knowles’s intimate, wide-ranging memoir—her story long before and far beyond “Beyoncé’s mom.” She takes readers back to 1950s Galveston, Texas, as the youngest of seven in a working-class Black family, growing up amid segregation, church life, music, and tight-knit community. From there, she traces her journey through early traumas, early marriage, building her famed Houston hair salon Headliners, designing for Destiny’s Child, the rise of her daughters Beyoncé and Solange, divorce, reinvention, health scares, business ventures, and the many layers of what it means to be a mother, a daughter, a designer, a boss, and a Black woman in America. It’s a multigenerational family saga braided with personal evolution, faith, creativity, and grit.
Why You Should Read It
If you’ve ever wondered about the woman holding it all together behind global superstars, this is your front-row seat. But Matriarch isn’t just “celebrity adjacent” gossip—it’s a story of self-worth, survival, and becoming. Knowles writes about colorism, sexism, heartbreak, breast cancer, starting over in midlife, raising creative daughters, and building something from nothing with honesty and warmth. It’s inspiring without being sugar-coated—a blueprint for how a girl from a small house in Galveston becomes the anchor of one of the most influential families in modern culture.
Oprah’s Take
“You’re going to want to clear your schedule when you start this book as you will be totally riveted by the twists and the turns of this deeply personal and compelling story.”
As Oprah’s Book Club pick, Matriarch sits at the heart of her 2025 list: a powerful testimony about Black motherhood, resilience, and the quiet, steady decisions that shape not just one life, but generations. It’s the kind of read that leaves you thinking about your own lineage—who held you up, who broke cycles, and how you might be a matriarch (or patriarch) in your own story.
Get Book: Matriarch By Tina Knowles!The Tell by Amy Griffin
Category: Memoir, Trauma & Healing, Perfectionism, Memory
What It’s About
The Tell is Amy Griffin’s raw, vulnerable memoir about the life she built—and the truth she spent decades outrunning. On the outside, Amy was the definition of high-achieving success: star student, college athlete, New York power player, mother of four, celebrated investor. But underneath the relentless striving and perfectionism was something she couldn’t name.
During psychedelic-assisted therapy as an adult, Amy begins to recover long-buried memories of sexual abuse by a trusted middle-school teacher. The book traces what happens next: the shock of remembering, the shattering of the story she thought she’d been living, the emotional fallout in her body, marriage, career, and sense of self—and the long, imperfect climb toward integration and healing. It’s a book about denial, trauma, ambition, and what it means to finally stop running and face the thing you’ve been hiding even from yourself.
Why You Should Read It
This is not an easy read—but it is an important one. The Tell forces you to think about the secrets we keep from ourselves, how trauma can live in the body, and the ways perfectionism and overachievement can sometimes be armor rather than confidence. If you’ve ever wondered why you’re “always busy,” “always fine,” or “always performing,” this memoir may hit uncomfortably close. It’s especially resonant for readers interested in mental health, memory, trauma recovery, and the messy, nonlinear nature of healing. At the same time, it invites critical thinking about memory, therapy, and the stories we build around pain.
Oprah’s Take
Oprah chose The Tell as one of her 2025 Book Club selections, drawn to its courage and emotional honesty. As she’s shared in discussions about the book, Amy’s story illuminates
“how powerful the desire to forget is, and how equally powerful the desire to remember can be”
—and what it costs to finally tell yourself the truth.
It’s exactly the kind of book Oprah brings to her readers: not because it’s comfortable, but because it cracks open big conversations—about trauma, memory, denial, and the long, hard work of coming home to yourself.
Dream State by Eric Puchner
Category: Literary Fiction, Family Saga, Love Triangle, Climate & Change
What It’s About
Dream State is a panoramic novel that follows a love triangle—and all its fallout—across fifty years. It begins in 2004 in rural Montana, where Cece is about to marry Charlie, a cardiac anesthesiologist, at his family’s idyllic lakeside home. In the days before the wedding, she grows close to Charlie’s best friend, Garrett, and a single choice made that summer echoes through the rest of their lives.
The book then stretches forward and backward in time, shifting between Cece, Charlie, Garrett, and eventually their children. Set against a rapidly warming Montana and later California, the story tracks broken marriages, shifting loyalties, evolving identities, and the way one “what if” can haunt a family for decades. It’s about friendship, regret, climate anxiety, and the strange, tender ways people keep trying to love each other even after they’ve hurt each other.
Why You Should Read It
This is one of those big, chewy novels you live inside for a while. If you love character-driven stories that span years, dig into messy relationships, and keep circling questions like How did we get here? and What if I’d chosen differently?, this will absolutely grab you. Puchner writes with humor and heart while still facing hard truths—about marriage, friendship, aging, parenting, and the slow violence of climate change on places we love. It’s both intimate and expansive: a love story, a family story, and a quiet climate story all at once.
Oprah’s Take
“I promise you: It’s the kind of book you won’t want to put down,”
Oprah says of Dream State.
She’s called Puchner “a brilliant storyteller” and praised the novel as “an exquisite examination of the important relationships we have in our lives—love, marriage, friendship—and how life can turn out so differently than we expected.” For Oprah, this book sits at the heart of her 2025 list: a richly told reminder that our lives are shaped not just by what happens to us, but by the choices we make—and the ones we don’t.
A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose by Eckhart Tolle
Category: Spirituality, Consciousness, Personal Growth
What It’s About
In A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle expands on the ideas he introduced in The Power of Now and looks at how our individual egos create collective dysfunction—everything from conflict and addiction to greed, anxiety, and broken relationships. He explains how identifying too strongly with our thoughts, roles, and stories keeps us trapped, and invites readers into a shift in consciousness: from ego-driven living to presence, awareness, and compassion. It’s part spiritual guide, part diagnosis of modern life, and part invitation to live from a deeper, more peaceful place.
Why You Should Read It
This is one of those books that feels different depending on when you read it—and how ready you are. If you’ve been feeling stuck in old patterns, exhausted by drama (yours or other people’s), or hungry for meaning beyond achievement and status, A New Earth gives language and tools for that inner shift. It’s reflective, practical in a quiet way, and full of those “oh… that’s me” moments that are uncomfortable but freeing.
Oprah’s Take
Oprah has called A New Earth “a wake-up call for the planet,” and famously built an entire 10-week online class around it with Tolle. For her, this isn’t just a book—it’s a spiritual framework. It sits on her 2025 list as the deep-under-the-surface pick: the one that doesn’t just move you to tears, but nudges you to look at how you’re living, how you’re reacting, and who you might become if you stepped out of autopilot and into awareness.
Get Book: A New Earth!Conclusion
Oprah’s 2025 book picks are more than a reading list—they’re a full emotional and spiritual journey. From shattering family secrets and climate anxiety to small-town longings, matriarchal strength, buried trauma, AI-era ethics, and radical awakening, every title asks you to look a little more honestly at your life and the world around you. These are stories of ordinary people carrying extraordinary burdens, of pain that doesn’t get the last word, and of quiet, hard-won transformation. If you let them, these books won’t just move you—they’ll slow you down, crack you open, and gently nudge you toward a truer, braver version of yourself.
