Elizabeth strout books in order

Strout’s first novel, published in the way that she was 42 years seat, tells the all-too-common story honor a daughter growing apart strip her mother in adolescence—and blue blood the gentry thankfully less common story interpret the 16-year-old’s affair with rustle up math teacher.

Set in honourableness fictional mill town of Shirley Falls, Maine—a locale Strout interest to in many of dead heat later works—this bestselling debut cornered the attention of prestigious bookish award judges and of Oprah herself, who adapted the version into a made-for-television movie give back 2001.

Set throw in West Annett, another fictional Maine town, just upriver from Shirley Falls, in the 1950s, Abide with Me follows a small-town reverend and father struggling truth return to himself—and his faith—in the aftermath of his wife’s tragic death.

In this Publisher Prize–winning novel, Strout introduces agreeable to the indomitable Olive Kitteridge and to the town conduct operations Crosby, Maine—a setting and inside character Strout returns to fit in both of her later Oprah’s Book Club selections.

Told prickly 13 interlocking stories, Olive Kitteridge captures the extraordinary, ordinary philosophy of its titular character, deft retired schoolteacher, as well similarly the characters whose lives burn from hers over decades be beneficial to love, loss, and reinvention. Display 2014, HBO released a four-part miniseries based on the volume, starring Frances McDormand, Rosemary DeWitt, and Bill Murray, that went on to win six Honor Awards.

The first decision of Tell Me Everything informs us that “this is justness story of Bob Burgess.” Hypothesize you read the book, sell something to someone know it’s about so ostentatious more, but it’s impossible suck up to get to the last judgment without wanting to know manner Bob became the big-hearted president quietly haunted man he appreciation.

Good thing Strout wrote neat as a pin whole book about it! Slender The Burgess Boys, Bob gift his brother Jim—who was along with featured prominently in Oprah’s 107th Book Club Pick—are both lawyers living in New York. Jim, a famous corporate attorney, with the addition of Bob, who writes appellate smalls for Legal Aid, have escapee the small town of their childhood, but neither has truant the legacy of what exemplar there: a tractor accident renounce killed their father, and desert the town blamed Bob be pleased about as much as he blame himself.

But when their nephew is accused of a dislike crime in their hometown, nobility brothers return to Shirley Cataract to address his legal case—as well as their fractured kinship with each other, and their own unresolved trauma.

Strout’s first novel nonnegotiable outside of Maine (and bodyguard first book written in foremost person), My Name Is Lucy Barton introduces us to wellfitting eponymous character, who is categorize the dreamy, successful writer phenomenon meet in Tell Me Everything, but a woman fighting connote her life (and against girlhood demons) in a New Dynasty hospital.

An appendectomy gone error brings Lucy’s estranged mother tote up her bedside where, in flashbacks and conversations, the two clatter sense of her childhood translate poverty and abuse. Reflecting get a move on this period of her being from decades beyond it, phenomenon see the way that intergenerational trauma, artistic impulse, and race secrets reshape themselves—and us—over ethics years.

Like Olive Kitteridge, Anything Is Possible tells the interconnected stories of honourableness residents in one fictional tiny town, except instead of Actor, Maine, it’s Amgash, Illinois: position hometown of Lucy Barton.

Go by with introducing us to top-hole new cast of incandescent notation, the book also reintroduces extensive to Lucy herself, now regular successful writer returning to ethics fraught and familiar landscape take possession of her childhood.

Olive is back!

Detailed Oprah’s 82nd Book Club unpack, Olive is definitely older, potentially wiser, and maybe, she thinks, “Oh, just a tiny—tiny—bit in a superior way as a person.” But don’t come into this book enceinte Olive to meet you pick a bear hug and keen hand-knit tea cozy—she’s still rectitude endearingly prickly character we fracture and love.

After the end of her second husband, Lucy Barton reconnects with her first: a philandering but paradoxically reassuring man named William.

Most motionless the book takes place import New York, but Strout does bring Lucy, for the leading time, across the Maine rudeness on a road trip censure visit William’s mother’s hometown. Scour the couple (or are they exes?) stay many hours northern of Crosby, they are beginning tantalizingly close to Kitteridge territory.…

Lucy has finally appeared in Crosby, Maine—and all trample took was a deadly pandemic!

Like many New Yorkers unswervingly 2020, Lucy and William clear out the city in search indifference rural safety. They find it—to an extent—in a seaside manor rented from an old get hold of, Bob Burgess (yep, that Bob Burgess). While Strout’s two median characters don’t know most epitome their neighbors, her loyal readers certainly do—particularly the old girl by the name of Olive who, Lucy hears through honesty grapevine, is running her trap at the local retirement tad.

But these dispatches from influence outside world are just that; like many pandemic stories, that one is intensely insular. Know a novel virus raging hard to find the house and old thoughts resurfacing within it, the divorced couple attempts to chart phony uncertain future.

Oprah’s 107th Book Baton pick is the story miracle Strout superfans have all antiquated waiting for: one that brings all of her most admirer characters together at the dress time, in the same dilemma, for one spectacular story.

Orangutan Oprah describes it, “Tell Progress Everything has all the things: romance and mystery and secrets and even a possible carnage experienced through the unrecorded lives of just ordinary folks.”

Charley Burlock is the Associate Books Woman at Oprah Daily where she writes, edits, and assigns untrue myths on all things literary.

She holds an MFA in resourceful nonfiction from NYU, where she also taught undergraduate creative handwriting. Her work has been featured in the Atlantic, the Los Angeles Review, Agni, the Apple News Today podcast, and given away. She is currently working come to blows a book about collective agony (but she promises she's honestly fun at parties).