13 of the Best Book Club Books to Discuss Now

This book, a non-fiction read, documents the glowing girls of the 1920s—women who worked in radium-dial factories.

Tasked with painting the faces of watch dials with the glow-in-the-dark radium paint, the women worked hard and fast to prove what good employees they were. And, since it was at first believed that radium held health benefits, they had no qualms with licking the tips of the paintbrushes so they could be even quicker and more precise in completing their work.

The girls became so coated with the radium dust that when they would leave work at night, they would glow in the dark streets. But what they didn’t know was the health risk they were being exposed to.

Soon enough, the girls started becoming ill in very horrible and painful ways. And some died. When doctors began to suspect that their jobs had something to do with it, the factories ignored concerns and continued to put more of these women at risk.

A page-turner of a read, this story shows the extraordinary strength of these women as they had to fight for their voices to be heard and the truth of their unsafe work practices to be brought to light. Heartbreaking and illuminating, this story has stuck with me years beyond when I first read it, and it is one that I continually want to discuss.

Conversational in tone with unbelievable historical elements, Miller explores the life of David Starr Jordan, a taxonomist who was obsessed with cataloging fish and is credited with discovering nearly a fifth of the fish we know today.

During the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, his life’s work, preserved away in glass jars, was demolished. In the midst of chaos, Jordan regrouped and returned to work, developing a system to prevent a similar catastrophe.

Experiencing her own personal turmoil, Miller begins to research Jordan’s life, admiring his tenacity to keep going despite life’s pull toward entropy.

But the more she learns about his life, the more complex and complicated: he becomes the first president of Stanford University, a pioneer of the eugenics movement, and possibly a murder suspect.

Henrietta Lacks has been dead for more than sixty years. But her immortal HeLa cells live in on science labs around the world. Her cells have helped in the development of the polio vaccine, cancer and virus discoveries, in vitro fertilization, cloning and more. Yet, Henrietta had no idea that doctors were using her cells and her family didn’t learn about HeLa cells until twenty years after she died.

Though a multi-billion-dollar industry sold and profited off her cells, her family received no compensation.

Engaging, riveting and frustrating, this non-fiction New York Times bestseller focuses on the HeLa cells, as well as the Lacks family.

First gaining the family’s trust, it took Skloot over a decade for the story to come together. She then created a page-turner of a scientific story, one of bioethics, poverty, discovery, privacy and ownership.

I first read this book years ago, but I constantly talk about it, still confounded by the story, while also seeing modern-day parallels to questions of ownership of our data and genetic material.

What is friendship in your middle ages?

Forty-year-old May Attaway sets out on an odyssey of sorts to reconnect with four best friends who she met over the course of her life, and who she hasn’t seen in decades.

As she reaches life’s midpoint, this socially-awkward loner is examining the meaning of friendship and community in a digitally-dominated world. Her profession as a university gardener is the perfect juxtaposition to the online world that allows us to cultivate appearances and aesthetics.

Quiet, witty and poignant, I had to remind myself on multiple occasions that I was reading a work of fiction, not a memoir.

May’s voice is so natural and conversational that I believed her to be real. This book is subtle, patient, and slow in the best possible ways. I felt as if I was listening to an old friend, relating to her experiences, and asking similar life questions as her.

This book is sure to spark plenty of conversation about modern friendship and the importance of IRL bonds.

Nearly twelve-years old, Margaret Simon has just moved from New York City to Farbook, New Jersey. She quickly becomes friends with a group girls who forge a secret club where they can talk about all the important matters: boys, bras, God, and getting their periods.

Over the course of the book, we follow Margaret as she adjusts to life outside the city, new friends, intrusive grandparents, family drama and all the angst that comes with puberty.

I have to confess that I just read this book for the first time. I know, I know; I missed out on a major milestone by not reading this when I was younger, but at that age, I wasn’t much of a reader. While I enjoyed the humor and perspective of this story, I was astonished by how freely Margaret talked about bras, periods and the desire to have her first one.

My adolescent experience was much different, much quieter and tight lipped. But that’s also why I recommend this read for book clubs.

For some readers, this will be a chance to return to an old favorite. And I have no doubt that this will start great conversations and discussions of what women’s experiences have been.

