10 Best Books to Read in Bed

Cherries in the Snow

By Emma Forrest

Cherries in the Snow

by: Emma Forrest

Amazon Price: $6.43 (as of 05/29/2012)

Sadie Steinberg needs a makeover - a life makeover. While the 24-year-old has a knack for naming cosmetics at her friends' trendy New York makeup company, she can't seem to remember the name of her favorite fruit (is it a mango or a papaya?), get started on the Great American Novel she's been meaning to write or stop falling for older men who resemble her dad. When Sadie finally does meet the right guy - a former graffiti artist turned yoga-practicing corporate art consultant - she nearly loses him.

Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

By Rebecca Wells

Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood: A Novel

by: Rebecca Wells

Amazon Price: $9.50 (as of 05/29/2012)

When mother and daughter Vivi and Siddalee Walker get into a savage fight over a New York Times article that refers to Vivi as a "tap-dancing child abuser," the fallout is felt from Louisiana to New York to Seattle. A successful theater director, Siddalee panics and postpones her upcoming wedding-so Vivi's intrepid gang of lifelong girlfriends, the Ya-Yas, sashay in and conspire to bring everyone back together.

Written on the Body

By Jeanette Winterson

Written on the Body

by: Jeanette Winterson

Amazon Price: $5.79 (as of 05/29/2012)

The narrator, a lifelong philanderer, has fallen in love with Louise, a pre-Raphaelite beauty. Louise is unhappily married to a workaholic cancer researcher, so the narrator leads her into a sexually combative affair. But it is never revealed whether the narrator is male or female. Rather, readers are teased out of their expectations about women and men and romance: Louise calls the narrator "the most beautiful creature male or female that I have ever seen," and the narrator observes, "I thought difference was rated to be the largest part of sexual attraction but there are so many things about us that are the same."

The Secret Life of Bees

By Sue Monk Kidd

The Secret Life of Bees

by: Sue Monk Kidd

Amazon Price: $6.15 (as of 05/29/2012)

14-year-old Lily Owen, neglected by her father and isolated on their South Carolina peach farm, spends hours imagining a blissful infancy when she was loved and nurtured by her mother, Deborah, whom she barely remembers. These consoling fantasies are her heart's answer to the family story that as a child, in unclear circumstances, Lily accidentally shot and killed her mother. All Lily has left of Deborah is a strange image of a Black Madonna, with the words "Tiburon, South Carolina" scrawled on the back.

The House on Mango Street

By Sandra Cisneros

The House on Mango Street

by: Sandra Cisneros

Amazon Price: $4.00 (as of 05/29/2012)

Esperanza Cordero, a girl coming of age in the Hispanic quarter of Chicago, uses poems and stories to express thoughts and emotions about her oppressive environment. A deeply moving novel...delightful and poignant.... Like the best of poetry, it opens the windows of the heart without a wasted word. This book has made a great space for itself on the shelf of American literature.

The Virgin Suicides

By Jeffrey Eugenides

The Virgin Suicides: A Novel

by: Jeffrey Eugenides

Amazon Price: $9.00 (as of 05/29/2012)

On the morning the last Lisbon daughter took her turn at suicide... the two paramedics arrived at the house knowing exactly where the knife drawer was, and the gas oven, and the beam in the basement from which it was possible to tie a rope. In an unnamed town in the slightly distant past, detailed in such precise and limpid prose that readers will surely feel that they grew up there, Cecilia--the youngest and most obviously wacky of the luscious Lisbon girls--finally succeeds in taking her own life. As the confused neighbors watch rather helplessly, the remaining sisters become isolated and unhinged, ending it all in a spectacular multiple suicide.

Strange Business

By Rilla Askew

Strange Business

by: Rilla Askew

Amazon Price: $5.95 (as of 05/29/2012)

The regional voices in these interrelated, canny stories are protean and riveting as they record the "strange business" of death and the fleetingness of life in the fictional town of Cedar, Okla. Opening with Native American recollections of bloody strife among whites and several Choctaw factions in 1892, Askew titles each subsequent tale with a year from 1961 to 1986. A woman shoots her long-nagging husband; an old man newly dead watches his own funeral; a pet raccoon turns feral at the moment a boy most identifies with the animal.

One Hundred Years of Solitude

By Gabriel García Márquez

One Hundred Years of Solitude

by: Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Amazon Price: $6.20 (as of 05/29/2012)

One Hundred Years of Solitude tells the story of the rise and fall, birth and death of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendía family. Inventive, amusing, magnetic, sad, and alive with unforgettable men and women -- brimming with truth, compassion, and a lyrical magic that strikes the soul -- this novel is a masterpiece in the art of fiction.

An Invisible Sign of My Own

By Aimee Bender

An Invisible Sign of My Own: A Novel

by: Aimee Bender

Amazon Price: $5.79 (as of 05/29/2012)

At 20, Mona is recruited to teach math at the local elementary school. To her surprise, she is a brilliant teacher, making addition and subtraction tangible to second graders with a game called Numbers and Materials, in which the students bring in natural or man-made objects that take the form of numbers. When 7-year-old Lisa Venus brings in a zero made of IV tubing from her dying mother's hospital room, Mona recognizes a kindred spirit. But she will have to be healthy herself to help Lisa resist her urge to take on her mother's illness out of grief and loyalty.

The Rachel Papers

By Martin Amis

The Rachel Papers

by: Martin Amis

Amazon Price: $7.20 (as of 05/29/2012)

In his uproarious first novel Martin Amis, author of the bestselling London Fields, gave us one of the most noxiously believable -- and curiously touching -- adolescents ever to sniffle and lust his way through the pages of contemporary fiction. On the brink of twenty, Charles High-way preps desultorily for Oxford, cheerfully loathes his father, and meticulously plots the seduction of a girl named Rachel -- a girl who sorely tests the mettle of his cynicism when he finds himself falling in love with her.

In Danger of Dying

In Danger of Dying

by: James Chapman

Amazon Price: (as of 05/29/2012)

A spectacular bus crash, escaping convicts, hostage taking, armed bank siege and love are all included in this action filled suspense thriller with a twist at the end. Negotiator Scott Bradley has been assigned to secure the hostage's safe release but he has much more than just the convicts to watch out for in this pulsating crime thriller. With the scenes unfolding through his eyes you get the unique opportunity to peek inside the dark and dangerous world of hostage negotiation.

Maybe Tomorrow

Maybe Tomorrow

by: James Chapman

Amazon Price: (as of 05/29/2012)

After tragic events cause her to lose the only love that she has known, Monica enters into a world of dark visions which threaten her survival and sanity, but she has learnt never to give up hope and eventually triumphs beyond her wildest dreams. The story line is drawn from Monica's many diary entries which depict a tale of courage, determination and the winning of a fight against all the odds. When you read this book you are witnessing events through Monica's eyes.

Living on the Lost Edge of Time

By James Chapman

Living on the Lost Edge of Time

by: James Chapman

Amazon Price: (as of 05/29/2012)

Jennifer is a romantic at heart and adores reading in the tranquil calm of the old house that is her home. But everything changes when her sleep is suddenly disturbed in the middle of the night. Rising to investigate Jennifer soon finds herself immersed in a dark and mysterious adventure. She has lived alone in the old house for the last three and a half years since her mother died and never before had felt there was any need to think she should be afraid. But Jennifer does experience real fear and in the depths of the darkness she discovers a love that is destined to change her life forever.