recommended biographies for book clubs

The Cheshire Library Blog

Library news, books to choose, info to peruse, 10 favorite biographies and memoirs for book clubs, ten favorite biographies and memoir suggestions for your book club to read and discuss:.

• Proof of Heaven by Eben Alexander
• Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl
• Born to Run: a hidden tribe, super athletes, and the greatest race the world has ever seen by Christopher McDougall
• Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me by Mindy Kaling
• Tiny Beautiful Things: advice on love and life from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed
• Zeitoun by Dave Eggers
• Kitchen Confidential: adventures in the culinary underbelly by Anthony Bourdain
• Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey: the lost legacy of Highclere Castle by Countess Fiona Carnarvon
• Where Men Win Glory : the odyssey of Pat Tillman by Jon Krakauer
• Strength in What Remains by Tracy Kidder

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10 Awe-Inspiring Memoirs for Book Club

Looking for your next fall book club pick? Look no further than this list of ten thought-provoking, tear-jerking, and original memoirs. Most memoirs are perfect for any book club because of the raw and intimate insights they provide into some of today’s most pressing topics, but each of these titles in particular has a master storyteller at its helm to guide you through perspectives and experiences that are sure to stimulate hour-long discussions. After you choose one of these unforgettable true stories, all that’s left is picking out the wine and cheese.

In this charming and uplifting memoir, Italian book publicist turned bookstore owner Alba Donati describes how her small hillside bookstore became a beloved community center and literary destination. Donati’s plan to open a bookstore in her hometown of Lucignana, a Tuscan village of fewer than two hundred people, seemed like a long shot. But soon the cottage inspired family members, community volunteers, and booklovers worldwide to flock to Donati’s store for one of her fail-safe book recommendations. Perfect for fans of UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN, this memoir is a love letter to books and their readers.

National Bestseller

Under the Tuscan Sun meets Diary of a Bookseller in this charming memoir by an Italian poet recounting her experience opening a bookshop in a village in Tuscany.

Alba Donati was used to her hectic life working as a book publicist in Italy—a life that made her happy and allowed her to meet prominent international authors—but she was ready to make a change. One day she decided to return to Lucignana, the small village in the Tuscan hills where she was born. There she opened a tiny but enchanting bookshop in a lovely little cottage on a hill, surrounded by gardens filled with roses and peonies.

With fewer than 200 year-round residents, Alba’s shop seemed unlikely to succeed, but it soon sparked the enthusiasm of book lovers both nearby and across Italy. After surviving a fire and pandemic restrictions, the “Bookshop on the Hill” soon became a refuge and destination for an ever-growing community. The locals took pride in the bookshop—from Alba’s centenarian mother to her childhood friends and the many volunteers who help in the day-to-day running of the shop. And in short time it has become a literary destination, with many devoted readers coming from afar to browse, enjoy a cup of tea, and find comfort in the knowledge that Alba will find the perfect read for them.

Alba’s lifelong love of literature shines on every page of this unique and uplifting book. Formatted as diary entries with delightful lists of the books sold at the shop each day, this inspirational story celebrates reading as well as book lovers and booksellers, the unsung heroes of the literary world.

MENTIONED IN:

The 10 Most Popular Books of September

By Off the Shelf Staff | September 29, 2023

By Alice Martin | September 12, 2023

Jeannie Vanasco loved her father, a man who named her after his daughter from a previous marriage who died. And when he—the man she always viewed as her hero—dies, Vanasco vows to keep her promise to him of writing a book by investigating the mysterious circumstances around the other Jeannie’s death. As Vanasco falls deeper into a manic obsession with the puzzle-like mystery before her, THE GLASS EYE asks, in its own mesmerizing and engrossing way: What kind of answer can ever be enough to recover from such grief?

When award-winning author Beth Nguyen was eight months old, she, her father, sister, grandmother, and uncles all escaped Saigon for America. Her mother did not. Years later, when Beth was nineteen, they finally met again. Now, unfolding through a collection of brief, fragmented visits over the course of years, OWNER OF A LONELY HEART crafts a refugee coming-of-age story that grapples with motherhood, absence, and conditions of estrangement, all through the lens of Beth’s complex relationship with her mother. Aching, joyful, and compassionate, Nguyen’s memoir is a heartrending must-read.

From the award-winning author of Stealing Buddha’s Dinner , a powerful memoir of a mother-daughter relationship fragmented by war and resettlement.

At the end of the Vietnam War, when Beth Nguyen was eight months old, she and her father, sister, grandmother, and uncles fled Saigon for America. Beth’s mother stayed—or was left—behind, and they did not meet again until Beth was nineteen. Over the course of her adult life, she and her mother have spent less than twenty-four hours together.

Owner of a Lonely Heart is a memoir about parenthood, absence, and the condition of being a refugee: the story of Beth’s relationship with her mother. Framed by a handful of visits over the course of many years—sometimes brief, sometimes interrupted, sometimes with her mother alone and sometimes with her sister—Beth tells a coming-of-age story that spans her own Midwestern childhood, her first meeting with her mother, and becoming a parent herself. Vivid and illuminating, Owner of a Lonely Heart is a deeply personal story of family, connection, and belonging: as a daughter, a mother, and as a Vietnamese refugee in America.

6 New Books I’m Championing This Awards Season

By Sarah Walsh | July 26, 2023

In this unflinching portrait of single, working motherhood, Stephanie Land describes the years she spent scraping by while cleaning the houses of America’s upper-middle class. At twenty-eight, Land’s life was forever altered by an unplanned pregnancy. To build a life for her child, Land began working as a housekeeper by day and completing online courses by night. In MAID , she shares the experience of existing—often invisibly—beside her clients’ biggest triumphs while also being witness to their most vulnerable selves. Catch up on this can’t-miss book before Land’s second memoir, CLASS , comes out this November 7.

Poet Safiya Sinclair was raised by her volatile father, a reggae musician and militant observer of a strict Rastafari sect, who crafted everything around protecting her purity from Babylon, the sect’s term for the corrupting influences of the Western world. But as Sinclair embraced the books her mother gave her and the education she received, she found herself on a rebellious and violent collision course with her father’s beliefs. HOW TO SAY BABYLON is a nuanced and lyrical look at one woman’s grappling with the interlocked legacies of patriarchy and colonization.

With echoes of Educated and Born a Crime , How to Say Babylon is the stunning story of the author’s struggle to break free of her rigid Rastafarian upbringing, ruled by her father’s strict patriarchal views and repressive control of her childhood, to find her own voice as a woman and poet.

Throughout her childhood, Safiya Sinclair’s father, a volatile reggae musician and militant adherent to a strict sect of Rastafari, became obsessed with her purity, in particular, with the threat of what Rastas call Babylon, the immoral and corrupting influences of the Western world outside their home. He worried that womanhood would make Safiya and her sisters morally weak and impure, and believed a woman’s highest virtue was her obedience.

In an effort to keep Babylon outside the gate, he forbade almost everything. In place of pants, the women in her family were made to wear long skirts and dresses to cover their arms and legs, head wraps to cover their hair, no make-up, no jewelry, no opinions, no friends. Safiya’s mother, while loyal to her father, nonetheless gave Safiya and her siblings the gift of books, including poetry, to which Safiya latched on for dear life. And as Safiya watched her mother struggle voicelessly for years under housework and the rigidity of her father’s beliefs, she increasingly used her education as a sharp tool with which to find her voice and break free. Inevitably, with her rebellion comes clashes with her father, whose rage and paranoia explodes in increasing violence. As Safiya’s voice grows, lyrically and poetically, a collision course is set between them.

How to Say Babylon is Sinclair’s reckoning with the culture that initially nourished but ultimately sought to silence her; it is her reckoning with patriarchy and tradition, and the legacy of colonialism in Jamaica. Rich in lyricism and language only a poet could evoke, How to Say Babylon is both a universal story of a woman finding her own power and a unique glimpse into a rarefied world we may know how to name, Rastafari, but one we know little about.

12 Reading Goals We’re Determined to Meet in 2024

By Off the Shelf Staff | January 12, 2024

Readers’ Choice: Your 12 Favorite Books of 2023

By Off the Shelf Staff | December 29, 2023

19 New Fall Releases Adored by Indie Booksellers

By Off the Shelf Staff | October 26, 2023

My 10 Favorite Books of 2023 (So Far)

By Katya Buresh | October 3, 2023

Our 26 Most Anticipated Books of Fall

By Off the Shelf Staff | August 15, 2023

All her life, Chloé Cooper Jones has depended on her existence as an academic to provide a cloistered solace from the judgements of the outside world, a world made even crueler because of her rare congenital condition, sacral agenesis. But when Jones unexpectedly becomes a mother, she is forced to look beyond the confines of her academic success to reclaim a life that others—and perhaps even herself—have denied her for years. In EASY BEAUTY, Pulitzer Prize finalist and philosophy professor Jones explores taboo questions of disability and motherhood.

Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Memoir or Autobiography

A New York Times Notable Book of 2022 * Vulture ’s #1 Memoir of 2022 * A Washington Post , Los Angeles Times , USA TODAY , Time , BuzzFeed , Publishers Weekly , Booklist , and New York Public Library Best Book of the Year

From Chloé Cooper Jones—Pulitzer Prize finalist, philosophy professor, Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant recipient—an “exquisite” ( Oprah Daily ) and groundbreaking memoir about disability, motherhood, and the search for a new way of seeing and being seen.

“I am in a bar in Brooklyn, listening to two men, my friends, discuss whether my life is worth living.”

So begins Chloé Cooper Jones’s bold, revealing account of moving through the world in a body that looks different than most. Jones learned early on to factor “pain calculations” into every plan, every situation. Born with a rare congenital condition called sacral agenesis which affects both her stature and gait, her pain is physical. But there is also the pain of being judged and pitied for her appearance, of being dismissed as “less than.” The way she has been seen—or not seen—has informed her lens on the world her entire life. She resisted this reality by excelling academically and retreating to “the neutral room in her mind” until it passed. But after unexpectedly becoming a mother (in violation of unspoken social taboos about the disabled body), something in her shifts, and Jones sets off on a journey across the globe, reclaiming the spaces she’d been denied, and denied herself.

From the bars and domestic spaces of her life in Brooklyn to sculpture gardens in Rome; from film festivals in Utah to a Beyoncé concert in Milan; from a tennis tournament in California to the Killing Fields of Phnom Penh, Jones weaves memory, observation, experience, and aesthetic philosophy to probe the myths underlying our standards of beauty and desirability and interrogates her own complicity in upholding those myths.

“Bold, honest, and superbly well-written” (Andre Aciman, author of Call Me By Your Name ) Easy Beauty is the rare memoir that has the power to make you see the world, and your place in it, with new eyes.

Critically acclaimed novelist Martha McPhee grew up on Omega Farm, a ramshackle New Jersey property that, to her, always seemed filled with art, people, and chaos that were by turns compassionate and sinister. Suddenly, McPhee must travel back to the now-neglected home she once knew with her husband and children to help care for a mother who no longer recognizes her as she slips into dementia. As McPhee tries to mend family ties and surrounding forests alike, her past will not let her go in this complex story of family legacy and environmental repair.

A long-awaited memoir from an award-winning novelist—a candid, riveting account of her complicated, bohemian childhood and her return home to care for her ailing mother.

In March 2020, Martha McPhee, her husband, and their two almost-grown children set out for her childhood home in New Jersey, where she finds herself grappling simultaneously with a mother slipping into severe dementia and a house that’s been neglected of late. As Martha works to manage her mother’s care and the sprawling, ramshackle property—a broken septic system, invasive bamboo, dying ash trees—she is pulled back into her childhood, almost against her will.

