9. The Help, Kathryn Stockett
You've probably read it. If not, you're in for a treat as you watch Skeeter Phelan, a child of privilege in pre-civil rights Mississippi, get her consciousness raised — and her social position endangered — as she begins writing about the lives of the maids who polish the silver and make the beds. The book is warm, decent, and often funny, but what elevates it — odd but true — are the hundreds of domestic details.