What makes a good book club book? A controversial read may be best for lively discussion. Others may prefer to keep the peace with an all-around crowd pleaser. The best book club books are the ones you keep thinking about long after you've turned the last page. We've selected books we couldn't put down. Books that made us text our bookish friends, and the ones we still think about today. There’s modern literary fiction, memoirs, and a female-focused list of authors. We could have included anything by Sally Rooney, Yaa Gyasi, or Celeste Ng. Whether you're in search of your next book club read or looking for a great book, here are 25 books we recommend.
Book club fiction
In 1980, physics professor Joan Goodwin pursues her dream of becoming one of NASA's first women astronauts. Alongside a diverse group of candidates, she finds unexpected friendship and love during their intensive training. But everything changes during mission STS-LR9 in December 1984, forcing Joan to reconsider everything she knows about her place in the universe.
A touching story about Tova Sullivan, a widow who works nights at the Sowell Bay Aquarium where she forms an unlikely friendship with Marcellus, an intelligent giant Pacific octopus. While Tova still grapples with her son's mysterious disappearance thirty years ago, Marcellus uncovers clues about that fateful night. Together, they explore the possibility of healing from the past and finding hope in unexpected places.
A gripping thriller set in 1978 that follows two women connected by a notorious crime. When a murderer terrorises a Florida sorority house, survivor Pamela Schumacher's life is forever altered. Across the country, Tina Cannon searches for answers about her missing friend, believing both cases are linked to the same killer. Their paths converge in a shocking confrontation as they pursue justice and challenge the media's sensationalised narrative of a infamous murderer.
In 1960s America, brilliant chemist Elizabeth Zott faces constant discrimination at the Hastings Research Institute, finding an unlikely ally in Calvin Evans, who falls for her brilliant mind. Life takes an unexpected turn when she becomes a single mother and the host of a cooking show, where she uses her scientific expertise to teach women not just about chemistry, but about breaking free from society's constraints.
A psychological thriller about a housemaid who becomes increasingly entangled in the complicated lives of her employers, the Winchesters. As she cleans their beautiful home and cares for their daughter, she discovers disturbing dynamics between Nina and Andrew Winchester. When she crosses a line by trying on her employer's clothes, dark secrets emerge that reveal no one is quite who they appear to be.
The story of twin sisters, inseparable as children, who ultimately choose to live in two very different worlds, one black and one white. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' storylines intersect? Signed copies available.
A community in the Piedmont of North Carolina rises in outrage as a county initiative draws students from the largely Black east side of town into predominantly white high schools on the west. For two students, Gee and Noelle, the integration sets off a chain of events that will tie their two families together in unexpected ways over the next 20 years.
Connell and Marianne grew up in the same small town, but the similarities end there. At school, Connell is popular and well liked, while Marianne is a loner. But when the two strike up a conversation, something life changing begins. A story of mutual fascination, friendship and love. Signed copies available.
A thrilling book that offers a look at our changing world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator, Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities. Klara and the Sun explores the fundamental question: what does it mean to love? Signed copies available.
In a dystopian future, environmental disasters and declining birthrates have led to a Second American Civil War. A totalitarian regime enforces rigid social roles and enslaves the few remaining fertile women. Offred is one of these, a Handmaid bound to produce children for one of the regime's commanders. Deprived of her husband, her child, her freedom, and even her own name, Offred clings to her memories and her will to survive. Signed copies available.
The story of Calliope Stephanides and three generations of the Greek-American Stephanides family who travel from a tiny village overlooking Mount Olympus in Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit, witnessing its glory days as the Motor City, and the race riots of 1967, before moving to suburban Grosse Pointe. Calliope is not like other girls, and to understand why she has to uncover a guilty family secret and the astonishing genetic history that turns Callie into Cal, one of the most audacious and wondrous narrators in contemporary fiction. Signed copies available.
The deeply moving story about a blind French girl, Marie-Laure, and a German boy, Werner Pfennig, whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Signed copies available.
An exquisite novel about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee, and her parents are determined that she will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue. But when Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together is destroyed, tumbling them into chaos.