Martha grew up at Omega Farm with her four sisters, five stepsiblings, mother, and stepfather, in a house filled with art, people, and the kind of chaos that was sometimes benevolent, sometimes more sinister. Caring for her mother and her children, struggling to mend the forest, the past relentlessly asserts itself—even as Martha’s mother, the person she might share her memories with or even try to hold to account, no longer knows who Martha is.

A masterful exploration of a complicated family legacy and a powerful story of environmental and personal repair, Omega Farm is a testament to hope in the face of suffering, and a courageous tale about how returning home can offer a new way to understand the past.

Mary Beth Keane Recommends: 9 Exquisite Books Told with Heart and Nuance

By Off the Shelf Staff | March 6, 2023

8 Must-Read Books If You Love EDUCATED

By Off the Shelf Staff | January 8, 2020

In this clear-eyed exploration of race, class, and identity, writer and lawyer Omer Aziz describes his experience of growing up as a first-generation Pakistani Muslim boy outside Toronto. Despite fearing the violence and discrimination he sees in the world around him, Aziz embraces his education. But as he moves from college in Ontario to prestigious institutions in Paris and Cambridge, and finally to law school at Yale, Aziz is constantly in conflict with himself: Is it possible to escape his feelings of shame and powerlessness in a Western world seemingly dedicated to reminding him of those feelings?

Brown Boy is an uncompromising interrogation of identity, family, religion, race, and class, told through Omer Aziz’s incisive and luminous prose.

In a tough neighborhood on the outskirts of Toronto, miles away from wealthy white downtown, Omer Aziz struggles to find his place as a first-generation Pakistani Muslim boy. He fears the violence and despair of the world around him, and sees a dangerous path ahead, succumbing to aimlessness, apathy, and rage.

In his senior year of high school, Omer quickly begins to realize that education can open up the wider world. But as he falls in love with books, and makes his way to Queen’s University in Ontario, Sciences Po in Paris, Cambridge University in England, and finally Yale Law School, he continually confronts his own feelings of doubt and insecurity at being an outsider, a brown-skinned boy in an elite white world. He is searching for community and identity, asking questions of himself and those he encounters, and soon finds himself in difficult situations—whether in the suburbs of Paris or at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Yet the more books Omer reads and the more he moves through elite worlds, his feelings of shame and powerlessness only grow stronger, and clear answers recede further away.

Weaving together his powerful personal narrative with the books and friendships that move him, Aziz wrestles with the contradiction of feeling like an Other and his desire to belong to a Western world that never quite accepts him. He poses the questions he couldn’t have asked in his youth: Was assimilation ever really an option? Could one transcend the perils of race and class? And could we—the collective West—ever honestly confront the darker secrets that, as Aziz discovers, still linger from the past?

In Brown Boy, Omer Aziz has written a book that eloquently describes the complex process of creating an identity that fuses where he’s from, what people see in him, and who he knows himself to be.

Editors Recommend: 12 Brilliant and Surprising Spring Reads

By Off the Shelf Staff | January 16, 2023

Christie Tate thought her problems with commitment were over when she finally settled down with the right guy. But when her friend Meredith—twenty years older and both brutally and somehow gently honest—challenges her to dig into her many past failed female friendships, Tate realizes the hard work is still to come. Together, the two explore the shame, jealousy, and fears that led to Meredith’s many broken relations with other women and begin to consider what a “healthy relationship” really means. Funny and emotionally generous, BFF is a love letter to female friendship.

From the author of Group , a New York Times bestseller and Reese’s Book Club Pick, comes a moving, heartwarming, and powerful memoir about Christie Tate’s lifelong struggle to sustain female friendship, and the friend who helps her find the human connection she seeks.

After more than a decade of dead-end dates and dysfunctional relationships, Christie Tate has reclaimed her voice and settled down. Her days of agonizing in group therapy over guys who won’t commit are over, the grueling emotional work required to attach to another person tucked neatly into the past.

Or so she thought. Weeks after giddily sharing stories of her new boyfriend at Saturday morning recovery meetings, Christie receives a gift from a friend. Meredith, twenty years older and always impeccably accessorized, gives Christie a box of holiday-themed scarves as well as a gentle suggestion: maybe now is the perfect time to examine why friendships give her trouble. “The work never ends, right?” she says with a wink.

Christie isn’t so sure, but she soon realizes that the feeling of “apartness” that has plagued her since childhood isn’t magically going away now that she’s in a healthy romantic relationship. With Meredith by her side, she embarks on a brutally honest exploration of her friendships past and present, sorting through the ways that debilitating shame and jealousy have kept the lasting bonds she craves out of reach—and how she can overcome a history of letting go too soon. But when Meredith becomes ill and Christie’s baggage threatens to muddy their final days, she’s forced to face her deepest fears in honor of the woman who finally showed her how to be a friend.

Poignant, laugh-out-loud funny, and emotionally satisfying, B.F.F. explores what happens when we finally break the habits that impair our ability to connect with others, and the ways that one life—however messy and imperfect—can change another.

6 Emotionally Impactful Found Family Tales

By Katya Buresh | November 22, 2023

Staff Picks: 6 Reads Recommended to Us by Indie Booksellers

By Off the Shelf Staff | April 25, 2023

Indie Booksellers Recommend: 17 Spring New Releases Hand-Picked for You

By Off the Shelf Staff | March 8, 2023

My 7 Favorite Memoirs of the Year

By Holly Claytor | December 27, 2022

Our Most Anticipated New Books of 2023

By Off the Shelf Staff | December 15, 2022

CREEP is a collection of essays by writer and critic Myriam Gurba that unearths the disturbing manifestations of toxic traditions. In essays that are half cultural criticism and half personal essay, Gurba explores everything from the carceral system to Mexican stereotypes to inmate abuse. Wide-ranging and adventurous, razor-smart and provocative, these pieces explore the ecosystems that both sustain and result from oppression, systems that creep into every facet of life, from school to work and government institutions to family homes.

A ruthless and razor-sharp essay collection that tackles the pervasive, creeping oppression and toxicity that has wormed its way into society—in our books, schools, and homes, as well as the systems that perpetuate them—from the acclaimed author of Mean , and one of our fiercest, foremost explorers of intersectional Latinx identity.

A creep can be a singular figure, a villain who makes things go bump in the night. Yet creep is also what the fog does—it lurks into place to do its dirty work, muffling screams, obscuring the truth, and providing cover for those prowling within it.

Creep is Myriam Gurba’s informal sociology of creeps, a deep dive into the dark recesses of the toxic traditions that plague the United States and create the abusers who haunt our books, schools, and homes. Through cultural criticism disguised as personal essay, Gurba studies the ways in which oppression is collectively enacted, sustaining ecosystems that unfairly distribute suffering and premature death to our most vulnerable. Yet identifying individual creeps, creepy social groups, and creepy cultures is only half of this book’s project—the other half is examining how we as individuals, communities, and institutions can challenge creeps and rid ourselves of the fog that seeks to blind us.

With her ruthless mind, wry humor, and adventurous style, Gurba implicates everyone from Joan Didion to her former abuser, everything from Mexican stereotypes to the carceral state. Braiding her own history and identity throughout, she argues for a new way of conceptualizing oppression, and she does it with her signature blend of bravado and humility.

Photo credit: iStock / Andrii Medvediuk

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Blog – Posted on Friday, Apr 02

The 35 best book club books to get you talking in 2024.

It seems that everybody and their dog has a book club these days. But whether you’re a seasoned old-timer, or you started up an online book club in 2020, you’re probably facing the same question: “What should we read next”?

When decision fatigue sets in, picking the next group read can be the hardest part of the process. But fear not, because we’re here to help. Whether you’re looking for cutting-edge releases new for 2021 or classic recommendations, we’ve selected 35 of the very best book club books sure to spark conversation. So get that coffee brewing and have your page tabs handy, because we’re ready to dive in.

If you're feeling overwhelmed by the number of great book club books out there, you can also take our 30-second quiz below to narrow it down quickly and get a personalized book recommendation for your club 😉

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2021 releases your book club will lap up

If your book club prides itself on being on top of the latest literary releases, we’ve got you covered. Here are 12 book club books we think you’ll love that are new in 2021. Pencil them into your TBR and you’ll be set for the rest of the year.

1. Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

In this year’s most anticipated sci-fi release , Booker-winner Kazuo Ishiguro returns with gusto and sensitivity to the theme of personhood and what it means to be human — his bread and butter. Klara is a humanoid robot built to be an “Artificial Friend”. When chosen as a companion for a gravely ill 14-year old, Klara is confronted by aspects of the human condition to which she’d previously been naïve: love, loneliness, and mortality. Tackling major questions regarding AI and the ethics of technology, Klara and the Sun is fuel for a fascinating book club discussion.

2. Girl A by Abigail Dean

Is there a member of your book club who, despite their best efforts, never gets around to finishing the book? (And hey, no judgement! We all have busy lives!). Well, fear not: we have the answer. Abigail Dean’s debut novel Girl A is a gripping thriller guaranteed to get even the most sluggish reader racing to the end . The novel follows Lex, the titular Girl A, who escapes her abusive home — dubbed the “house of horrors” by the media — and tries to put the past behind her. But when Lex’s mother dies in prison, leaving the house to her and her siblings, it becomes apparent that she can’t outrun her past. An unflinching look at the aftermath of trauma, Girl A is one of those much-hyped book club books that your own club is guaranteed to devour.

3. Fake Accounts by Lauren Oyler

Of Fake Accounts , Zadie Smith wrote: “This novel made me want to retire from contemporary reality. I loved it.” And we couldn’t agree more. A cutting-edge look at internet culture, social media, and the malleability of identity in the modern age, Fake Accounts is a challenging but timely debut from author Lauren Oyler. The narrator, an unnamed young woman, is snooping through her boyfriend’s phone on the night of Donald Trump’s inauguration when she makes a startling discovery: he’s a notorious online conspiracy theorist. A series of incredible revelations leads the narrator to Berlin, where the story is only just beginning. Oyler clearly has her finger on the pulse of 2020s culture, and the stark truths in Fake Accounts are sure to spark heated debate among your reading group. 

4. Aquarium by Yaara Shehori

The Ackermans live in a world of their own, entirely by choice. Father Alex, mother Anna, and daughters Lili and Dori are all deaf — avoiding “the hearing” at all costs. Instead, they live an alternative lifestyle, only observing outsiders from afar. But when an earth-shattering secret is revealed, the family unit is torn apart, and the girls are forced to navigate the world of the hearing alone. A beautiful exploration of love and sisterhood, Aquarium raises fascinating questions about the nature of disability and identity.

5. Filthy Animals by Brandon Taylor

If you’re looking for a palate cleanser after a string of dense novels, you could do far worse than Filthy Animals. A series of interlinked vignettes from critically acclaimed author Brandon Taylor, Filthy Animals provides a snapshot of life in the American Midwest from a number of perspectives, including a young woman fighting cancer, a young man navigating an open relationship, and a group of teenagers whose tensions reach boiling point. Your book club will delight in untangling this complex web of relationships, and the breadth of stories guarantees there’ll be something for everyone.

