29 Beach-Perfect Doorstoppers

Soak in the sun, sand, surf, and stories!

What is it that makes reading at the beach so satisfying? There's nothing like immersing yourself in a book with your toes buried in the sand, a briney sea salt breeze on your face, and the roar of the surf drowning out all your worries. It's a double dose of escape.

But what makes a perfect beach read? Well, that depends on the reader. Some crave light, fluffy fare requiring minimal focus, while others are looking to lose themselves in an epic saga. If you're looking for a big, fat book to swallow you whole, here are 29 beach-perfect doorstoppers for you. (FYI, if you're wondering just how big these books are, the number of pages are provided from the hardback copy of each title.)

Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros

This sexy, suspenseful romantasy keeps readers captivated from beginning to end. Frail and bookish, Violet is reluctant to join the dragon rider candidates, but when her tough-as-talons mother commands it, she must learn to rely on her wits. (528pp.) 

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

Born to a teen mom in Appalachia amidst the opioid crisis, Demon has nothing to his name beyond his razor-sharp wit and a fierce talent for survival. This brilliant retelling of David Copperfield, speaks for a new generation of lost boys. (560pp.)

The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

This beautifully written masterwork chronicles the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities. From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. (640pp.)

The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese

Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, this novel is set in Kerala, India, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere. (736pp.)

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

Set in the rich farmland of California's Salinas Valley, this sprawling and often brutal novel follows the intertwined destinies of two families—the Trasks and the Hamiltons—exploring weighty themes of identity, love, and rivalry. (601pp.)

Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe

In 1972, masked intruders dragged a 38-year-old widow and mother of ten, from her Belfast home. In this bestselling true-crime narrative—as finely paced as a novel—this incident serves as a prism for the history of North Ireland's Troubles. (464pp.)

The Brothers K by David James Duncan

This riveting novel chronicles decades of drama and passion in one family. A father whose dreams of baseball glory are shattered by an accident. A mother clinging to religion. Four brothers coming of age during the seismic shifts of the sixties. (645pp.)

11/22/63 by Stephen King

On this date in 1963, President John. F. Kennedy was assassinated by a sniper's bullet in Dallas, Texas. After that, the world changed. This time-traveling novel explores an alternate reality. What if the assassin had been stopped? (864pp.)

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

A richly told saga tracing four generations of a Korean immigrant family from the early 1900s to the present day. From bustling street markets to Japan's finest universities, these complex characters must fight to control their destiny. (490pp.)

The Passage of Power by Robert Caro

This breathtakingly vivid biography follows Lyndon Johnson through the most frustrating and triumphant periods of his career—1958 to 1964. From his conflicted path to the vice presidency through JFK's assassination and beyond. (736pp.)

The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin

In this award-winning novel of power, oppression, and revolution, Essun is a woman who must hide her power as she embarks on a high-stakes quest across a treacherous landscape to find her kidnapped daughter. (512pp. - paperback; this title was not originally published in hardcover)

The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions by Jonathan Rosen

Tender, funny, and harrowing by turns, this account traces the forces that led the author's closest childhood friend from the heights of brilliance and success to the psychiatric hospital where he has lived since killing the woman he loved. (576pp.)

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Scarlett O'Hara is the spoiled, manipulative daughter of a wealthy plantation owner, coming of age as the Civil War forever changes her way of life. This sweeping saga of tangled passion and complex courage still casts a spell. (1048pp.)

Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 by Tony Judt

Almost a decade in the making, this is the first modern history covering all of Europe, both east and west, sweeping readers through thirty-four nations and sixty years of political and cultural change—all in one enthralling narrative. (878pp.)

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

This enigmatic work of science fiction has been described as the literary equivalent of Russian nesting dolls. A series of interlinking novellas gradually come together like a puzzle to form a probing examination of connection and identity. (544pp.)

The Overstory by Richard Powers

An impassioned paean to trees, this sweeping tale unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables ranging from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. (512pp.)

A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving

Summer, 1953: two eleven-year-old boys—best friends—are playing in a Little League baseball game in Gravesend, New Hampshire. One of the boys hits a foul ball that kills the other boy's mother. What happens after that is extraordinary. (672pp.)

Dune by Frank Herbert

The origin story of Paul Atreides, the scion of the House of Atreides. Identified as a messiah-like figure with the power to lead his people toward a new era, Paul embarks on an epic journey of war, betrayal, and mysticism. (528pp.)

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

England in the 1520s is poised on the edge of a precipice. Despite powerful opposition, Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years and marry Anne Boleyn. Into this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell, a wholly original man. (560pp.)

Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner

A retired historian sets out to write his grandparents' story, chronicling their days spent carving civilization into America's western frontier. What emerges is an enthralling portrait of four generations in the life of an American family. (569pp.)

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee

The story of cancer is a story of human ingenuity, resilience, and perseverance, but also of hubris, paternalism, and misperception. Written by a physician, this Pulitzer Prize-winner reads like a literary thriller with cancer as the protagonist. (592pp.)

I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb

Dominick Birdsey is a forty-year-old housepainter living a quiet life in Connecticut. When his twin brother Thomas, a paranoid schizophrenic, commits a shocking act of self-mutilation, he is forced to confront dark secrets and pain from his past. (912pp.) 

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

As the long shadow of Hitler falls across Europe, America is in thrall to the Golden Age of comic books. Joe and Sammy, Jewish cousins living in Brooklyn, spin comic book tales together, carving out lives as vivid as cyan and magenta ink. (656pp.)

Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity by Andrew Solomon

Many parents grapple with the question of how much they should (or can) influence who their children become. Drawing on a decade of research and interviews with more than three hundred families, this book tackles that question. (976pp.)

The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño

Twenty years after a violent showdown in the Sonoran Desert, poets and activists Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima are still on the run. This wildly inventive novel traces the hidden connection between literature and violence. (577pp.)

The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt

Sybilla is a single mother, struggling to raise her precocious son, Ludo. Both Sybilla and Ludo are wickedly intelligent. Their joint obsession with Kurosawa's Seven Samurai sets eleven-year-old Ludo on a secret quest for the father he never knew.   (544pp.)

Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom by David W. Blight

After escaping slavery, Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) went on to become a major literary figure, a respected orator, and a leading abolitionist. This cinematic biography draws on newly uncovered sources to share his fascinating story. (912pp.)

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

As the story goes, Tolstoy set out to write a cautionary tale about adultery, but then fell in love with his magnificent heroine. Filled with a rich cast of characters, this tragic romance belongs entirely to the tempestuous woman at its center. (638pp.)

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist missionary, transplants his family to the Belgian Congo in 1959. Told by his wife and four daughters, this suspenseful epic traces the family's experiences over three decades in postcolonial Africa. (560pp.)

From lasting classics to absorbing new titles, this is your list of beach-perfect doorstoppers. You can also check out our ultimate Beach-Perfect Books list, our Beach-Perfect Thrillers edition, and Easy, Breezy Beach-Perfect Books.

And if you can't make it to the beach, these books will be equally as enjoyable in your backyard or a nearby park.

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Read more by Ashly Moore Sheldon