31 Best Thanksgiving Books to Celebrate the Holiday

The Oprah Magazine said The Macy's Day Parade will look different in 2020 than it did in prior years. The iconic celebration, watched around the country, will be "reinvented" with a virtual ceremony. Keep the spirit of the in-person parade alive with this children's book, which highlights the tremendous effort it takes to get those larger-than-life balloons onto the streets of New York.

The Oprah Magazine said Thanksgiving is a complicated holiday. While part of the American tradition, it perpetuates myths about Native Americans' relationship to white settlers. As novelist Tommy Orange has written, Thanksgiving isn't necessarily even a time for celebration. Read about contemporary Native Americans in this acclaimed novel, which switches perspectives between 12 characters.

The Oprah Magazine said Laurie Colwin is known for her delightful and astute novels about families, and for her excellent writing about cooking. Essentially, her books are ideal for the Thanksgiving season, as they understand the emotional power of gathering for a meal.

The Oprah Magazine said Introduce a new word into your child's vocabulary: Otsaliheliga, used by members of the Cherokee Nation to express their gratitude. "It is a reminder to celebrate our blessings and reflect on struggles—daily, throughout the year, and across the seasons," Traci Sorell, a member of the Cherokee Nation, writes in the book for young readers.

The Oprah Magazine said The holidays are a time of feasts and, if we're honest, occasionally family dysfunction. The Nest features one of the most memorable families in contemporary literature. The four Plumb siblings' years of built-up tension come to a head following a confrontation, allowing you to escape into another family's problems for a change.

The Oprah Magazine said While not necessarily about Thanksgiving, Still Life is set during that very specific time of year, when the holiday spirit is in the air—and in this book, so is danger.

The Oprah Magazine said

The Oprah Magazine said Not written deliberately as a Thanksgiving book, Ross Gay's collection of gorgeously observed and whimsically rendered essays is perfect for the holiday. Gay finds delight everywhere he looks—even among the mundane.

The Oprah Magazine said National Geographic's book gives a more holistic portrait of the Colonies at the time of the first Thanksgiving feast in a way that children can understand.

The Oprah Magazine said Giving Thanks is a gorgeous adaptation of a Thanksgiving Address delivered at the start of ceremonial Iroquois gatherings. With a message of gratitude for the Earth, Giving Thanks is a book that can be read and re-read daily.

The Oprah Magazine said Thanksgiving is a day for pausing and taking stock of what there is to be grateful for. Though Thanks a Million was written with children in mind, the book of poems will certainly inspire adults to reflect, as well.

The Oprah Magazine said Complete with a slow-roasted turkey on T-Day, this is one kooky love story that will make smile through the tears.

The Oprah Magazine said So Louisa May Alcott’s old-fashioned holiday short story about the Bassett family may not even be able to compete with the March sisters novel you know and adore, but luckily, it doesn’t have to. There’s room on your digital shelf for both Alcott’s seminal coming-of-age novel and her heartwarming tale about an impoverished family determined to get Thanksgiving dinner on the table.

The Oprah Magazine said When all else fails, get out the Ouija board. That’s what the Baird College misfits in Alexandra Sokoloff’s supernatural thriller do over Thanksgiving weekend. Opposed to retreating home for the holiday—each for their very own secretive reason—the newfound allies who think they’re the only five students left on campus learn they might not be alone after all. This one gives off those nostalgic R. L. Stine vibes.

The Oprah Magazine said OK, “book is better than the movie” people. You’ve most likely gotten the story about two upper middle class, Connecticut families in crisis over Thanksgiving from Ang Lee’s atmospheric adaptation, but have you ever actually gone straight to the source? As in, the acerbic written original from award-winning novelist Rick Moody?

The Oprah Magazine said Read aloud to your bits as Carlos the French bulldog heads from the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade to Grand Central Station, spotting acts of kindness from his ankle-high perspective all along the way.

The Oprah Magazine said If the season is about being grateful, then we are grateful to the legendary French chef who created this whimsical menu diary. With it, you can turn every meal into a story by while also flipping through illustrations crafted by the toque himself. One of Oprah’s Favorite Things last year, we’ll let her explain it further: Menus “lets you chronicle every time you’ve broken bread and who you shared it with. Merci, Jacques!”

