Oprah’s Free Book and Top 25 Summer Book List

We all know of Oprah‘s insatiable appetite for books, and she rarely steers us into a bad one. This summer she’s got 25 books that she says you won’t be able to put down. The first of which is available totally free!

For 48 hours beginning July 20, Oprah’s making available the new release “Heroic Measures” for free! That’s right, if you log-in to your Oprah.com account you’ll be able to download the book in its entirety via PDF. Author Jill Ciment tells the story of, as O Magazine describes, an elderly couple very much in love facing changing times.

After a lifetime together, 70-something Alex and his wife, Ruth, are still smitten—with each other (“He has loved her for so long that he can no longer distinguish between passion and familiarity”) and with their elderly dachshund, Dorothy. About to sell their Manhattan walk-up, the couple is caught up in crisis: Their dog is suddenly paralyzed, a truck jackknifes in a tunnel, news channels click into terrorist-hype overdrive. Read Jill Ciment’s Heroic Measures (Pantheon) for its painterly depictions of a rattled city, its deliciously biting satire of media and real estate madness, its tender knowledge of the creaturely ties that bind.

The book is available for free at Oprah.com until 10:59 a.m. ET Wednesday July 22, 2009.

We might be half-way through July, but there is still plenty of time to meet your summer reading goals. The other 24 books Oprah says are must-haves this summer are as follows:

Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann

Yes, My Darling Daughter by Margaret Leroy

Dreaming in Hindi by Katherine Russell Rich

What I Thought I Knew by Alice Eve Cohen

A Pearl in the Storm by Tori Murden McClure

Columbine by Dave Cullen

The Glister by John Burnside

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith and Jane Austen

Admission by Jean Hanff Korelitz