The most recommended books about Oxford

Who picked these books? Meet our 30 experts.

30 authors created a book list connected to Oxford, and here are their favorite Oxford books.
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Book cover of Becoming Mrs. Lewis

Jenni L. Walsh Author Of A Betting Woman: A Novel of Madame Moustache

From my list on women paving their way in a man’s world.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve written ten books for children and adults inspired by women throughout history, ones about American outlaws, war-time heroes, resistance groups, and activists. I enjoy learning, researching, and shining a spotlight on the women who shape our world today. In A Betting Woman, the presence of three names for a single woman intrigued me. I wondered how one name bled into the next and how life winded to a seemingly unappealing nickname, given to Eleanor after she’d taken a man’s last dime during a card game. Still, Eleanor kept the moniker for over a decade as she carried on. I hope you’ll enjoy her story, along with the other strong women featured on this list!

Jenni's book list on women paving their way in a man’s world

Jenni L. Walsh Why did Jenni love this book?

Becoming Mrs. Lewis is the improbable love story of Joy Davidman and C. S. Lewis. And, at the novel’s onset, their coupling truly feels improbable. While in an unhappy marriage, Joy is very much married. She has young children. Joy has health issues. Joy and C.S. Lewis are separated by a body of water. Yet, Joy is also a very tenacious woman, which also included Joy inserting herself into conversations and places women at that time didn’t frequent. I wholly respect how Joy creates a new life for herself.

By Patti Callahan,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Becoming Mrs. Lewis as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Now a USA TODAY and Publishers Weekly bestseller! Meet the brilliant writer, fiercely independent mother, and passionate woman who captured the heart of C.S. Lewis and inspired the books that still enchant and change us today.

When poet and writer Joy Davidman began writing letters to C. S. Lewis-known as Jack-she was looking for spiritual answers, not love. Love, after all, wasn't holding together her crumbling marriage. Everything about New Yorker Joy seemed ill-matched for an Oxford professor and the beloved writer of The Chronicles of Narnia, yet their minds bonded over their letters.

Embarking on the adventure of her…


Book cover of The Years

Connie Kronlokken Author Of Pulled Into Nazareth

From my list on siblings who help each other to evolve.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a reader, I am deeply interested in the real and complex lives of people. This often leads me to history and biography. Fiction shows both the interior and exterior lives of its characters and gives language to relationships, places, and the times in which they live. I am always looking for books with their feet on the ground and their pages crackling with the details of reality. Coming from a large family myself, I have found that, even if you live far apart, siblings make up each other’s world, and that, as my mother used to insist, our siblings may be our best friends throughout our lives.

Connie's book list on siblings who help each other to evolve

Connie Kronlokken Why did Connie love this book?

This book quickly became my favorite novel by Woolf, perhaps because it depicts a large Victorian family over time.

When her mother dies, Eleanor keeps the home fires burning for her siblings, Morris in the law courts, Edward at Oxford, Delia, Milly, and the younger Martin and Rose. We watch them grow and, fifty years later, deduce what has become of their lives when they talk to each other at a party.

Woolf’s narrative sweeps across England, across London, giving us vignettes of her characters from which the reader must make up the whole. My copy of this book is tattered from re-reading. I loved following along with Woolf’s attempt to gather everything she knew into her story of the Pargiter family.

Book cover of The Pursuit of Love

Ursula DeYoung Author Of Shorecliff

From my list on families from the mid-twentieth century.

Why am I passionate about this?

I grew up in a small seaside town north of Boston. I have three siblings, and we always spent a few weeks every summer with our cousins in a rented house somewhere in New England—a new place each year. I became a bookworm at a young age, and I’ve always loved reading novels about big families that capture both the magic and the conflicts inevitable with many siblings and relatives. I was also an anglophile, and I tended to gravitate toward books written in earlier decades, particularly those of the mid 20th century. When I began writing my own novels, it seemed natural to set them in those fascinating earlier times.

Ursula's book list on families from the mid-twentieth century

Ursula DeYoung Why did Ursula love this book?

Fictionalizing her large and extremely eccentric family—shabby members of the British gentry in the 1930s, lacking the wealth of earlier times—Nancy Mitford managed to create a novel that is both hilarious and poignant, with a style uniquely her own. Her characters seem almost too bizarre to be real, yet if you read about the real Mitfords, you discover that, if anything, this novel (published in 1945) softened their edges! She writes brilliantly not only about the fun and tensions among an array of strongminded siblings but also about her domineering father and, later, about the blissful madness of falling in love after an isolated childhood.

By Nancy Mitford,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Pursuit of Love as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

One of the funniest, sharpest novels about love and growing up ever written, Nancy Mitford's classic is now a major BBC and Prime Video series directed by Emily Mortimer and starring Lily James, Andrew Scott and Dominic West

'He was the great love of her life you know.'
'Oh, dulling,' said my mother, sadly, 'One always thinks that. Every, every time.'

Oh, the tedium of waiting to grow up! Longing for love, obsessed with weddings and sex, Linda and her sisters and cousin Fanny are on the lookout for the perfect lover.

But finding Mr Right is much harder than…


Book cover of Becoming Mrs. Lewis
Book cover of The Years
Book cover of The Pursuit of Love

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