Plus, the movie version starring Rachel McAdams is set to release in the spring of 2023, which would make for a fun "real life" book club outing. Not to mention, this would be a great selection to read with your middle school or high school daughter...

A Case Worker for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, Linus Baker is a good, devoted, rule-following employee who lives alone with his cat. And he’s quite alright with his life as it is.

But, when Extremely Upper Management sends him on a highly-classified assignment to the Marsyas Island Orphanage, the supposed dangerous children he encounters there, along with the secrets he uncovers, challenge his perception of work, life, and relationships.

A combination of YA and fantasy, this is not the typical book I would read, but after a very persistent friend continued to insist I read it, I gave in.

And I’m so glad I did.

I chose to listen to the book, and the audio version was delightful. I’m sure my neighbors wondered what was wrong with me as I walked through the neighborhood, reacting and laughing out loud.

Both the author and the narrator brought this vivid cast of misfit characters to life, and I couldn’t help but fall in love with them, even the supposed Antichrist.

Plus, it has a cat, and I’m always a sucker for a book with a cat.

A story about kindness even in the darkest places, it explores identity, friendship, acceptance, and found family and is sure to pull at your heartstrings.

Told from the perspective of eleven-year-old KB, this story follows two sisters. After they lost their father to an overdose, their overwhelmed mother sends them to live with their estranged grandfather for the summer.

KB finds herself alone in what feels like a stranger’s house. Even her sister who used to be her best friend, now wants nothing to do with her because adolescence has built a wall between them.

KB attempts to befriend neighbors, but barriers stand in the way, leaving her lost and alone again, trying to figure out who she is while also confronting long-held secrets.

I am a sucker for a coming-of-age story and Harris does a beautiful job of capturing the voice and emotions of KB as she is caught between childhood and the teen years.

This book explores racism, mental health, family dynamics, and the realities we face when we have to grow up too quickly.

Reflecting on how your sibling relationships evolve in adolescence would yield a dynamic discussion.

The story of two, lone teenage girls forging an unlikely partnership, this book is Southern fiction at its best.

Set in the 1920s in Natchez Trace, Mississippi, Ada swore she would never go back after running away from home. With no other options, she finds herself returning to her harsh father.

Meanwhile, Matilda, daughter of a sharecropper, lives on the other side of the Trace. Fierce and determined, Matilda plans to escape the hard realities of her life in the South. Soon their paths cross as they realize that survival might require something that is in short supply: trust.

Mustian’s prose is poetry, her description so visceral that the Trace becomes a character of its own, full of beauty, danger, and long-buried secrets.

I got lost in this literary book, so full of character depth and development. The Girls in the Stilt House explores themes of belonging, race, found family, and the costs of hidden pasts.

This isn’t just a must-read book; it is one that I will read again and again just to be reminded of the masterfully-crafted story telling.

In 1908, Dorothy Draper is living the aristocratic life, in search of love as she forges her future, but she wants more than the planned-out life her parents desire for her. She always chafes against the traditions of high society. All except for the summers she spends at the Greenbrier Resort in West Virginia. 

Thirty-eight years later, Dorothy has divorced and established America’s first interior design firm, when she returns to the Greenbrier, not as a guest but as the interior designer hired to restore the aging resort to its former beauty.

But what people don’t know is that her business is on the cusp of closing. She undertakes the massive design job because of her love for the Greenbriar, her memories there, and as a last-chance effort to save her business and her reputation.

Callaway captivates the reader through description and details that transport us into the story, and bring the Greenbriar and Dorothy to life.

I truly felt as if I was walking through the Greenbriar alongside Dorothy, seeing the interior design, fashion and characters in what felt like three-dimension.

Callaway’s extensive research is obvious and yet is relayed in subtle, natural ways, so the reader is immersed, feeling transported in time.

This is a must-read for lovers of interior design, historical fiction, and high society.

In 1936, the last of the rare Blue People live in Eastern Kentucky.

Cussy Mary Carter, a.k.a. Bluet, is not only different because of her blue-tinged skin, but also because she is a pack horse librarian who traverses the treacherous mountains by mule to deliver books to impoverished people living tucked away in the hills.

Despite poverty, prejudice and danger, Bluet has a feisty, indelible drive to keep going.

With this book, Richardson uncovered two fascinating historical nuggets: the Pack Horse Library Project started by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Blue People who had congenital methemoglobinemia that gave their skin a blue tinge.