6. Outlawed by Anna North

Ada’s running out of time. In a frontier town where women who can’t have children are hanged for witchcraft, she’s still not pregnant — and quickly approaching her first wedding anniversary. As panic sets in, Ada realizes her hometown is no longer safe, so she goes on the run. She joins up with the notorious Hole in the Wall Gang,  a group of female and non-binary outlaws who dream of setting up a safe haven for women on the frontier — but the risks they’ll have to take to get there are steep. Unlike anything your book club has read before, this wild wild Western piece of feminist fiction is a little bit True Grit , a little bit The Handmaid’s Tale , and a whole lot of adventure.

7. How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House by Cherie Jones

In Cherie Jones’ much-hyped debut novel, a murder brings two very different couples crashing into each other’s orbits . Set on Barbados, this thriller shatters our conceptions of the island paradise and exposes the dark underbelly lurking beneath even the most picturesque communities. We follow two women: pregnant hairdresser Lala, trapped in a violent marriage, and the wealthy Mira, who has left her life of luxury in London and returned home to Baxter’s Beach. When Lala knocks on Mira’s front door late at night, in labor and alone, what unfurls is as brutal as it is shocking. A searing study of class and crime, there’s no chance you’ll put this book club book down before the final page.

8. One of the Good Ones by Maika and Maritza Moulite

When teenage activist Kezi is tragically killed after a social justice rally, the public outrage is overwhelming. Her sisters Happi and Genny, while dealing with their own grief, must also reckon with an unexpected outcome: their brilliant, but ultimately very human sister’s elevation as an infallible martyr. As the public stamps Kezi’s memory with the label “one of the good ones”, her sisters struggle to reconcile the real-life Kezi with the angelic figure she’s become. They confront uncomfortable questions about legacy, fallibility, and who “deserves” to be mourned — and by implication, who doesn’t. Deeply timely and edifying, One of the Good Ones is a certified must-read by a powerhouse sister duo.

10. Let Me Tell You What I Mean by Joan Didion

Another great option for any book club facing novel fatigue, fans of the essay form will be delighted to hear that 2021 is bringing a whole new arrangement of writings by the incomparable Joan Didion. This timeless collection of pieces — spanning the breadth of her career — tackles insecurity, femininity, and the wider culture. A colorful array of characters and situations populate the pages of this carefully curated anthology, meaning you’ll be spoiled for choice when it comes to talking points.

11. With Teeth: A Novel by Kristen Arnett

 Sammie is losing her grip on life. Her troubled son has become increasingly threatening and she’s started to resent her absent wife. As tensions reach boiling point, she’s forced to reckon with her own failings as she attempts to figure out where things went wrong. Peppered with surprising moments of dry humor despite the challenging subject matter, Kristen Arnett’s latest novel is a profoundly honest examination of family dynamics and the trials and tribulations of parenthood.

12. A Pho Love Story by Loan Le

It’s a tale as old as time: young lovers from feuding families are forced to battle against the odds to make their star-crossed romance work. But Loan Le’s 21st-century reimagining has a (not so) secret ingredient — a whole lot of noodle soup. Bao and Linh’s families run rival Vietnamese restaurants, so when a romance sparks between them, they’ll need to decide what they’re willing to risk to follow their hearts’ desire. A nourishing, savory rom-com that’s guaranteed to delight, this debut novel is the heaping portion of comfort your book club has been craving. (Noodle soup for the soul, anyone?)

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Evergreen classics for book club books

If you’re not in the mood for a new release and want to go for some tried-and-true reads, here are some we’ve hand-selected for their ability to spark conversation. These much-discussed volumes range from the oldest of the old (we’re talking 800BC ) to hyped recent releases that your book club may have missed and we think are worth circling back round to.

13. The Secret History by Donna Tartt

If you still haven’t picked up this cult classic, it’s definitely time to suggest The Secret History to the group. A heady, atmospheric mystery that spawned an entire subculture (“dark academia”, anyone?), The Secret History is a coming-of-age novel like no other. Following a group of classics students at an elite college, the story details their gradual unraveling — a downward spiral that ends with a death amongst their ranks. As you’ll know if you’ve ever met one of the novel’s devoted fanbase, it’s a book people simply cannot stop talking about  — perfect book club fodder.

14. Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

More than 200 years after its release, the questions raised by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein remain as pressing as ever. Considering its enduring relevance in popular culture, you probably know the plot already, so we won’t bore you; but suffice to say, this seminal story about a scientist creating a sentient creature still holds up today. Frankenstein will have your book group up until the wee hours discussing issues of personhood, humanity, and the ethics of science —not least because this horror classic will leave you more than a little spooked. 

16. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

There’s a certain amount of snobbery around including YA and children’s literature within a book club reading list. However, even the most sceptical reader will find their preconceptions challenged by Mark Haddon’s superlative coming-of-age mystery novel. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime follows Christopher, a boy with autism who investigates the mysterious death of his neighbor’s pet dog, only to stumble across a number of unexpected and uncomfortable truths about his family. Raising important discussions about identity, and providing insight into both the challenges and possibilities of neurodivergence, The Curious Incident is deeply thoughtful YA. Moral of the story: don’t think kidlit can’t be serious!

17 . Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart

A word of warning: this 2020 Booker winner isn’t an easy one to stomach. The heartbreaking tale of Shuggie, a working class boy in Thatcher-era Glasgow, is relentlessly harrowing, touching on themes of addiction, abuse, sexual assault, and suicide. This brutal examination of a toxic mother-son bond shocked readers and critics, yet captured something universal in its authentic depiction of family life in impossible circumstances. If your club is looking for a critically acclaimed read that tackles serious topics, Shuggie is an important recent release to get under your belt.

18. The Odyssey by Homer

Ancient Greek literature might sound dry, but there’s a reason readers have been attracted to The Odyssey’s siren song for millenia. The story of Odysseus’ voyage home to his faithful wife Penelope is a foundational text — one that you’ll find echoes of in many of your favorite modern titles. So if you want to dig down into literary history, or have a greater appreciation for some of your modern picks by way of better understanding their ancient allusions, treat your book club to this blast from the past. 

19. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

Some people love it, some people hate it, and some people call it “the intellectual equivalent of Kraft macaroni and cheese” (and by “some people” we mean Stephen King). Wherever you land, it’s undeniable that Dan Brown’s blockbusting bestseller The Da Vinci Code is divisive enough to get conversation flowing. This art-historical thriller follows a twisting tale of murder and code-cracking, steeped in art history and religion, and it’s literally impossible to have nothing to say about it — for better or worse.

20. The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells

Your book club might usually stick to literary fiction, but if you want a well-rounded diet, you shouldn’t neglect genre fiction! For those in the market for a healthy helping of sci-fi , you might want to start with HG Wells’ 1897 classic, War of the Worlds . Beyond the surface-level plot, which chronicles the traumatic arrival of Martians on Earth, you’ll find deftly crafted social commentary, exploring the devastating effects of colonialism in allegorical terms. Careful reading and close examination are rewarded here, making it a book club staple.

21. Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo

The great book club books often pose one overarching question and challenges its reader to discern an answer. In the case of Girl, Woman, Other, that question is clear : What does it mean to be a girl, a woman, or a gender-nonconforming person in Black Britain? This breathtaking portrait of twelve female and nonbinary people across the African diaspora is as vividly realized as it is absorbing. Evaristo’s mastery in the field of the short story ensures  every section is a self-contained gem, each following one of our twelve leads, whose intersecting lives cross lines of class and identity. As beautiful as it is important, if you haven’t read it already you’ll want to pick this one up sooner rather than later.

22. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

For a stylish slice of historical fiction, Markus Zusak’s Book Thief is a go-to choice for many book clubs. Covering broad thematic ground, this WWII novel tells the story of Liesel, a young girl coming of age in Nazi Germany. Perhaps best-known for being a book narrated by Death, this might sound a little out there for some readers. But far from being bleak or gimmicky, the beautiful prose and moments of joy make this expertly executed and unique narrative perspective a delight to analyze.

23. My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead

If there’s one thing book lovers love reading about, it’s book lovers. For those who want to get a little self-indulgent, My Life in Middlemarch is a beautiful reflection on the importance of reading that bookworms are guaranteed to enjoy. Part memoir, part ode to literature, author Rebecca Mead leads us through the story of her life-long, evolving relationship with George Eliot’s Middlemarch (another book club classic, if you don’t mind your books running long). An ideal pick if your club’s motivation is flagging and you need a reminder of the life changing magic of a good book.

24. Lord of the Flies by William Golding

While we might instinctively resist the books we’ve always been told to read, sometimes, there’s a reason the classics are classics. As brilliant as it is controversial ( it’s the eighth most banned book in American libraries ), The Lord of the Flies is shocking, visceral, and a guaranteed conversation starter. A tale about a group of boys left to their own devices on a desert island, and their ensuing struggle to find order among chaos, Golding’s book is a brutal look at humanity, community, and civilization. It’s a staple for any book club due to the timelessness of its themes, but be warned: it isn’t for the faint of heart.

25. My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

If you had to pick between saving the man you love's life, or preserving your sister's freedom, which would you choose? Or, to put it another way, is blood thicker than water when actual blood is involved? Okinyan Braithwaite's searingly tense yet darkly humorous debut novel asks this among many other questions: not least, where the line between comedy and horror lies. One of our picks for must-read books by black authors , My Sister, the Serial Killer will produce heated debate and nervous giggles in equal parts .

26 . Fleishman is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

Released to incessant buzz in 2019, Fleishman is in Trouble tells the story of an acrimonious divorce, a forty-something man navigating the world of online dating, and a sudden disappearance. The tale of Fleishman and his ex-wife’s vanishing act has a lot to say about 21st-century marriage and the anxieties that underpin middle-class life, meaning there’s every chance it’ll hit a little close to home for some readers (in a way only a truly incisive book can). But if you can wince through the pain, you won’t be disappointed by this blisteringly funny, yet fiercely moving, page-turner that stealthily packs a powerful feminist punch. 

27. Animal Farm by George Orwell

It might seem to have become the reserve of high school English classes over time, but there’s still a lot to unpack in George Orwell’s 1945 novella. This allegorical tale of political power, democracy, and communism — all explored through the lens of farm animals — is an enduring statement that never fails to leave us reeling, and therefore a guaranteed big hitter for any discussion group. Even if your knowledge of WWII and the era of Stalin is a little rustier than you’d like, Orwell’s prose is so sharp, compelling, and clear that you can’t fail to hear something of what he’s saying in Animal Farm — and feel a little blinded by its brightness. Packed with wit and humor, this is a book for everyone.

28. The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

Another book that explores literature’s power to transport and transform us, The Midnight Library makes poignant fodder for the kind of avid readers that make up a book club. The premise is an intriguing one: imagine you could retrace every fork in the road over the course of your life, and lead any of the lives you might have lived if you’d made different choices. What would you change? Well, reading the books that stock the shelves of the Midnight Library allows you to do just that. A delightful dose of magical realism, The Midnight Library posits questions about regret and fate that won’t fail to get you reminiscing.

29. Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee

Sometimes, the best book discussions are thinly veiled arguments. If you want to throw a cat among the pigeons, suggest this Harper Lee’s deeply controversial first draft of To Kill a Mockingbird to your book club . Divisive among casual readers as it has among critics and literary historians, this book offers an unexpected divergence from the civil rights classic we are more familiar with. It’ll spark interesting discussions around authorship, ownership, and how much a book can belong to its readers. And hey, if you’re happy to do a double bill, why not read both Watchman and Mockingbird — the comparison between the two is where the debate really heats up.

