Five essential Toni Morrison books you need to read, from 'Beloved' to 'The Bluest Eye'

Mary Cadden | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Author Toni Morrison dies at age 88 Toni Morrison was the first African American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. This is her legacy.

Toni Morrison, the first African American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, has died at age 88.

But her unique voice endures in novels like "Beloved," "Song of Solomon," "Sula" and "The Bluest Eye."

Here are five of her most notable fiction titles:

"Beloved": This 1987 classic about slavery and its aftermath won the Pulitzer Prize and was turned into a major motion picture starring Oprah Winfrey. According to a Publishers Weekly review: "As a record of white brutality mitigated by rare acts of decency and compassion, and as a testament to the courageous lives of a tormented people, this novel is a milestone in the chronicling of the black experience in America. It is Morrison writing at the height of her considerable powers, and it should not be missed."

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"The Bluest Eye": The author's first title remains one of her most notable, about a young black girl in rural Ohio in the 1940s named Pecola Breedlove who, after being raped by her father, is led to madness by her desire to become like the famous white child star Shirley Temple. A 2000 pick for Oprah Winfrey's book club, Kirkus Reviews called the work "A skillful understated tribute to the fall of a sparrow for whose small tragedy there was no watching eye."

"Song of Solomon": The first of Morrison's novels chosen by Winfrey in her book club in 1996, the 1977 novel explores the themes of racism, life and death through the main character Macon “Milkman” Dead. According to Kirkus Reviews, "Morrison's narration, accomplished with such patient delicacy, is both darkly tense and exuberant; fantastic events and symbolic embellishments simply extend and deepen the validity and grace of speech and character."

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"Sula": The 1973 novel and follow-up to her debut, "The Bluest Eye," explores the friendship between two women, Sula Peace and Nel Wright, that first sustains then injures them. According to Kirkus Reviews, "Miss Morrison, ... in her deceptively gentle narrative, her dialogue that virtually speaks from the page, and her multilayered perceptions drawn through the needle's eye of any consciousness she creates, is undoubtedly a major and formidable talent, and this is an impressive second novel."

"Paradise": The highly anticipated 1997 novel was the first book published by Morrison after her Nobel Prize win in 1993 and explored the tragic tension between “organized religion and unorganized magic.” According to Publishers Weekly, "So intense and evocative in its particulars, so wide-ranging in its arch, this is another, if imperfect, triumph for the Nobel Prize-winning author ... the individual stories of both the women and the townspeople reveal Morrison at her best. Tragic, ugly, beautiful, these lives are the result of personal dreams and misfortune; of a history that encompasses Reconstruction and Vietnam; and of mystical grandeur.

Contributing: Deirdre Donahue