Suggested Reads for Your Book Club
The best book club books are the ones that get you thinking, make you want to talk about the story and characters with your friends and keep you reading late into the night. They’re the types of books that have you wanting more even after you finish the last page. In some cases, they leave you with more questions than when you started.
These thought-provoking books for book club will have everyone wanting to share their opinion and reading experience. Some of these books deal with difficult topics, ranging from terminal cancer and childhood poverty to theft and family drama. Others might have you questioning your initial beliefs. But that only adds to the great conversation your book club will dig into as you pour over the pages with a glass of wine or cup of tea or coffee in hand.
So, gather your friends, pick a book, and get the conversations started with this award-winning, thought-provoking books.
1. The Dream Hotel
by Laila Lalami
NATIONAL BESTSELLER & READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK FEATURED ON TODAY
From Laila Lalami, the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist and a "maestra of literary fiction" (NPR), comes a riveting and utterly original novel about one woman's fight for freedom, set in a near future where even dreams are under surveillance.
Sara has just landed at LAX, returning home from a conference abroad, when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside and inform her that she will soon commit a crime. Using data from her dreams, the RAA's algorithm has determined that she is at imminent risk of harming the person she loves most: her husband. For his safety, she must be kept under observation for 21 days.
The agents transfer Sara to a retention center, where she is held with other dreamers, all of them women trying to prove their innocence from different crimes. With every deviation from the strict and ever-shifting rules of the facility, their stay is extended. Months pass and Sara seems no closer to release. Then one day, a new resident arrives, disrupting the order of the facility and leading Sara on a collision course with the very companies that have deprived her of her freedom.
Eerie, urgent and ceaselessly clear-eyed, The Dream Hotel artfully explores the seductive nature of technology, which puts us in shackles even as it makes our lives easier. Lalami asks how much of ourselves must remain private if we are to remain free, and whether even the most invasive forms of surveillance can ever capture who we really are.
2. All the Colors of the Dark
by Chris Whitaker
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER WITH OVER ONE MILLION COPIES SOLD, Read with Jenna Book Club Pick as Featured on Today
A Best Book of the Year: Washington Post, She Reads, Kirkus Reviews
From the author of We Begin at the End comes a soaring thriller and an epic love story that "hits like a sledgehammer … an absolutely must-read novel" (Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl).
"Kept me frantically turning the pages and somehow made me cry at the end … Brava!" -- Kristin Hannah, author of The Women
"Melds tense suspense with a powerful exploration of devotion, obsession and love." -- People
1975 is a time of change in America. The Vietnam War is ending. Muhammad Ali is fighting Joe Frazier. And in the small town of Monta Clare, Missouri, girls are disappearing.
When the daughter of a wealthy family is targeted, the most unlikely hero emerges: Patch, a local boy, who saves the girl, and in doing so, leaves heartache in his wake.
Patch and those who love him soon discover that the line between triumph and tragedy has never been finer. And that their search for answers will lead them to truths that could mean losing one another.
A missing person mystery, a serial killer thriller, a love story, a unique twist on each, Chris Whitaker has written a novel about what lurks in the shadows of obsession and the blinding light of hope.
3. Tell Me Everything
by Elizabeth Strout
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK - From Pulitzer Prize-winning author Elizabeth Strout comes a "stunner" (People) of a novel about new friendships, old loves and the very human desire to leave a mark on the world.
"Tell Me Everything hits like a bucolic fable … A novel of moods, how they govern our personal lives and public spaces, reflected in Strout's shimmering technique." -- The Washington Post
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION - A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Time, NPR, Vogue, Parade
With her remarkable insight into the human condition and silences that contain multitudes, Elizabeth Strout returns to the town of Crosby, Maine, and to her beloved cast of characters -- Lucy Barton, Olive Kitteridge, Bob Burgess, and more -- as they deal with a shocking crime in their midst, fall in love and yet choose to be apart, and grapple with the question, as Lucy Barton puts it, "What does anyone's life mean?"
It's autumn in Maine, and the town lawyer Bob Burgess has become enmeshed in an unfolding murder investigation, defending a lonely, isolated man accused of killing his mother. He has also fallen into a deep and abiding friendship with the acclaimed writer Lucy Barton, who lives down the road in a house by the sea with her ex-husband, William.
Together, Lucy and Bob go on walks and talk about their lives, their fears and regrets and what might have been. Lucy, meanwhile, is finally introduced to the iconic Olive Kitteridge, now living in a retirement community on the edge of town. They spend afternoons together in Olive's apartment, telling each other stories. Stories about people they have known -- "unrecorded lives," Olive calls them -- reanimating them, and in the process, imbuing their lives with meaning.