30. Three Women by Lisa Taddeo

If you’re looking to broaden your genre horizons, why not give narrative nonfiction books a try? Lisa Taddeo’s breathtaking Three Women is a great way to dip your toes into the waters of creative journalism. Following the true stories of (surprise, surprise) three women, Taddeo chronicles their sexual and emotional lives in stunning detail. A complex snapshot of the internal worlds and sexuality of American women in the 21st century, this book will challenge your preconceptions of what nonfiction should look like.

31. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Aldous Huxley’s classic masterpiece is an uncanny prediction of a future that arrived far quicker than he expected. Reading this 1932 novel only gets more rewarding as the decades pass, and we’re able to read with one foot firmly in the present, spotting the eerie parallels between Huxley’s speculative future and our own modern world. A prescient and brilliant work of dystopian sci-fi, Brave New World is a must-read — so why not kill two birds with one stone, and tick off a book club read and one of the books you should read before you die in one go?

32 . The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman

Another SFF classic that sparks fascinating discussion, Philip Pullman’s fantasy series is so thematically rich that the fantastical elements are just the cherry on top — although, talking polar bears and shape-shifting daemons are quite the cherry. For those who enjoy drawing out parallels between fiction and the real world, Pullman’s presentation of an alternative Oxford touches astutely upon religious and political power in a world far closer to our own than initial impressions might suggest, creating ample room for debate and analysis as a group.

33. Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

He's undeniably one of the most influential authors of all time, but the deeply idiosyncratic Haruki Murakami's work is deeply challenging, and usually provokes either an ecstatically positive, or strongly negative reaction. His sparse style is divisive, and his often bizarre narrative structures are deliberately posing a riddle to his readers. Kafka on the Shore is our recommended starting point for this extraordinary author : it's one you’ll want to talk out the second you’re finished with it, so it’s best to rope a whole book club into doing it with you.

34 . Little Fires Everywhere: A Novel by Celeste Ng

Celeste Ng’s gripping 2017 psychological thriller explores unnervingly familiar territory for most readers. This domestic drama details the anxieties of a mother, and the dangers of hanging on to your children too tightly, drawing relatable concerns out to their most extreme conclusions. Also bringing important conversations about race and class to the table, Ng’s second novel became a book club classic immediately upon launch. If you skipped it the first time around, it’s well worth circling back to.

35. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis

Children’s books may seem like a thing of your literary past, but don’t forget that there’s often more than meets the eye in some of your childhood favorites. One classic that’s well worth revisiting is The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe : CS Lewis’ biblical allegory may have gone over your head when you were a kid, but it’s a masterpiece of symbolism that you’ll appreciate on a whole new level as an adult. Plus, it gets extra points for nostalgia, making it a surefire crowd-pleaser at any book club night. 

Hungry for more recommended reads? Check out our list of the 115 best books of all time .

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Recommended Memoirs for Book Clubs

There are times I’m suddenly aware that I’m not as well-rounded a reader as I’d wish. The curation of this list was one of those moments. I read the way I do most things––intuitively and deeply. I’m a poet, so my memoir preferences lean toward beautiful writing as much as to dramatic storytelling. I’m a student and teacher of depth psychology, so a memoirist’s ability to reflect upon the inner journey is just as important to me as funny anecdotes about crazy relatives. I’m a feminist, which leads me more often, though not exclusively, to women’s stories.

As a writer, I also adore craft books, which is why I’ve included one by Mary Karr. I promise, it’s as much fun as her first memoir. And, if you aren’t yet a writer, by the time you finish The Art of Memoir , you’ll be ready to pick up a pen.

Composed: A Memoir by Rosanne Cash

Not your typical celebrity tell-all. Sure, there’s enough industry-insider intrigue to keep fans of Rosanne Cash and Johnny Cash turning pages. But Rosanne is a sage, often lyrical, writer. Hers is a story of the ties that bind her to her family, her music, and her soul. 

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

Didion became famous for pioneering a form of writing that seamlessly marries journalism and personal essay. She is a keen observer of the tense relationship between the outer world and inner experience, nowhere more so than in this acclaimed account of the aftermath of her husband’s sudden death. 

Heating and Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs by Beth Ann Fennelly

Delightful, and delightfully short, this genre-defying collection of personal reflections marries the best things about poetry (intensity of compression) and memoir (radical, sometimes raw truth-telling). Plus, Fennelly’s observations about marriage, children, and the writing life can be uproariously funny. Fennelly currently serves as Poet Laureate of Mississippi.

There Will Be No Miracles Here by Casey Gerald

I fell in love with Casey Gerald when I heard him speak at last year’s library fundraiser, Verse & Vino. His wasn’t the only book I bought that night (no surprise there), but it’s the one that keeps me thinking. He writes in breathtaking detail and with lots of good humor about his dramatic and impoverished upbringing, the searing pain of surviving adolescence as both black and gay, and becoming a man within a duplicitous society that both promotes and limits him in his journey into adulthood.  

I Could Tell You Stories: Sojourns in the Land of Memory by Patricia Hampl

This memoir is a beautifully written exercise in the art of discovery. Though it’s not a craft book, Hampl consciously demonstrates the means through which she reflects on her inner and outer life experience, explores the misty landscapes of memory, and explains what most memoirists are only vaguely aware of—the reason for writing one at all.

Crazy Brave: A Memoir by Joy Harjo

Harjo was named U.S. Poet Laureate this past June. Yes, this memoir is written in prose—gorgeous, lyrical, mythic prose. After you’ve read it, you’ll likely want to read her poems, too. And, afterwards, you’ll want to find recordings of her music. And, after that, you’ll want to meet her, which you can do next April when Harjo visits Charlotte to headline CPCC’s Sensoria festival and (lucky us!) teach at Charlotte Lit.

Memories, Dreams, Reflections by C. G. Jung

As I admitted in the introduction, I’m a Jungian, so there’s no way I could leave this classic off my list. Yes, it’s one of the more difficult books (and perhaps the strangest) on the list. But readers will be rewarded for their efforts with fresh understanding about the roots of modern psychology and an experience of its founder’s rich imagination. MDR , as it’s known, is a classic—deservedly so.

The Liar’s Club and The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr

Yes, these are two separate books. I’m fighting against the limits of the list. Besides, my hunch is that avid readers have already come across Karr’s famous first memoir, The Liar’s Club . If not, read it before any of these others. Then sometime in the middle of your reading year, take up Karr’s equally compelling craft book, The Art of Memoir . Even if it doesn’t make you want to take up your pen, it will make you a better reader.

The Dance of the Dissident Daughter : A Woman’s Journey from Christian Tradition to the Sacred Feminine by Sue Monk Kidd

Kidd is known for her best-selling novel, The Secret Life of Bees . This is an altogether different kind of book—part memoir, part study of feminist spirituality. Kidd weaves the two threads seamlessly, not only finding her voice in the process but helping readers do the same. As she writes, “The hardest thing about writing is telling the truth. Maybe it’s the hardest thing about being a woman, too.”

Ordinary Light: A Memoir by Tracy K. Smith

This memoir is also written by a U.S. Poet Laureate. Smith served in the role from 2017-2019. By now, you might be wondering about the relationship between poetry and memoir. All I can say is that the best memoir writers have a style of consciousness, a tendency for and pattern of reflection, that is poetic in essence. And no one does this more lyrically or powerfully than Smith.

Since many book groups meet every month of the year, I’m throwing in a few more titles to choose from. These books are no kind of runners up; I just ran out of room!

• Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott
• Bluets by Maggie Nelson (another slender micro-memoir volume)
• Wild by Cheryl Strayed

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25 Nonfiction Suggestions for Your Book Club

Want to add some nonfiction to your book club's rotation? Start here with 25 of the best nonfiction suggestions for your book club.

Sophia LeFevre

Michigander turned Indianapolis transplant, Sophie spends her days as a marketer and front-end engineer for a venture studio. When she isn’t reading or helping startups grow their online presence, you can find her exploring national parks or watching the Food Network. She blogs about her reading life at www.mainandmaple.com . Follow her on Instagram @_sophiereads .

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There are few things in life as intense as picking the next book for your book club. Maybe you’ve thought of suggesting a nonfiction book, but that seems risky. What if it’s too dense? What if people get bored? Don’t worry. We’re here to help you pick a nonfiction book that your book club will love!

There are tons of benefits to reading nonfiction in your book club. For starters, it’s a great way to remove some of the intimidation that many people feel when approaching nonfiction. Having your book club pals around to wade through the difficult or confusing parts can help spark conversation and open new dimensions to a book. 

There’s a group of readers around you who come from assorted backgrounds and have lived different life experiences—take advantage of that! You’ll get to learn about a new topic from various perspectives, while also getting to know your book club pals on a deeper level.

So, if you feel like it’s time to add some nonfiction to your book club lineup, here are some nonfiction suggestions for your book club!

Blurbs are taken from Goodreads. 

Current events.

Biographies/Memoirs

Shared Interests

Self Improvement

Looking for more ideas on how to pick your next book club book? Check out these 10 suggestions for picking your next book club book !

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Books We Love

Great reads, thoughtfully curated by npr.

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What is this thing?

Books We Love is NPR’s interactive reading guide. Mix and match tags such as Book Club Ideas , Biography & Memoir or Eye-Opening Reads to filter results and find the book that’s perfect for you or someone you love.

How are the books selected?

We reached out to our staffers and trusted critics and asked them to nominate their favorite books published in 2023. They responded with hundreds of titles. Then, the editors and producers at NPR Books sat down with a huge spreadsheet of responses; we resolved duplications, noted omissions, considered the overall mix and balance of books recommended and then made assignments.

Why isn’t this just a list?

Back in 2013, the NPR Books staff was suffering from an acute case of list fatigue. So we teamed up with our friends at NPR News Apps and started to think about a site that would be more Venn diagram-y than list-y – a site that could help you seek out the best biographies that were also love stories, or the best mysteries that were also set in the past. We wholeheartedly believe that human beings are capable of absorbing new information in formats that are 1) not sequentially ordered and 2) wait … dammit! and 3) never mind.

But no, really, I just want to see a list of books

We got you. To view these books as a list of titles rather than as an array of covers, you are welcome to select the “List” option in the upper right-hand corner of the site.

So what’s the deal with these tags?

At NPR Books, we’re all about discovery: helping you find your next great read – the mystery you can’t put down, the memoir you recommend to all your friends. In 2013, we hashed out a basic taxonomy that was both functional (e.g., Biography & Memoir or Kids’ Books ) and fun (e.g., It’s All Geek To Me and Let’s Talk About Sex ). Over the years, we’ve refined our filters and added new tags, like The States We’re In and No Biz Like Show Biz .

The names are cute, but what do they mean?

The States We’re In is for stories of the American experience both true and fictional. It’s All Geek To Me is for deep dives on particular topics – trees, personality tests, tiny houses, you name it. In The Dark Side , you’ll find dystopias, serial killers, true crime and people behaving badly in general. Eye-Opening Reads will give you a new perspective on the topic at hand, whether it’s the state of philanthropy or a new pair of shoes.

How do the books get tagged?

Our critics and staffers make suggestions, but to ensure we are applying tags consistently, the producers and editors at NPR Books consider and discuss every tag on every book.

That must take a very long time

Can i look under the hood.

If you want to know more about how Books We Love was designed and coded, you can read about the process here . And if you’re curious to see the code and adapt it for your own project, you can check it out here .

If I click on the links and purchase one of the books, does that purchase help NPR?

Yes. And you can read more about how that works here .

How can I stay up to date on reviews and recommendations from NPR Books?

