Tiny Beautiful Things, by Cheryl Strayed

Cheryl Strayed will be best known for her memoir Wild, released earlier this year and, last month, featured as the first pick of Oprah's relaunched book club. But this month, Strayed has an equally terrific book out, Tiny Beautiful Things, which collects the best pieces from her anonymous advice column, "Dear Sugar."

"Dear Sugar" was originally written by Steve Almond on the daring (and sometimes curmudgeonly) literary site The Rumpus, but it wasn't until Strayed took the reins that "Dear Sugar" found its dedicated Internet following. In the introduction of Tiny Beautiful Things, Almond identifies Strayed's gift for "radical empathy," the way she relates the strangest, darkest stories from her life to understand and console her pained readers.