Brimming with empathy and pathos, Tell Me Everything is Elizabeth Strout operating at the height of her powers, illuminating the ways in which our relationships keep us afloat. As Lucy says, "Love comes in so many different forms, but it is always love."
4. Portrait of a Thief
by Grace D Li
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - A New York Times Best Crime Novel of 2022 - A Most Anticipated Book of 2022 by Marie Claire, Washington Post, Vulture, NBC News, Buzzfeed and more! - An Edgar Award Nominee for Best First Novel & Longlisted for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize
“The thefts are engaging and surprising, and the narrative brims with international intrigue. Li, however, has delivered more than a straight thriller here, especially in the parts that depict the despair Will and his pals feel at being displaced, overlooked, underestimated and discriminated against. This is as much a novel as a reckoning.” – New York Times Book Review
Ocean's Eleven meets The Farewell in Portrait of a Thief, a lush, lyrical heist novel inspired by the true story of Chinese art vanishing from Western museums; about diaspora, the colonization of art and the complexity of the Chinese American identity
History is told by the conquerors. Across the Western world, museums display the spoils of war, of conquest, of colonialism: priceless pieces of art looted from other countries, kept even now. Will Chen plans to steal them back.
A senior at Harvard, Will fits comfortably in his carefully curated roles: a perfect student, an art history major and sometimes artist, the eldest son who has always been his parents' American Dream. But when a mysterious Chinese benefactor reaches out with an impossible and illegal job offer, Will finds himself something else as well: the leader of a heist to steal back five priceless Chinese sculptures, looted from Beijing centuries ago.
His crew is every heist archetype one can imagine or at least, the closest he can get. A con artist: Irene Chen, a public policy major at Duke who can talk her way out of anything. A thief: Daniel Liang, a premed student with steady hands just as capable of lockpicking as suturing. A getaway driver: Lily Wu, an engineering major who races cars in her free time. A hacker: Alex Huang, an MIT dropout turned Silicon Valley software engineer. Each member of his crew has their own complicated relationship with China and the identity they've cultivated as Chinese Americans, but when Will asks, none of them can turn him down.
Because if they succeed? They earn $50 million -- and a chance to make history. But if they fail, it will mean not just the loss of everything they've dreamed for themselves but yet another thwarted attempt to take back what colonialism has stolen.
Equal parts beautiful, thoughtful, and thrilling, Portrait of a Thief is a cultural heist and an examination of Chinese American identity, as well as a necessary critique of the lingering effects of colonialism.
5. Three Days in June
by Anne Tyler
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - A new Anne Tyler novel destined to be an instant classic: a socially awkward mother of the bride navigates the days before and after her daughter's wedding.
"Nobody understands human nature better than Tyler. And nobody understands the complexities of love the way she does." --Boston Globe
"Three Days in June is like reading a hug." --Minneapolis Star Tribune
Gail Baines is having a bad day. To start, she loses her job (or quits), depending on whom you ask. Tomorrow her daughter, Debbie, is getting married, and she hasn't even been invited to the spa day organized by the mother of the groom. Then, Gail's ex-husband Max arrives unannounced on her doorstep, carrying a cat, without a place to stay, and without even a suit.
But the true crisis lands when Debbie shares with her parents a secret she has just learned about her husband to be. It will not only throw the wedding into question but also stir up Gail and Max's past.
Told with deep sensitivity and a tart sense of humor, full of the joys and heartbreaks of love and marriage and family life, Three Days in June is a triumph and gives us the perennially bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer at the height of her powers.
6. One of the Good Guys
by Araminta Hall
A CrimeReads Most Anticipated Fiction Novel of 2024 and Best Psychological Thriller for January - A Book Riot Most Anticipated Book of Jan-Jun 2024 - A Tertulia Best New Crime and Thriller Book This Winter - A Paste Most Anticipated Mystery and Thriller Book of 2024
Two young women vanish in a seaside town. At the cliff's edge, nobody is who they seem. Desperate to escape the ghosts of his failed marriage, Cole upends his life. He leaves London behind for a remote stretch of coast, relishing the respite from the noise, drama, and relentless careerism that curdled his relationship and mental health. Leonora has made the same move for similar reasons. She's living a short walk from Cole's seaside cottage, preparing for her latest art exhibition. Though Cole still can't figure out what went wrong with his marriage, and Leonora is having trouble acclimating to the hostile landscape, the pair forges a connection on the eroding bluff they call home.