Sign up for our newsletter ! Every week we will send interviews, stories and reviews right to your inbox.

Subscribe to our podcast ! NPR’s Book of the Day brings you today’s great reads in 15 minutes or less.

Have fun exploring Books We Love! We hope you find something wonderful to read today.

The 2023 Books We Love team: Rose Friedman , Andrew Limbong , Beth Novey and Meghan Collins   Sullivan

Project Credits

This edition of Books We Love was published on Nov. 20, 2023.

• Produced and edited by Rose Friedman, Beth Novey and Meghan Collins Sullivan
• Design and development by Alyson Hurt and Brent Jones
• Copy edited by Preeti Aroon, Arielle Retting and Pam Webster
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Previous editions of Books We Love: Annette Elizabeth Allen, Preeti Aroon, Jeremy Bowers, Tayla Burney, Nicole Cohen, Patricia Cole, Danny DeBelius, Camila Domonoske, Beth Donovan, David Eads, Juan Elosua, Jess Eng, Natalie Escobar, Rose Friedman, Alice Goldfarb, Christopher Groskopf, Geoff Hing, Clinton King, Becky Lettenberger, Megan Lim, Wes Lindamood, Petra Mayer, Amy Morgan, Koko Nakajima, Duy Nguyen, Beth Novey, Maureen Pao, Katie Park, Ashley Pointer, Christina Rees, Arielle Retting, Ellen Silva, Meghan Collins Sullivan, Ruth Talbot, Shelly Tan, Pam Webster, Glen Weldon, Thomas Wilburn, Matthew Zhang

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Best Book Club Books: Memoirs

Memoirs offer an incredible opportunity to immerse yourself in another life with the author as your guide. The true story of how someone overcomes incredible obstacles also allows you to wonder, What would I do?

For a good book club memoir discussion, choose a book that’s a bit outside of your group’s comfort zone. And if discussion questions aren’t provided with the book, ask each member to come with one or two of their own. These memoirs — stories of survival and even triumph — would all make excellent book club books.

Finding Freedom

By erin french.

Celebrated chef Erin French shares her moving story of overcoming obstacles and finding community in her bestselling memoir , Finding Freedom . From her formative years working the line at her dad’s diner to opening her own critically acclaimed restaurant The Lost Kitchen in Freedom, Maine, French’s journey to the head of the table was anything but easy. Indeed, she endured addiction, hit multiple rock bottoms, and faced the challenges of single motherhood along the way. Told with candor and warmth — and enriched by French’s delectable food writing — Finding Freedom celebrates the life-affirming joys of family and finding your voice and the delicious connection between good food and great company.

While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence

By meg kissinger.

In While You Were Out, award-winning journalist Meg Kissinger movingly chronicles her relationship with her family and the mental health crises that they endured. Combining the intimacy of memoir with the rigor of investigative journalism , Kissinger’s narrative guides us through moments of personal tragedy, love, resilience, and unexpected humor with an eye toward the future and changing the way we talk about mental health care in America. 

Being Henry: The Fonz...and Beyond

By henry winkler.

With self-deprecating humor and a healthy dose of Hollywood charm, Happy Days star Henry Winkler opens up about his life in this entertaining celebrity memoir. The Emmy Award–winning actor touches on everything from his lifelong struggles with dyslexia and the daily grind of showbiz to dazzling anecdotes from the sets of Barry and Arrested Development, and, of course, his career-defining turn as the Fonz on Happy Days . Radiating sincerity and warmth, Being Henry teaches lessons on being truthful to yourself no matter the odds — something every reader can appreciate.

Unmasked: My Life Solving America's Cold Cases

By paul holes.

For true crime aficionados, Paul Holes needs no introduction. The seasoned cold case investigator has dedicated his life to the pursuit of evil and he has helped crack some of the most notorious cases in modern American history, from the kidnapping of Jaycee Dugard to the 20-year manhunt for the Golden State Killer. He’s proud of his work, putting away criminals and providing closure to survivors. But he’s also haunted by a troubling question about his career: What was the cost to his well-being and his family? In this bestselling true crime memoir , Holes looks back on the cases he’s investigated and opens up about the many sacrifices he’s made in pursuit of justice, from frayed personal relationships to missing out on the joys of fatherhood. Delivered with unflinching honesty, Unmasked is a powerful account that “grabs its reader in a stranglehold and proves more fascinating than fiction and darker than any noir narrative” ( Los Angeles Magazine ). 

Hollywood Park

By mikel jollett.

From being born into an infamous cult – to a childhood filled with poverty and addiction, Mikel Jollett struggled to find love and a sense of normalcy in world where nothing made sense. His incredible story is at once heartbreaking and inspiring, and it shows you that family loyalty and fierce determination can take you to places you only dreamed about.

Here We Are: American Dreams, American Nightmares

By aarti namdev shahani.

In a way, NPR correspondent Aarti Shahani has lived the American dream. She and her family immigrated to New York City, she received a scholarship to a top Manhattan private school, and eventually she landed a successful career. But the Shahani family’s struggles equally define these years, especially when her old-world shopkeeper father inadvertently launders money for the Cali drug cartel. This immigrant story presents a look at a controversial topic that is not as black-and-white as some might think, which makes for a thought-provoking dialogue. Discussion questions are  here .

Birdgirl: Looking to the Skies in Search of a Better Future

By mya-rose craig.

From Mya-Rose Craig, the renowned birder and environmentalist who stands at the forefront of a new generation of environmental activists, Birdgirl combines science writing with advocacy and a touching tale of family love. Craig’s nature memoir interweaves her passion for bird-watching with the story of her mother’s mental health crisis, beautifully capturing the planet’s fragile grandeur while championing her mother’s journey and highlighting the restorative power of the natural world. Both thought-provoking and inspiring, Birdgirl is a deeply felt narrative about finding your calling and all the help you need along the way.

Good Boy: My Life in Seven Dogs

By jennifer finney boylan.

From  New York Times  bestseller and human rights activist Jennifer Finney Boylan comes her newest memoir  Good Boy,  showing how a young boy became a middle-aged woman—accompanied at seven crucial moments of growth and transformation by seven memorable dogs. Boylan contemplates her past in ways that prompt you to consider your own transformative times. An ode to dogs, identity, and finding love, the perfect thought-provoking read to share with friends or family.

When Harry Met Minnie

By martha teichner.

Calling all animal lovers: Grab your furry friend and plenty of tissues, and settle in for this touching memoir about love, loss, and soul-warming companionship. When Emmy Award–winning news correspondent Martha Teichner is asked if she’d consider adopting a dog in need, she happily agrees — after all, Harry, the dog in question, is a bull terrier, just like her dog, Minnie. The two canines quickly hit it off; they’re natural companions. And yet, a friendship also blossoms between Martha and Harry’s owner, Carole, a woman who’s dying of cancer caused by exposure to toxins from 9/11. When Harry Met Minnie is a modern-day fairy tale rich with chance encounters, fated friendships, and a bustling New York City backdrop. It’s also a stirring memoir about camaraderie, and how the souls that we meet, both human and canine, leave a lasting impression on our lives.

By LaDoris Hazzard Cordell

What do you do when the system you believe in is flawed? According to Judge LaDoris Hazzard Cordell, you get in there and you fix it. In this eye-opening new memoir , Judge Cordell, the first African American woman to sit on the Superior Court of Northern California, offers an insider’s look at America’s criminal justice system , celebrating its strengths, highlighting its weaknesses, and tracing paths to more equitable judicial methods. Judge Cordell is well aware of the legal system’s shortcomings: shaky plea bargains, unchecked racial biases in law enforcement, and the troubling shift from rehabilitation to punishment are but a few of the weighty issues she tackles here. Nevertheless, Cordell is prepared to put in the work for positive change. In Her Honor, Cordell invites us into her chambers and shares her remarkable journey through the halls of justice, all while maintaining her conviction that the system can work — if we work on it.

Between the World and Me

By ta-nehisi coates.

In a letter to his 15-year-old son, Coates seeks to teach one important lesson: how to be a black man in America. He recounts his rough childhood, the importance of black history, and the moment he learns that education and wealth can’t protect you from racism if you’re black. Coates doesn’t put much faith in the American Dream; instead he urges his son to build strong community ties and surround himself with the love he finds there. Discussion questions are  here .

Heavy: An American Memoir

By kiese laymon.

Laymon pulls no punches when describing the abuse he suffered as a child. He places blame squarely in two places: his mother, and America’s institutional racism and sexism. His mother’s strict insistence on good grades, his obesity, and his career struggles are the stressors that lead to him writing. In doing so, he uncovers generations of family abuse and condemns those who did nothing to stop it. It’s a harrowing but important read. Discussion questions are here .

Happiness: The Crooked Little Road to Semi-Ever After

By heather harpham.

Harpham is thrilled by her new relationship with Brian until she gets pregnant … and Brian balks, leaving her alone and disillusioned. New-mom joy turns into a nightmare when baby Gracie grows suddenly, gravely ill. Brian returns, commits to helping Harpham and Gracie, and their relationship slowly resuscitates. How this fragile family grows strong is almost unbelievable, yet it’s true … and it has a happy ending. Discussion questions are  here .

The Light Years

By chris rush.

In the late 60s, at age 12, Rush is introduced to psychedelic drugs. From that moment, the counterculture of hippies and nomads becomes his family. Once a colorful decade of peace and love, the years soon dissolve into the 70s’ raw and violent hedonism. Rush survives his quest for meaning —– but just barely. Discussion questions are  here .

By Elie Wiesel

Wiesel’s Nobel-prize-winning memoir is more than just the story of his years as a prisoner at the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps. It’s also a study of faith, and how it gets redefined in the face of one of the worst crimes against humanity in modern history. Even if you’re among the millions who have read  Night , this story is worth a re-read at different points in your life. Discussion questions are  here .

By Michelle Obama

Obama is the first to admit that she would never have predicted her journey from Chicago’s working-class South Side to the White House. Her memoir is a fascinating peek behind a heavily-guarded curtain—from her concerns about how the Presidency affected her marriage and family, to the closing moments of her tenure as First Lady. These stories are riveting, and her honesty has made  Becoming  a book club favorite. Discussion questions are  here .

By Tara Westover

Education — the 13 or so years most Americans receive — was never a given for Westover. Raised in a remote survivalist camp in Idaho, her parents considered the public school system to be a waste of time. So when Westover ran away and started school at age 17, she had a lot to learn. And she did, eventually working her way into Harvard and Cambridge universities. After her incredible escape and global adventures, can she ever go home again? Discussion questions are  here .

The Year of Magical Thinking

By joan didion.

Magical thinking is how Didion describes the mental gymnastics required of her during the most challenging year of her life. Her daughter falls ill and is placed in a medically induced coma, and shortly thereafter her husband suddenly dies of a heart attack. Both of these events send her spiraling into a world of medical journals and existential crises, all beautifully and miraculously captured in this memoir.  Discussion questions are  here .

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Solider

By ishmael beah.

When he was 13 years old, Beah was recruited as a child soldier in Sierra Leone’s government army. As he’s asked to perform increasingly violent acts, he shuts down emotionally. Childhood is reduced to a past dream; the war an inescapable nightmare … until one day, he’s shown the way out. Written at age 25, Beah’s story is shocking but so important to witness. Discussion questions are  here .

Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive

By stephanie land.

Being single and pregnant, Land learns, has an immediate impact on your ability to make a living. Working as a maid keeps her small family fed and clothed, and along the way she discovers surprising lessons about the upper class and what it means to be their servant. Discussion questions are  here .

