The Best Thanksgiving Books, Per O, The Oprah Magazine

O, The Oprah Magazine’s 2020 article on the “best Thanksgiving books to celebrate the holiday” recommends this story about the puppeteer behind the floats of America’s most beloved parade, writing: “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 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,” according to O, The Oprah Magazine, which continues: “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.” And we all could use an escape right now.

“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,” according to the O, The Oprah Magazine description. When a beloved town member is found dead in the woods, it looks like a tragic hunting accident. But Chief Inspector Armand Gamache suspects something far more sinister.

Don’t let the title fool you — this book will not teach you how to bake a pecan pie. But it will fill you with that warm and fuzzy holiday spirit as you follow the kitchen debacles and romantic entanglements of a woman with zero baking skills who is set on recreating her grandmother’s famous dessert. O, The Oprah Magazine calls it “A romance worthy of any Hallmark holiday movie.”

Like the March family in Louisa May Alcott’s beloved “Little Women,” the family in this short story is “poor in money, but rich in love.” As the Christmas shopping season ramps up, this is a lovely reminder about the true spirit of the holidays: the joy comes from people, not presents — even if your family’s presence this year is virtual.

Even if you’ve seen Ang Lee’s gorgeous movie adaptation, you don’t want to miss reading the book. Set in the 1970s, suburban ennui threatens to unravel two families during a Thanksgiving blizzard.

With this pick, O, The Oprah Magazine encourages readers to “Spend Thanksgiving giving thanks to the most important person in your life: YOU.” Oprah’s here to help. Her book, “The Path Made Clear,” shows you how to listen to your intuition in order to figure out your life’s purpose and start living it now.

“Richard Bausch’s novel celebrates the time-honored tradition of showing gratitude for family and community on the late-November holiday. The story pivots around two families and their affectionately labeled ‘crazies,’ who are reluctantly thrust together on Thanksgiving night, and eventually all the more thankful for it,” according to the O, The Oprah Magazine description.

The family at the heart of “Strangers at the Feast” will make your dysfunctional family get-togethers seem all rainbows and harmony by comparison. Set over the course of one Thanksgiving Day, tensions simmer and shocking secrets are revealed as a gutrenching crime puts two families’ worlds on an explosive collision course.

A new Thanksgiving classic, this story of a returned soldier hailed as a hero explores the ways that war changes one young man's relationship to his family, his country, and to himself. According to the write-up in O, The Oprah Magazine, the book “revels, mourns, and comes to grips with a nation’s fumbled priorities.”

Whether you’re looking to mix things up this Thanksgiving dinner or to give thanks by celebrating the diverse cultures and culinary traditions that make up American food, you’ll find what you need in the 600(!) recipes in “One Big Table.” O, The Oprah Magazine says the recipes “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.” Let these dishes transport you across the States as you practice social distancing this holiday.