Then, two young women activists raising awareness about gendered violence disappear while passing through. Cole and Leonora find themselves in the middle of a police investigation and the resulting media firestorm when the world learns of what happened. And as the tension escalates alongside the search for the missing women, they quickly realize that they don't know each other that well after all.
From the critically acclaimed author of Our Kind of Cruelty and Imperfect Women, comes an urgent psychological thriller about gender, power, and how both are captured in our contemporary media environment. Unexpected and twisty from its first page to its last, One of the Good Guys asks: If most men claim to be good, why are most women still afraid to walk home alone at night?
7. A Little Life
by Hanya Yanagihara
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - A stunning "portrait of the enduring grace of friendship" (NPR) about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. A masterful depiction of love in the 21st century.
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST - MAN BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST - WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE
A Little Life follows four college classmates -- broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition -- as they move to New York in search of fame and fortune. While their relationships, which are tinged by addiction, success and pride, deepen over the decades, the men are held together by their devotion to the brilliant, enigmatic Jude, a man scarred by an unspeakable childhood trauma. A hymn to brotherly bonds and a masterful depiction of love in the 21st century, Hanya Yanagihara's stunning novel is about the families we are born into and those that we make for ourselves.
8. Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies
by Maddie Mortimer
A Jen Hatmaker Book Club Pick - Named a Best Book of 2022 by Time, The New Yorker, and The Wall Street Journal - Longlisted for the Booker Prize - Winner of the Desmond Elliott Prize - Shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize - Longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize
This lyrical debut novel is at once a passionate coming-of-age story, a meditation on illness and death and a kaleidoscopic journey through one woman's life -- told in part by the malevolent voice of her disease.
Lia, her husband Harry and their beloved daughter Iris are a precisely balanced family of three. With Iris struggling to navigate the social tightrope of early adolescence, their tender home is a much-needed refuge. But when a sudden diagnosis threatens to derail each of their lives, the secrets of Lia's past come rushing into the present, and the world around them begins to transform.
Deftly guided through time, we discover the people who shaped Lia's youth; from her deeply religious mother to her troubled first love. In turn, each will take their place in the shifting landscape of Lia's body; at the center of which dances a gleeful narrator, learning her life from the inside, growing more emboldened by the day.
Pivoting between the domestic and the epic, the comic and the heart-breaking, this astonishing novel unearths the darkness and levity of one woman's life to symphonic effect.
9. Demon Copperhead
by Barbara Kingsolver
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE - WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION - New York Times Readers' Pick: Top 100 Books of the 21st Century - An Oprah's Book Club Selection - An Instant New York Times Bestseller - A New York Times "Ten Best Books of the Year"
"Demon is a voice for the ages -- akin to Huck Finn or Holden Caulfield -- only even more resilient." -- Beth Macy, author of Dopesick
"May be the best novel of [the year] … Equal parts hilarious and heartbreaking, this is the story of an irrepressible boy nobody wants, but readers will love." -- Ron Charles, Washington Post
From the acclaimed author of The Poisonwood Bible and The Bean Trees and the recipient of the National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, a brilliant novel that enthralls, compels and captures the heart as it evokes a young hero's unforgettable journey to maturity
Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit and a fierce talent for survival. Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities.
Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours. Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens' anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can't imagine leaving behind.
10. The Correspondent
by Virginia Evans
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - Discover the word-of-mouth hit hailed by Ann Patchett as "A cause for celebration" -- an intimate novel about the transformative power of the written word and the beauty of slowing down to reconnect with the people we love.
"The Correspondent is this year's breakout novel no one saw coming." -- The Wall Street Journal
"I cried more than once as I witnessed this brilliant woman come to understand herself more deeply." -- Florence Knapp, author of The Names
In development as a major motion picture starring Jane Fonda - LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE, THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL AND THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION - A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
"Imagine, the letters one has sent out into the world, the letters received back in turn, are like the pieces of a magnificent puzzle. …Isn't there something wonderful in that, to think that a story of one's life is preserved in some way, that this very letter may one day mean something, even if it is a very small thing, to someone?"
Filled with knowledge that only comes from a life fully lived, The Correspondent is a gem of a novel about the power of finding solace in literature and connection with people we might never meet in person. It's about the hubris of youth and the wisdom of old age, and the mistakes and acts of kindness that occur during a lifetime.
Sybil Van Antwerp has throughout her life used letters to make sense of the world and her place in it. Most mornings, around half past ten, Sybil sits down to write letters--to her brother, to her best friend, to the president of the university who will not allow her to audit a class she desperately wants to take, to Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry to tell them what she thinks of their latest books, and to one person to whom she writes often yet never sends the letter.