Before Night Falls: A Memoir

By reinaldo arenas.

Arenas escapes poverty in rural Cuba to become one of the country’s most popular writers in exile. His rise to fame is treacherous, though. Once outed as a gay man, his writing is banned, he’s sent to prison, and he eventually flees his homeland. In New York, he faces the ultimate fight for his life: AIDS.  Before Night Falls  is considered his deathbed memoir.

First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers

By loung ung.

In 1975, Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge ended five-year-old Ung’s childhood as she knew it. Her father worked in government, which put them all in immediate danger. Indeed, as the family attempted to escape Phnom Penh, they were separated. Two years later, Ung is a child soldier and her siblings are struggling to survive in various labor camps. Their sudden uprooting and slow, uncertain reunion makes for an intense read. Discussion questions are  here .

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The Complete List of All 106 Books in Oprah’s Book Club

More than two decades’ worth of celebrated titles.

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Since 1996, Oprah’s Book Club has selected books that engender conversation, spark enlightenment, help launch emerging authors, and reacquaint us with the already prominent. The goal? To connect readers around a community of fellow bibliophiles. The secret sauce? Each pick is chosen by Oprah herself, who delights in sharing books she loves with the club’s ever-growing audience. She describes her most recent pick, Familiaris, by David Wroblewski, as "an extraordinary journey that brilliantly interweaves history, philosophy, adventure, and mysticism to explore the meaning of love, friendship, and living your life’s true purpose.” This book joins Nathan Harris’s Sweetness of Water , Michelle Obama’s Becoming , Cheryl Strayed’s Wild , and Imbolo Mbue’s Behold the Dreamers as Oprah’s Book Club picks, as well as the many other titles—fiction and nonfiction alike—the club has spotlighted over the years. You’ll never forget these illuminating stories —just ask Oprah.

Familiaris, by David Wroblewski

In Familiaris , David Wroblewski tells the origin story of his bestselling first novel, and Oprah’s 66th Book Club pick, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle . Beginning in 1919, the sweeping epic follows the family’s patriarch, John Sawtelle, as he embarks, with his new wife and ragtag best friends, on building a utopian dog-breeding farm in northern Wisconsin. Laced through with magic, history, philosophy, whimsy, and humor, this book will capture your imagination—for all 975 pages!

Long Island, by Colm Tóibín

In his 11th novel, Tóibín returns to the characters from his bestselling book Brooklyn , which was adapted into a widely acclaimed film starring Saoirse Ronan. But don’t worry; no prior reading is necessary to dive into this totally singular story.

Decades after immigrating to America from Ireland, Eilis Lacey has made a life for herself on Long Island with her husband, Tony, their two children, and his large extended Italian American family. But that life shatters in an instant when a stranger shows up on her doorstep and informs her that Tony has gotten his wife pregnant…and that he plans on leaving the baby on Eilis’s doorstep. As Oprah puts it, this is a novel about a woman’s reckoning with “infidelity, with long-lost love, with secrets, and the universal struggle we all have to figure out where we truly belong.”

The Many Lives of Mama Love, by Lara Love Hardin

In this memoir of “lying, stealing, writing, and healing,” Lara Love Hardin recounts how opioid addiction destroyed her quiet suburban life—and how she built something stronger out of the rubble. From the outside, Hardin’s life looked perfect. She had a two-story home in a California cul-de-sac, four beautiful children, a small business—“a pet cemetery, of all things”—and a handsome husband. But behind the scenes, she was drowning. Her worsening opioid addiction had taken her from prescription painkillers to heroin, from selling her own belongings to stealing her neighbors’ credit cards. Hardin is eventually charged with 32 felonies. The end of her life as a soccer mom marks the beginning of a new life: one built on accountability, forgiveness,vulnerability, growth, and reinvention. After jail, Hardin became a renowned ghostwriter, collaborating with celebrated doctors, spiritual leaders, and activists on their books. She even coauthored Anthony Ray Hinton’s memoir, The Sun Does Shine , which was an Oprah’s Book Club selection in 2018. Oprah described selecting Hardin’s own memoir for the club as a “full-circle moment.”

Let Us Descend, by Jesmyn Ward

Let Us Descend tells the story of Annis a young, enslaved woman, separated from her mother and sold South. Traveling from the Carolina rice fields to the New Orleans slave markets to a Louisiana sugar plantation, Annis uncovers a hidden world of ancestral wisdom and spiritual forces, handed down by her African maternal line.

Jesmyn Ward is the author of three previous novels—two of which have won the National Book Award. She is the only woman and the only Black author to have received such an honor. “A fan of her writing for years,” Oprah has read all of Ward’s books and calls her newest offering, Let Us Descend , “a vital work for our culture.”

Wellness , by Nathan Hill

Oprah’s 102nd Book Club pick is a hilarious and tender exploration of love, marriage, life hacks, technology, and how to reconcile the people we once were with the strangers we inevitably, eventually, become. Jack and Elizabeth meet as starry-eyed college students deeply enmeshed in the ’90s Chicago grunge scene and—quickly—in a whirlwind romance. Two decades later, their world and their relationship have transformed; their lives are now governed by the responsibilities of parenthood, the tyranny of self-optimization, and the planning of their suburban “forever home.” Traversing time and geography, we follow Jack and Elizabeth as they confront the mind-warping power of Facebook algorithms, the legacy of childhood trauma, the marital law of a vindictive HOA, and some all-too-relatable marital strife.

As Oprah insists, this book will take you for “an incredible ride.” Buckle up!

The Covenant of Water , by Abraham Verghese

Inspired by his great-grandmother, who, as a child, married a widower, Verghese introduces the fictional Big Ammachi, matriarch of a Christian family in Kerala, India. We follow three generations from 1900 to 1977, through mysterious drownings, afflictions, colonialism, and independence. This epic tale soars with lyricism and tension, transporting you across time and continents. So clear your schedule and immerse yourself in this instant classic, which Verghese, a physician, wrote while simultaneously working as a professor of medicine at Stanford University.

Oprah says, “It is one of the best books I have read in my entire life, and I have been reading since I was 3!”

Hello Beautiful , by Ann Napolitano

What Oprah said about her 100th pick: “I’m telling you, once you start, you won’t want it to end…and be prepared for tears.”

Written in homage to the classic Little Women, Hello Beautiful follows the story of the four Padovano sisters, who live in Pilsen, a working-class neighborhood of Chicago. The girls’ close-knit, rambunctious family is forever changed when the eldest, Julia, marries a young man with a tragic past that threatens their future together.

Bittersweet , by Susan Cain

“This book has the power to transform the way you see your life and even the world,” Oprah says. “I have started to look at my own life in the world differently.”

Bittersweet , by Susan Cain, is a nonfiction title that explores how we deal with sadness. Not by denying it. Not by surrendering to it. But by acknowledging it. Even if, at times, it seems self-defeating because: We’re all supposed to be happy, right? Or at least try to be happy?

Demon Copperhead , by Barbara Kingsolver

Oprah says, “I t’s an absolutely riveting read.” Demon Copperhead re-envisions the Charles Dickens classic David Copperfield , setting it in modern-day Appalachia. Kingsolver was inspired while on a visit to Dickens’s seaside English retreat and actually started writing Demon Copperhead at Dickens's own desk. It’s Kingsolver’s 17th novel in some three decades, and in writing it, Kingsolver says she wanted to counter some of the condescension and downright snobbery directed at the region in which she was born and still lives, a region whose people, she believes, have been exploited for generations, most recently by pharmaceutical companies who targeted Appalachian residents and created the current opioid crisis.

That Bird Has My Wings , by Jarvis Jay Masters

Masters has been incarcerated in California’s San Quentin State Prison for the past 41 years. Oprah read the book shortly after it was first published by HarperOne, in 2009, and it left a strong impression: “His story, of a young boy victimized by addiction, poverty, violence, the foster care system, and later the justice system, profoundly touched me then, and still does today,” said Oprah.

HarperOne has reissued the book, which contains a foreword by spiritual teacher Pema Chödrön, who has long championed Masters’s cause.

Masters had this to say about the selection of his book for Oprah’s Book Club:

“I turned 60 this year, having entered San Quentin at the age 19. I wrote That Bird Has My Wings while in solitary confinement, isolated and alone,” he says. “My greatest hope at that time was that a few young people would read my story and learn from my mistakes. Thanks to Ms. Winfrey and her book club, my story will be introduced to a national audience. It is my greatest hope that their lives will be the better for it, and I am forever grateful for the honor and the opportunity that Oprah has afforded me.”

Nightcrawling, by Leila Mottley

Mottley began her astonishing debut novel when she was just 16. It has received raves from such luminaries as Dave Eggers, Kiese Laymon, and this one from James McBride: “Leila Mottley has an extraordinary gift. She writes with the humility and sparkle of a child, but with the skill and deft touch of a wizened, seasoned storyteller.”

Finding Me , by Viola Davis

In her powerful and empowering memoir, the first Black actor to earn the so-called “Triple Crown of Acting”—an Oscar, a Tony, and an Emmy—details her rise from poverty and other trauma to emerge as an iconic American artist. Through revisiting her childhood and all its pain, she was able to finally answer the question that had long haunted her: How did I claw my way out? About the pick, Oprah had this to say: “There are so many lessons to be learned from this breathtaking memoir about triumphing over adversity and trauma. Viola Davis leaves it all on the page—from her beginnings in South Carolina as the fifth of six children born in a sharecropper’s shack to acclaim as an actor, producer, and philanthropist. I was so moved by this book that I just had to share it with our entire OBC audience.”

Penguin Life The Way of Integrity by Martha Beck

The Way of Integrity: Finding the Path to Your True Self was a New York Times bestseller and the first offering under Maria Shriver’s book imprint, The Open Field/Viking.

On her 94th pick,Oprah said: “As we all navigate this watershed moment in our collective history, The Way of Integrity provides a road map on the journey to truth and authenticity. Her latest work is filled with aha moments and practical exercises that can guide us as we seek enlightenment.”

Bewilderment, by Richard Powers

Richard Powers’s intimate novel is about astrobiologist Theo Byrne, who is raising his 9-year-old son after his wife's death. It is tender and timely, drawing readers into existential questions about the place of humans in the world.

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The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois, by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

Epic doesn't begin to describe this tour-de-force of a novel, which touches on family, legacy, identity, and America's tangled roots. Ailey, our protagonist, is the second of three girls. Ailey grows up visiting her mom's family in a small town in Georgia, and becomes curious about her roots—who does she descend from? Her first-person narration is a coming-of-age story meets history. But Jeffers also incorporates a sweeping narrative about Ailey’s ancestors, who she tries to know and understand through the years.

The Sweetness of Water, by Nathan Harris

Set in the fictional town of Old Ox, Georgia, at the very end of the Civil War, Harris’s powerful first novel centers on brothers Prentiss and Landry, who are at last leaving the plantation where they’ve spent their entire lives, and grappling with what will come next. “As I read this masterful novel,” Oprah said , “I kept thinking—this young 29-year-old is a first-time author, so how did he do this ?” She continued, “As the best writers can do, Nathan takes us back in time, and helps us to feel we are right there with Prentiss and Landry as they get their first taste of freedom. I rooted for them, and feared for them, too.”

