Often in life the most powerful love is brief but blindingly bright. So it is with this debut collection of short stories — each a tiny, white-hot masterpiece.
Available at amazon.com, $11.
In a world consumed by Fifty Shades of Grey, we’d like to redirect your attention to this explicit tale. For decades it was censored in the United States and Britain and banned in Australia and Canada — which is why we want to read this sexy story that crosses the class divide again and again.
Available at amazon.com, $5.
Ah, young love. Careful, or you’ll get your heart broken by the story of two teens with cancer.
Available at amazon.com, $10.
Gail Caldwell and Caroline Knapp bonded over writing, dogs, and a love of water sports. Theirs was a friendship for the ages that ended way too soon.
Available at amazon.com, $11.
There was a time when just peeping at this husband-wife love story on the shelf caused us to burst into tears.
Available at amazon.com, $8.
We cheered for Elizabeth when she told off Mr. Darcy, nodded in agreement when she declared herself a spinster unless true love came her way, and smiled at the happiest of endings.
Available at amazon.com, $10.
You’ll fall in love with author Rob Sheffield when you read his memoir about tragically losing his wife. It’s as much a tribute to music as it is one to her; prepare to spend at least $100 downloading songs as the story unfolds.
Available at amazon.com, $10.
Some of us wanted to be Scarlett O’Hara. Some of us just wanted Clark Gable.
Available at amazon.com, $10.
Real love prevails in the sweeping (and often heartbreaking) tale of Japanese awesomeness.
Available at amazon.com, $11.
We’ll get in line behind Faulkner, Dostoevsky, Nabokov, and others who called this the greatest novel ever written.
Available at barnesandnoble.com, $9.
The part where she’s in the truck and he’s standing in the rain is seared into our brain. That Robert and Francesca don’t end up together is the realest thing.
Available at amazon.com, $7.
We think it would have been exhilarating (frustrating, but exhilarating) to have been married to Ernest Hemingway. Here we see the great writer — and a grand love affair — through the eyes of his first wife, Hadley.
Available at amazon.com, $9.
What if the show Dallas were an epic love story set in South America and spanned half a century? You would totally read it.
Available at barnesandnoble.com, $9.
This one’s from back when the Vows section of The New York Times made us laugh, hope, cry, etc.
Available at amazon.com, $4.
Charlie really loved that mouse! Which is more than we can say for the heaving sobs that the last page brought.
Available at amazon.com, $9.
Beware of reading these tenderly wrought short stories in public. We cried, smiled, gasped, and cooed on the L train.
Available at amazon.com, $11.
When it comes to nontraditional romances set on sweeping English estates, Cecilia Tallis and Robbie Turner make Lady Mary and Cousin Matthew (and Sybil and Branson, for that matter) look like child’s play.
Available at amazon.com, $10.
A revealing look into the ups and downs of lifelong BFFs that foreshadowed some of our own friendship struggles.
Available at barnesandnoble.com, $8.
Amanda Hesser and Tad Friend’s courtship is SATC meets NYT meets Gourmet.
Available at amazon.com, $12.
When we put down this sci-fi tearjearker, we were, well, crying. Partly because it is heartbreaking and partly because it was over.
Available at amazon.com, $10.
Love exists in many forms; Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe personify it.
Available at amazon.com, $11.
We admit it’s a little creepy to have this on the list, but it’s a powerful love story from beginning to end.
Available at barnesandnoble.com, $13.
A husband who cheats — and cheats again. A mother who doesn’t love her daughter. A boy who thinks he is a girl. These are things that happen to other people. Except when “other people” is you.
Available at amazon.com, $16.
A family falls in love with a nothing-but-trouble Labrador Retriever. We know just how they feel.
Available at amazon.com, $11.
An achingly devastating account of true love lost by one of America’s foremost essayists.
Available at amazon.com, $10.
Step right up for carny love — plain and simple.
Available at amazon.com, $8
Estella is heartbreak personified, but no one can fault Pip for trying.
Available at barnesandnoble.com, $6.
A profound profession of love and loss so tender it hurts.
Available at amazon.com, $10.
Author Jeffrey Eugenides warns you right off the bat: These ain’t no fairy tales. Real love stories mean disappointment. And after reading a few of these gems, you believe him.
Available at amazon.com, $11.
We suggest finding an alone place to finish this on-again, off-again love story — not a crowded subway car. Trust us on this.
Available at amazon.com, $10.
Philip’s tortured love for Mildred, told through lyrical prose, might make you feel suddenly okay if this year’s valentine turns out to be Mr. Bubble.
Available at amazon.com, $6.
Shteyngart’s dystopian society eerily doesn’t feel so far off. Neither does the unusual yet wholly genuine romance between Eunice and Lenny.
Available at amazon.com, $10.
If you’re really into time travel, this is not the book for you. But if you want a poignant (if chick-lit-y) novel about eternal soul mates, read it and weep.
Available at amazon.com, $8.
James Baldwin’s tragic Parisian tale depicts the affair between David, an American expat, and Giovanni, a free-spirited Italian, examining the underworld of gay love and self-discovery in the early 20th century.
Available at amazon.com, $11.
We’re smitten with the lighthearted story (with art by Maira Kalman) that plants you in the middle of a teen breakup. A girl dumps her guy by leaving him a box filled with mundane items collected over the course of their relationship. Ouch.
Available at amazon.com, $12.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning poet details her grandparents’ lives, love, and marriage through a series of achingly beautiful poems.
Available at amazon.com, $12.
Inspired by the author’s own affair with Lady Catherine Walston, this classic tale of jealousy, love, and faith never fails to bring emotions to the surface.
Available at amazon.com, $10.
Please cast the terrible James Franco movie out of your memory. Way before Romeo and Juliet were breaking hearts, this tale of adulterous love between a knight and an Irish princess had 12th-century hearts racing.
Available at amazon.com, $6.
Let’s all just admit that we secretly read Nora Roberts. We’ll brown-paper-wrap this stirring tale of jewel thievery and magic any day.
Available at amazon.com, $6.
A loner librarian’s love for a man named James Carlson Sweatt — who is fifteen years her junior and a giant — proves the heart wants what the heart wants.
Available at amazon.com, $14.
From an obscenely heartfelt vacation breakup to a teen summer spent lusting after his big brother’s (much, much) younger bedmate, the Dominican-born Oscar Wao award winner proves that wearing one’s heart on one’s sleeve takes major cojones.
Available at amazon.com, $18.
Papa takes on the Lost Generation with a gorgeous roman à clef about expat debauchery and thwarted love. Extra points for tantalizing bullfight scenes and a heroine who flaunts the libertine flapper ethos with more aplomb than anyone this side of Zelda Fitzgerald.
Available at amazon.com, $10.
If you give Marcel Proust a cookie (a madeleine, to be precise), he’ll spin it into an expansive meditation on everything from the rise of the bourgeois class to the nature of memory. The first in what became a seven-volume series, In Search of Lost Time, this novel is required reading for any true book lover.
Available at amazon.com, $11.
This glittering and meticulously researched biography of Sara and Gerald Murphy (the real life inspiration for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night) offers a glimpse into the world of one of history’s more inspired couples.
Available at amazon.com, $12.
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