Sybil expects her world to go on as it always has -- a mother, grandmother, wife, divorcee, distinguished lawyer, she has lived a very full life. But when letters from someone in her past force her to examine one of the most painful periods of her life, she realizes that the letter she has been writing over the years needs to be read and that she cannot move forward until she finds it in her heart to offer forgiveness.
Sybil Van Antwerp's life of letters might be "a very small thing," but she also might be one of the most memorable characters you will ever read.
11. Heartwood
by Amity Gaige
"Heartwood will keep you guessing the whole way through. I didn't want it to end." -- Liz Moore
"The best thriller of 2025." --The Boston Globe * "Genius." -- The Washington Post
"A literary thriller of the highest order" (Elin Hilderbrand, New York Times bestselling author of The Perfect Couple), Heartwood takes you on a gripping journey as a search and rescue team race against time after a woman mysteriously disappears on the Appalachian Trail.
In the heart of the Maine woods, an experienced Appalachian Trail hiker goes missing. She is 42-year-old Valerie Gillis, who has vanished 200 miles from her final destination. Alone in the wilderness, Valerie pours her thoughts into fractured, poetic letters to her mother as she battles the elements and struggles to keep hoping.
At the heart of the investigation is Beverly, the determined Maine State Game Warden tasked with finding Valerie, who leads the search on the ground. Meanwhile, Lena, a 76-year-old birdwatcher in a Connecticut retirement community, becomes an unexpected armchair detective. Roving between these compelling narratives, a puzzle emerges, intensifying the frantic search, as Valerie's disappearance may not be accidental.
Heartwood is a "gem of a thousand facets -- suspenseful, transporting, tender and ultimately soul-mending," (Megan Majumdar, New York Times bestselling author of A Burning) that tells the story of a lost hiker's odyssey and is a moving rendering of each character's interior journey. The mystery inspires larger questions about the many ways in which we get lost, and how we are found. At its core, Heartwood is an "unputdownable" (Real Simple) and redemptive novel, written with both enormous literary ambition and love.
12. Good People
by Patmeena Sabit
ONE OF THE NEW YORKER'S BEST BOOKS OF 2026 SO FAR
"A thrilling tour de force of a novel. I'll be recommending this book to everyone." -- ANN PATCHETT
"[A] gorgeous and powerful debut." -- TOMMY ORANGE, The New York Times
"A stunning read." -- KHALED HOSSEINI
"Utterly addictive, Good People will have everyone talking." -- PAULA HAWKINS
Zorah Sharaf could do no wrong. Zorah Sharaf brought shame upon her family. What's the truth? Depends on who you ask. In a haunting debut novel that reads like true crime, told through a kaleidoscope of perspectives, a private tragedy thrusts one family into the court of public opinion as the media, and their own community, dissect every aspect of their lives.
The Sharaf family is the picture of success. Prosperous, rich, happy. They came to this country as refugees with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. And now, after years of hard work, they live in the most exclusive neighborhood, their growing family attending the most prestigious schools. Zorah, the eldest daughter, is the apple of her father's eye.
When an unthinkable tragedy strikes, everyone is left reeling. There is talk that behind closed doors the Sharafs' happy household was anything but. Did the Sharaf family achieve the American dream? Or was the image of the model immigrant family just a façade?
Like a literary game of ping-pong, Good People compels the reader to reconsider what might have happened even on the previous page. It's a riveting, provocative story of family -- sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers and the communities that claim us as family in difficult times.
13. The Rest of Our Lives
by Ben Markovits
NATIONAL BESTSELLER & FINALIST FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE
"Feels less like reading a novel and more like sitting in a car beside a dear friend as he navigates the road up ahead. A profoundly moving experience." -- Ann Patchett
"Deeply human ... a beautifully quiet and devastating book." -- Sarah Jessica Parker
A triumphantly life-affirming road trip novel about marriage, middle-age and a man at a crossroads in his life. When Tom Layward's wife had an affair 12 years ago, he resolved to leave her as soon as his youngest child left the nest. Now, while driving his college-bound daughter to Pittsburgh, he remembers his promise to himself. He is also on the run from his own health issues and a forced leave from work.
So, rather than returning to his wife in Westchester, Tom keeps driving west, with the vague plan of visiting people from his past – an old college friend, his ex-girlfriend, his brother, his son -- en route, maybe, to California. He's moving towards a future he hasn't even envisioned yet while he considers his past and the choices he's made that have brought him to this particular present. Pitch-perfect, tender and keenly observed, The Rest of Our Lives is a story about what to do when the rest of your life is only just the beginning of your story.