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Gilead , by Marilynne Robinson

For the first time in the history of the Book Club, Oprah chose four books by the same author at once: the Pulitzer Prize-winning Gilead , Home , Lila , and Jack by Marilynne Robinson. Together, these sublime novels form a quadrilogy of sorts, all of which takes place in the fictional Iowa town of Gilead. “ Marilynne Robinson is one of our greatest living authors,” Oprah said, “and in the Gilead novels she’s written a quartet of masterpieces . The more closely I read them, the more I find to appreciate, and the more they show the way in seeing the beauty in the ordinary.”

Home , by Marilynne Robinson

Home is a continuation of Gilead, the meaning of family and the secrets that surround them. Robinson had this to say in response to the news of her books being chosen: “Oprah Winfrey is a singular voice in this country and in the world. It is wonderful and amazing that my books will have the kind of attention only she could bring to them.”

Lila , by Marilynne Robinson

From a life of poverty, Lila enters the town of Gilead, where she meets John Ames, a minister. Plagued by her past, Lila and Ames try to forge a new path.

Jack , by Marilynne Robinson

When Oprah picked up a copy of Jack . The story—of the forbidden love between a down-on-his-luck white man and the prim and proper Black woman who’s come to occupy his mind and heart—is set in the mid-20th century. Yet it's a timeless tale of deep connection despite circumstance, of frailty, of familial bonds, of inequality, and of what it means to be human.

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Book Club Suggestions: 29 of the Best Book Club Books

Whether you’re picking your book club suggestions as a group or looking for the best book club books to choose from for an individual choice, these 29 options will have you covered! From chick-lit to historical fiction to non-fiction that reads like a novel, there’s a book here for every book club!

Is there anything that puts fear into your heart like having to choose a book for book club? I think not.

Of course, maybe you are braver than I am. Nothing puts fear into MY heart like that annual sign-up sheet asking for my best book club suggestions.

Here are 29 book club suggestions that I think most people will enjoy reading, ones that will spark interesting discussions, and ones that you’ll feel good about having forced other people to read.

Some of these are the best book club books from my own book clubs over the years and others are ones I WISH my book club had read.

This list of book club books has non-fiction, chick-lit, young adult and middle grade titles, history books and parenting books. There are new titles and ones that are bit older.

Whatever you’re looking for, I hope you’ll find a few perfect book club suggestions on this list for your group.

If you’d like to start your own book club, pop in your email address and I’ll send you my best tips for getting one started!

My favorite book club suggestions

• When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi – This memoir published after the author’s early death from lung cancer will basically rip your heart out, but also make you so glad to be alive. In the past, we’ve done family reunion book clubs and if we did another one, this would be in my top three book club suggestions for sure. ( Full review here )
• I’ve Got Your Number by Sophie Kinsella – If you’re looking for funny and fluffy book club books, it’s hard to beat Sophie Kinsella. I laughed my head off reading this book about a woman who loses her cell phone and finds another one in a garbage can, accidentally taking on the role of secretary for the businessman who owns the phone (Be warned that there is some swearing). ( Full review here )
• The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin – This is one of those book club suggestions that was just MADE for book lovers and while I usually shy away from books described that way (they always seem so pandering), this one is just spot-on. I couldn’t love this story of a grumpy old book shop owner who finds himself the caretaker of a little baby who is left in his store.  ( Full review here )
• Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson –  When I shared this book on Instagram, SO many people responded telling  me that their book clubs had read this title and had amazing discussions. It’s all about the American justice system, especially how the racial bias in it. I wished on every page that I had a book club to discuss it with.  ( Full review here )
• Make the Bread, Buy the Butter by Jennifer Reese – A quick read with all sorts of funny stories about food, cooking, and raising animals sprinkled with lots of recipes. Bonus, it’ll be easy to pick refreshments to go along with this book! ( Full review here )
• The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak – A really elegantly written young adult book about an orphan girl in Germany during WWII and the family that takes her in. One of the best books I’ve read. ( Full review here )
• Upstairs at the White House: My Life with the First Ladies by J.B. West – I read this more than three years ago and I still think about it ALL the time. It’s chatty and easy to read without being gossipy.  ( Full review here )
• How Not to Hate Your Husband After Kids by Jancee Dunn – Despite the click-bait title, this book is SO good. I felt like it was packed with helpful ideas and research, and it was super fun to read. If you invite me to join your book club this year, odds are good that I’ll choose this one.  ( Full review here )
• The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan – This one is pretty hefty, but it’s so interesting that no one in our group seemed to have too much trouble getting through it. And wow, did we have a fascinating discussion about the food sources in our country, the organic industry, and a multitude of other topics.
• Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport – This book is one that I kind of need to go back and read about every six months to help me refocus. I’d love this as a book club pick and then to come back and revisit it a few months later to see how everyone was doing.
• Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool – One of my favorite Newbery winners in recent years, this story is told by two different voices – a young girl during the Great Depression and a young boy just before WWI breaks out. ( Full review here )
• This Is Where You Belong: The Art and Science of Loving the Place You Live by Melody Warnick  – This book would be an especially good book club suggestion if you were in a book club with mostly transitory people, say students or expats.  ( Full review here )
• Cheaper by the Dozen by Frank B. Gilbreth Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey – This book about a family of twelve children, being raised in a home with an efficiency-expert father is sweet, hilarious, and just plain interesting. The sequel, Belles on Their Toes , is just as good. Nothing to do with the embarrassingly bad Steve Martin movie.  ( Full review here )
• These Is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine by Nancy E. Turner – The first thirty pages are a bit slow, but after that this diary-style novel really gets going about Sarah, a teenager growing up in the West, trying to educate herself, and, of course, falling in love. This book is deeply romantic, but to call it only a romance would be to sell it far too short.  ( Full review here )
• What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty – My favorite chick-lit book of all-time, about a woman who wakes up after a fall at the gym to discover that, instead of being pregnant, twenty-nine, and deeply in love with her husband, is thirty-nine, the mother of three and on the verge of divorce. As she tries to get back her memories of the past ten years, she also struggles to figure out what has changed her life (and marriage) so drastically. And, more importantly, can that marriage be saved? ( Full review here )
• Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chau – This is my pick for my bookclub this year (I’m leading the discussion in December) and I am just really excited to see how everyone feels about this book about Chinese parenting – or at least one woman’s take on it – and how it works in America ( Full review here )
• Nutureshock: New Thinking About Children by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman – One of my book clubs picked this a few years ago and I loved the amazing discussion about sleep, racism, praising children, and a whole slew of other parenting topics. ( Full review here )
• Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand – This book is non-fiction but it’s so amazing, it’s hard to believe someone didn’t make it up. Olympic runner Louis Zamperini’s plane is shot down in the Pacific during WWII and after surviving on a tiny inflatable raft for 47 days, he’s taken prisoner by the Japanese. And compared to being a POW, the raft time looks like vacation. Probably the best WWII book I’ve read.  ( Full review here )
• Wonder by R.J Palacio – A remarkably done middle-grade novel about a boy with severe facial abnormalities who begins attending public school for the first time in middle school. Moving, well-written, and full of things to talk about, which is why it’s one of my favorite book club suggestions.
• Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier – This book would be especially fun if you were choosing for October – kind of a gothic thriller/romance. The first chapter (about 30 pages) is a smidge slow, but after that, it is hard to put down! It ollows a young woman who marries a very rich widow and feels like she can’t escape the shadow cast by his larger-than-life first wife who died in a boating accident.
• Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely – Along the same lines as Malcolm Gladwell’s books, but Ariely is a professor and runs his own research studies. You could talk about this book all night long – it’s one of the best book club books I can think of!
• The Best Bad Luck I Ever Had by Kristin Levine – This middle-grade historical fiction title is set in Alabama during WWI. Dit is anxious for the new post master to arrive, since rumor is that he has a son Dit’s age, but when the post master’s family arrives, Dit can’t decide whether he’s more surprised that the family is black or that the promised friend is a girl.  ( Full review here)
• If I Stay by Gayle Forman – This is YA fiction at its best. After a horrible car accident, the course of Mia’s life is drastically changed and all the plans she’s had for her future are called into question. It’s not a very long book, but it is beautifully written. I cried both times I read it. ( Full review here )
• The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls – One of the best book club books that makes your own childhood look really really easy, this is a memoir about growing up in a completely dysfunctional family, where the family keeps moving in the middle of the night and the children eventually realize that the parents are never going to pull themselves together.  ( Full review here )
• Red China Blues by Jan Wong – In college, I read this memoir about a Canadian girl (of Chinese descent) who goes over to China during the Cultural Revolution, on fire with Mao’s vision. During the years she spends there, she comes to realize that Mao’s ideas for China might not be all that she’s hoped. This book is absolutely fascinating – I even sent my mom a copy for her birthday a couple of years ago (she loved it too).
• Room by Emma Donoghue – Horrifying, but ultimately full of hope, this book about a little boy raised by his mother in a single room where she is kept by her kidnapper and their eventual escape, explores what happens when the whole world opens up before you. ( Full review here )
• The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart – One of my very favorite YA books of all time about a very smart girl at a boarding school who discovers her boyfriend belongs to a secret boys-only society and is determined to get in. This is one of those book club suggestions that is easy to read but has TONS to chat about when you meet.  ( Full review here )
• Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance – I basically made Bart have our own little book club for this one, since I read it on a long car trip and then proceeded to read huge sections aloud to him and discuss each chapter, while he probably wondered how many more miles until we got home.  ( Full review here )
• All the Money in the World: What the Happiest People Know about Getting and Spending by Laura Vanderkam – This book was just MADE for reading in a book club. It’s broken up into short, readable chapters and each one is full of interesting conversations all about how we choose to spend our money and what actually makes us happy.   ( Full review here )

By the way, our book club has tossed around the idea of doing a theme for the year, whether it was books written by women, fiction only, children’s lit, etc. I think that might be a fun idea, since it’d make it at least slightly easier to choose a book. But I think other people might find that too restrictive.

And if you’d like a printable copy of this list that you can take to your library or screenshot on your phone for easy access, just pop in your email address below and it’ll come right to your inbox!

And please tell me your best book club books that have been big hits in YOUR book clubs! I’m always looking for more book club recommendations.

If you liked this post about book club suggestions, you might also enjoy these:

• 25 MORE book club books
• How to start a successful book club
• Hosting a one-time book club

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36 comments.

There's a bunch of overlap between your list and the ones I recommend the most often for book clubs (alphabetical by author):

Most heated discussions:

The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert Mountains Beyond Mountains, by Tracy Kidder Life of Pi, by Yann Martel The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck Working Days, by John Steinbeck The Secret History, by Donna Tartt Brooklyn, by Colm Toibin Ethan Frome, by Edith Wharton

Universally loved:

March, by Geraldine Brooks Year of Wonders, by Geraldine Brooks The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, by Michael Chabon My Life in France, by Julia Child Peace Like a River, by Leif Enger Everything on a Waffle, by Polly Horvath Interpreter of Maladies, by Jhumpa Lahiri The Honk and Holler Opening Soon, by Billie Letts The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows The Help, by Kathryn Stockett

Of these, my very tippy top recommendation is Peace Like a River!

More book club nerdery here . 🙂

I love reading this list because it shows 1) that we have similarly stellar taste in books and 2) how many book recs I get from you. Jefferson's Son and The Best Bad Luck I've Ever Had were some of my favorite books I've ever read. Kindred by Octavia Butler is another fantastic race-relations novel. It's adult fiction and a little bit sci-fi (a black woman gets pulled back in time to the antebellum South to save her white ancestor when his life is in peril), but I think (hope?) you would like it.