The Oprah Magazine said Spend Thanksgiving giving thanks to the most imporant person in your life: YOU. One way to live your best life is to get in touch with your inner purpose. And Oprah Winfrey’s latest book is here to help you find it. Over the course of 10 chapters, the icon shares personal stories and lessons while also mapping out a route to finding not just success, but significance.

The Oprah Magazine said New York Times best-selling author Anne Tyler’s thirtysomething antihero, Barnaby Gaitlin, is a mess. He’s divorced, he doesn’t see his daughter, he moves the elderly’s belongings for cash, and Thanksgiving is a disaster. But he’s trying. Tyler lends Barnaby her masterful attention to the ways of a shrewd yet sympathetic world. And it all makes for the dose of humanity this holiday deserves.

The Oprah Magazine said You may have to dig through F. Scott Fitzgerald’s scribbles originally published by Esquire magazine way back in 1936, but once you find the three-page recipe and cultural reference spread that is “Turkey Remains and How to Inter Them with Numerous Scarce Recipes,” you will be thankful you ever attempted the hunt. Prepare: There’s even a turkey cocktail recipe.

The Oprah Magazine said After reading Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s seminal novella, The Yellow Wallpaper (also included in this collective work), flip to another of her pertinent, turn-of-the-century stories illustrating early feminism: Three Thanksgivings.

The Oprah Magazine said Set in Point Royal, Virginia, Richard Bausch’s novel celebrates the time-honored tradition of showing gratitude for family and community on the late-November holiday.

The Oprah Magazine said Harriet Beecher Stowe, the abolitionist and author probably most known for her Uncle Tom’s Cabin, gives readers a glimpse into a 19th-century Thanksgiving in a New England village just after the Revolutionary War. And all we can say is: pies. There are lots of pies.

The Oprah Magazine said With as much conflict and suspense served up in Suzanne Berne’s slow-burn delight, sibling rivalry deserves its own plate at the table. Berne, whose resume swirls with narratives of psychological warfare, crafts a drama about two sisters whose memories of their mother’s death are very different. And it all comes to a head on the very day we should all be giving nothing but thanks.

The Oprah Magazine said Ironically a sequel to A Christmas Memory, Truman Capote’s Thanksgiving tale belongs to Buddy and his elderly best friend-slash-cousin Miss Sook, and tackles the themes of revenge and forgiveness that pertain to nine-year-old life (read: Bullying isn’t right, but neither is humiliating him). This one's yanked from Capote’s own childhood memories growing up in Alabama.

The Oprah Magazine said Every family has its dysfunction. But the Olsons, at the core of Easter Island author Jennifer Vanderbes’s stewing drama that unfolds over Thanksgiving, take it to another level. We’re talking secrets, tensions, suburban privilege. It’s only after an unforeseen mishap that their world collides with residents of a housing project, making for a clashing of cultures that ends with quite the climax.

The Oprah Magazine said A satirical war drama debut from author Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk juxtaposes the realities of war abroad with those at home. Over the course Thanksgiving Day, Billy Lynn, one of the surviving soldiers from the Bravo Squad who’s been invited to take a bow at the Dallas Cowboys halftime show, revels, mourns, and comes to grips with a nation’s fumbled priorities.

The Oprah Magazine said Thanksgiving means family, food, and … romance? In Janet Evanovich’s easygoing page-turner, you’ll devour the instant connection between Megan Murphy, the redhead who’s been hurt by love’s games in the past, and her Patrick Hunter, a doctor who is “too handsome to stay mad at for long.”

The Oprah Magazine said Seymour “Swede” Levov, a Jewish hometown hero from Newark, has been mindfully living the dream at the center of Philip Roth’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1997 novel. It’s only when his daughter, Merry, a 16-year-old antiwar terrorist, blows up a post office that his carefully constructed American existence is obliterated. And Thanksgiving dinners will never be the same.

The Oprah Magazine said Yes, this is technically a cookbook—a massive cookbook, actually, of 600 recipes. They range from Pueblo tamales in Santa Fe to heirloom dumplings in Virginia, collected by New York Times food writer Molly O’Neill on a cross-country road trip visiting families from coast to coast. But it’s SO much more than that. A tasty portrait of cultures and cuisines, One Big Table celebrates the diverse bounty that is the very thing we celebrate this time of year: American cuisine.

The Oprah Magazine said In a departure from traditional Thanksgiving fare that ignites those warm-and-fuzzies, Julie Edelson takes the emotional chaos route with a Southern-fried dark comedy.