Readers who love learning about historical tidbits such as these will be fascinated by this book, as will those who like strong, female lead characters and stories of hope against the odds.

Identical twins, the Vignes sisters grew up in a small town. At the age of sixteen, they ran away from their Southern, black community, hoping to find opportunity and a future. But their lives took very different paths in that pursuit.

One sister eventually moves back to her hometown with her daughter. She returns, in part to escape an abusive relationship, but also in hopes of finding answers to where her sister disappeared to. Separated by hundreds of miles, her sister is passing for white, married to a man who knows nothing of her past.

Told through the perspectives of multiple characters and over the span of decades, this New York Times bestseller beautifully weaves together the threads of the family’s complex relationships, even when they are physically and emotionally separated.

It explores identity, found family, race, belonging, and the generational impacts of people’s decisions and desires.

But perhaps what struck me most was the exploration of passing, not only in the case of race. It offers an empathetic view of the decisions people make in regards to identity and the consequences that result.

Set in a small Texas oil town in the mid-1970s, Valentine begins as a fourteen-year-old girl struggles to survive a violent assault. Soon the entire town has thoughts and opinions on who is to blame and what justice should look like.

Expertly told from alternating points of view, the story positions the reader in the minds of a cast of women whose lives intersect because of the tragedy. All share the commonality of struggling to survive in a gritty, dirty, dusty town that is thick with both a literal and figurative grime.

Powerful and compelling, this character-driven debut novel has stayed with me for years.

I love a rich, literary story that deepens empathy and makes me feel for the characters as if they are real people, and this book is at the top of that list for me.

Exploring the intersections of violence and race, class and region, strength and vulnerability, this book will provide plenty of topics for book club conversation.

Amy's addtion for today- we MUST include Meagan's book today!

Meagan Church bursts onto the historical fiction scene with a captivating coming-of-age story page-turner that will be difficult to put down and that any Diane Chamberlain fan will devour.

In 1935 beachy North Carolina, readers discover Leah, a character who delivers Ramona Quimby's mischievous energy. She lives in a cozy coastal shack where money is tight, but love from her father is abundant.

While Leah is creative and happy on the beach, her academic life leads much to be desired by her teachers. She also struggles with troubling seizure spells that affect her ability to concentrate and cause her to lose portions of time.

Her life takes an unfortunate twist when her father tragically dies in a logging-related accident that leaves her both orphaned and penniless.

With nowhere to turn, she is sent to the wealthy Griffin family, who live in a beautiful home and have agreed to take in Leah. She barely has time to settle before discovering that her room and board come with a new set of duties, working full-time as the family helpmate instead of attending school and the freedoms she had before.

As the other children in the home live their everyday wealthy lives, Leah is constantly corrected and thrown into situations meant to humiliate her and remind her of her poverty by the lady of the house, Mrs. Griffin. Although letters from her childhood friend only come through sporadically, they offer her the only comforts of home and sustain her through these moments.

As Leah blossoms into a young woman, Mrs. Griffin becomes vengeful, especially when she worries that Leah is catching the eye of her only son. Leah does not know there will be a dramatic retaliation to punish her for a lifetime of secrets.

It is impossible to write this review without saying what has also been included in the official book blurb and that this story is set against the backdrop of North Carolina's newly formed eugenics board. At that time, girls deemed "feebleminded" could be forcibly sterilized without consent for the "betterment of society."

While this is a big part of the inspiration for her story, there are other surprising fictionalized mysteries that many readers will appreciate that are just as beautifully done as this element. As Church often foreshadows what Leah's fate might hold, readers will be waiting for this scene to take place, but there are many well-crafted elements that any historical fiction reader will appreciate.

In the Author's Note at the end, we truly grasp how close to home this story was for Church as she uncovered the story of her great-aunt and then began researching North Carolina's sordid past with forced sterilizations in women who were deemed "feebleminded," criminals, the promiscuous, and those in poverty.

Church's scene-setting is where her writing, indeed, shines. She paints the landscape of North Carolina with breathtaking strokes that make readers feel as though they are on the beach with Leah exploring the sand. In addition, the historical details and well-thought dialogue are well-researched and meticulous. It is guaranteed to deliver on a thoughtful discussion.