Ooooohhhh! I love this post, and I love so many of your books and have added a half-dozen more to my wish list! I think our best book club discussion this year was "My Name is Asher Lev" by Chaim Potok, followed by "The Killer Angels" by Michael Shaara and "The Winter of our Discontent" by Steinbeck. Up next is "The Yiddish Policeman's Union" by Michael Chabon, and I sense it will be loved as well.

Yay books! Yay reading! Yay friends who also love books and reading!

I read Bringing up Bebe per your recommendation this past week. It was a fun read. I thought that her insight into French parenting was interesting, although I thought that she acted like it was the correct way in all ways. They definitely do some things right, but I will not stop nursing at 3 months or distance myself from my children. She did make some great points and I will implement some of them in my parenting style. Thank you for the book recommendations. I love to get new ideas.

Well now I have a whole bunch more books to add to my own reading list!

Am I awful for not liking The Book Thief? I read it, as everyone raved, but for some reason, there was something about it that bothered me. I don't know what it was.

I recently read Mr. Churchill's Secretary by Susan Elia MacNeal and really loved it. WWII during the London Blitz, and the sequel just came out last week, with a third in the works!

I just read "The Night Circus" by Erin Morgenstern. BEST BOOK I've read since high school. I captured me and captivated me and I never wanted it to end. As a matter of fact, I was disappointed by the ending just because I didn't want it to end.

We have very similar tastes in books! Before I moved six years ago, one of the book groups I belonged to picked a theme every year. I liked it. They might choose an area (Asia, Africa, South America, etc) or a topic, or even a range (youth fiction for example). There was usually one book about mid-year that was completely off theme, just for a break. It worked well with that group. If you change to going with a theme, be flexible and be willing to change back if it doesn't work for your group. But give it a couple of years.

I'm going to echo Erica here, so many of my favorite reads come from you. Thanks for this post, I can't wait to head over to the library.

Thanks for the great list! Ironically enough, we chose the same book for book club this year! Ha 🙂

This is such an incredible source!! Thanks for going to all of the work to put it together. I live in a small town (luckily, we have a library but it is tiny!) but I'd love to start up a book club. Any tips/suggestions on how to start??? ps. I absolutely LOVE love your blog.

You've got some good book club picks on this list! Lots that my book club has read and a couple that were my pick (Okay for Now, The Book Thief). Some of my favorite book club books that aren't on your list:

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali The Actor and the Housewife by Shannon Hale (crazy heated discussion)

Awesome list! I have been looking for a new book but totally stumped on what to read. Problem solved. 🙂

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks was a great discussion book for our group. Totally agree about Wonder. Simply awe-inspiring. Have you read The Age of Miracles? I think that would make a good discussion book as well. Thanks for your list. Angie

Wonderful recommendations! I added a bunch to my never ending to-read list. I've never been in a book club, but would love to try one because I'm always talking about the books I'm reading to whoever will listen anyway!

oh my, what great suggestions!! (both in your post and in these comments!) i've only read about 10 of those listed. i can't wait to add the others to our book club list for next year. my recent faves have been:

Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier True Women by Janice Woods Windle Iron Fey series by Julie Kagawa What's Eating Your Child? by Kelly Dorfman The Reading Promise by Alice Ozma Flavia DeLuce series by Alan Bradley (hilarious!!) A Jane Austen Education by William Deresiewicz

and WAY too many others… 🙂

Seriously, you have a great list here. Some of my favorite made the list. The only one I would add is The Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams. Great discussion on this one.

Thank you for the great list of books! There are a few that I've been meaning to read on it and it was great to go back and read your reviews.

I liked when my bookclub read Daddy Long Legs and Dear Enemy. They aren't very long and it's best to read them together. It created a lot of interesting discussion on raising children and women's roles in society, but they were written in the early 1900's. I would considered it Chick-lit YA.

Besides you can watch the movie with Fred Astaire and Leslie Caron afterwards which is never a bad thing!

I just love your book recommendations! I just read Moon over Manifest and loved it! I'm also working my way through Warmth of Other Suns which you were right, does read more like a novel than a non fiction. Thanks!

I listened to How Not to Hate Your Husband on audio and it was so spot on! Would be a fantastic book club discussion for 30+ year old women.

Oh, I should have listened to the audio!

The only two books that have been universally loved in our book club over the last two years were Moonglow by Michael Chabon and Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain. My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante was also quite popular, although there were one or two people who thought it overly violent and/or precious (not me! – I think the whole Neopolitan series is powerful and worth reading).

A few books that were polarizing but led to good discussions were Some Luck by Jane Smiley; Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank; Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff (I personally despised this book, but there were lots of interesting things to talk about, particularly why we had such strong reactions to it); and A Good Country by Laleh Khadevi.

Happy to see we’ve read A TON of these in our book club the last few years. Make the Bread, Buy the Butter was such a fun one because everyone who came brought something they made from the book- it was a great one! 🙂

That is SO fun.

My book club loved News of the World by Paulette Jiles (and the audio is great) and We are the Lucky Ones by Georgia Hunter. These are the only 2 books we’ve read that everyone rated a 10!

My book club I was in fell apart a few years ago, and I’ve missed that! I’ve looked into other ones, but no one is consistent…. I’ll join yours! You just moved to Utah, right?? 🙂

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Our book club loved “Evicted” and “The Road Back to You.” We also did a cookbook/biography and cooked meals from it for our final meeting of the year—which was fitting since it was between Thanksgiving and New Years. Thanks for your great suggestions!

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Love, Norm by Barbara Fintel Collins is available on Amazon. This book is truly life altering to read. There are questions at the end of chapters to really get your mind thinking and the book looks at life in such a different way that we should really strive to alter our own realities.

THE BEST BOOKS OUR BOOK CLUB READ WITH GREAT DISCUSSIONS TO FOLLOW: THE SHADOW OF THE WIND BY CARLOS RUIZ ZAFRON BLIND YOUR PONIES AND AMOS; TO RIDE A DEAD HORSE BY STANELY GORDON WEST THE ELEPHANT COMPANY BY VICKI CONSTANTINE CROKE THE BOYS IN THE BOAT BY DANIEL JAMES BROWN A MAN CALLED OVE BY FREDRIK BACKMAN THE DOUBLE BIND BY CHRIS BOHJALIAN MOST OF THE BOOKS WERE NOT BEST SELLERS BUT SUPER READS.

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I recently published a book and, wow, is it hard work to get it promoted! I’ve been having book signings/presentations all over OH (where I live) but being a new kid on the block means that I have a lot of ground to cover. This might be a dumb question, but I wonder if there is a way to get a book into a “book club.” Any suggestion?

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14 Nonfiction Books For Everyone In Your Book Club

When I was younger, I associated nonfiction with dry and dull textbook-like stories, and like many fiction-lovers, I often avoided nonfiction. I was wrong of course; there are many incredible nonfiction books, including these nonfiction books for your book club .

Recently, I have become much more interested in nonfiction, and was luckily able to shed my previously held notions about how boring it would be. No, nonfiction books don’t take place in fantasy worlds, but they can still be just as enchanting. From biographies to historical works to humorous true stories, nonfiction has a lot to offer.

One great thing about nonfiction is that it can often be appealing to a wide range of people. So if you’re in a book club, and you’re looking for a choice that will please everyone, this could be the perfect genre. And the great thing about true essays is that they’re often great conversation starters, which makes them excellent for sparking your literary discussion. Not sure where to start? I’ve got you covered – here are some of your best bets for nonfiction works that will be well liked by everyone in your book club. Even the fiction-loving doubters like me.

1. Outliers : The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

What is the key to success? New Yorker staff writer Malcolm Gladwell explores what allows high-achievers to succeed in Outliers . He tells plenty of stories to illustrate his points, and the book flows at an quick pace that will appeal to everyone in your book club.

Click here to buy.

2. Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari And Eric Klinenberg

You probably know Aziz Ansari from his role as Tom Haverford on Parks and Recreation and from his standup comedy, but did you know he wrote a book, too? In Modern Romance , Ansari and Klinenberg explore how people date and look for love in a technology-consumed era. It's filled with Ansari's trademark humor, but features many research-driven arguments about dating in the modern age. Definitely a great book club discussion starter.

3. Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl by Carrie Brownstein

Carrie Brownstein has an incredibly interesting life: she's a musician for feminist punk band Sleater-Kinney, and today she's often recognized as one of the stars of the hilarious TV series Portlandia . This is a music memoir that will certainly have a widespread appeal in your book club.

4. Unbroken : A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption By Laura Hillenbrand

Laura Hillenbrand's nonfiction reads like fiction. This exhaustively researched book tells the story of Louis Zamperini, an Olympian and World War II lieutenant who lived an incredible life. You probably remember the film produced and directed by Angelina Jolie — so why not check out the book that inspired the movie?

5. A Room of One's Own By Virginia Woolf

In this classic essay, Woolf explores the topic of women and fiction. If you're a woman who likes to read (and write), this is a can't-miss book for your book club. Plus, it's on the shorter side, so if you're looking for something to jumpstart discussions, this is a great pick.

6. Why Not Me? By Mindy Kaling

Mindy Kaling is a hilarious and excellent writer, and her latest memoirs is yet another example of that. Fans of The Mindy Project , fans of Nora Ephron, fans of rom-com-style books — this is the book for you.

7. We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

This essay was adapted from Adichie's TEDx talk, and it's a detailed and observant discussion of what feminism means today. You'll start a great discussion in your book club with this pick.

8. Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow

If you, like me, can't stop listening to the soundtrack from Lin-Manuel Miranda's musical Hamilton , check out the biography that inspired it. The incredibly compelling story of one of America's founding fathers is sure to be a hit with everyone in your book club.

9. Lab Girl by Hope Jahren

This memoir by scientist Hope Jahren will make you fall in love with nature, and don't worry — it's very accessible, even for someone like me, who doesn't have Jahren's gift for understanding science. Filled with stories from Jahren's childhood in rural Minnesota to her adventures around the world in the name of science, this one will appeal to all.

10. The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch

Carnegie Mellon computer science professor Randy Pausch gave this lecture after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. It's about achieving your dreams, overcoming obstacles, and taking advantage of every moment. It's inspirational and will make you laugh and cry and become a better person — everyone in your book club should read this lecture.

11. Modern Manners by Dorothea Johnson And Liv Tyler

It's never a bad idea to brush up on manners, and this book even has tips for job interviews and traveling overseas. If you read this book with your book club, you can all throw a fancy dinner party afterwards and know exactly what to do (side note: Dorothea Johnson expects that I'm going to be attending a lot more galas than I actually am, but hey, now I'm prepared in case I start getting invited to a bunch of them).

12. Weird Things Customers Say In Bookshops by Jen Campbell

If you're looking for something purely funny to share with the lit-lovers in your book club, look no further than Weird Things Customers Say In Bookshops. You don't have to have worked in a bookstore to appreciate the humor of this collection.

13. The View from the Cheap Seats : Selected Nonfiction by Neil Gaiman

If your book club has already gone through Gaiman's works of fiction, why not try some of his nonfiction? This collection of essays spans topics from fairy tales to ghosts to storytelling in general, and even though it's nonfiction, it still has Gaiman's enchanting trademark prose.

14. Princesses Behaving Badly by Linda Rodriguez McRobbie

I love funny and weird stories from history, especially when they're completely true. This nonfiction collection of stories revolves around strange tales of quirky princesses, and it will appeal to everyone in your book club because it's just so interesting . The stories range from intriguing to downright bizarre, and it completely flips the idea of a damsel in distress.

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