Two half sisters are born into different villages in Ghana, each unaware of the other. One will marry an Englishman and lead a life of comfort in the palatial rooms of the Cape Coast Castle. The other will be captured in a raid on her village, imprisoned in the very same castle, and sold into slavery. This extraordinary novel illuminates slavery’s troubled legacy both for those who were taken and those who stayed and shows how the memory of captivity has been inscribed on the soul of our nation. Signed copies available.
Eleven-year-old Wash, a field slave on a Barbados sugar plantation, is initially terrified when he is chosen as the manservant of his master’s brother. To his surprise, however, the eccentric man turns out to be a naturalist, explorer, inventor, and abolitionist. But when a man is killed and a bounty is placed on Wash’s head, they must abandon everything and flee together. Their travels will tear them apart, propelling Wash ever farther across the globe in search of his true self. Signed copies available.
Forced to flee their home in Acapulco, Mexico Lydia and eight-year-old Luca soon find themselves riding la bestia - trains that make their way north toward the United States. As they join the countless people trying to reach el norte, Lydia soon sees that everyone is running from something. But what exactly are they running to? Signed copies available.
Francis Gleeson and Brian Stanhope, rookie NYPD cops, are neighbours in the suburbs. What happens behind closed doors in both houses - the loneliness of Francis’s wife, Lena, and the instability of Brian’s wife, Anne, sets the stage for the explosive events to come. Heartbreaking and redemptive, Ask Again, Yes is a gorgeous and generous portrait of the daily intimacies of marriage and the power of forgiveness.
A startling portrait of a young woman fighting for her life and her unborn child against oppressive forces that manifest in the wake of a cataclysmic event. A chilling dystopian novel both provocative and prescient, this novel is a moving meditation on female agency, self-determination, biology, and natural rights that speaks to the troubling changes of our time. Signed copies available.
Turtle Alveston is a survivor. At 14, she roams the woods along the northern California coast. But while her physical world is expansive, her personal one is small and treacherous: Turtle has grown up isolated since the death of her mother, in the thrall of her tortured father, Martin. Her social existence is confined to the middle school and to her life with her father. Then Turtle meets Jacob, and for the first time, the larger world begins to come into focus: her life with Martin is neither safe nor sustainable. Signed copies available.
In the thick of motherhood's exhausting early days, Blythe becomes convinced that something is wrong with her daughter - she doesn't behave like most children do. Or is it all in Blythe's head? Her husband, Fox, says she's imagining things. The more Fox dismisses her fears, the more Blythe begins to question her own sanity, and the more we begin to question what Blythe is telling us about her life as well.
As children, Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were students at Hailsham, an exclusive boarding school secluded in the English countryside. It was a place of mercurial cliques and mysterious rules where teachers were constantly reminding their charges of how special they were. Now, years later, Kathy reconnects with Ruth and Tommy and is beginning to look back at their shared past and understand just what it is that makes them special. Signed copies available.
Book club memoirs
Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, Tara Westover was 17 the first time she set foot in a classroom. Her family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education. When her brother got himself into college, Tara decided to try a new kind of life. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her to Harvard and to Cambridge University. Signed copies available.
Valenti explores the toll that sexism takes on women’s lives, from the everyday to the existential. From subway gropings and imposter syndrome to sexual awakenings and motherhood, Sex Object reveals the painful, embarrassing, and sometimes illegal moments that shaped Valenti’s adolescence and young adulthood in New York City.
The Glass Castle is a remarkable memoir of resilience and redemption, and a revelatory look into a family at once deeply dysfunctional and uniquely vibrant. The Walls children learned to take care of themselves and eventually found their way to New York. Their parents followed them, choosing to be homeless even as their children prospered.
Chanel Miller was known to the world as Emily Doe when she stunned millions with her victim impact statement following the sentencing of her attacker, Brock Turner. Her story illuminates a culture biased to protect perpetrators, indicts a criminal justice system designed to fail the most vulnerable, and, ultimately, shines with the courage required to move through suffering and live a full and beautiful life.
