13 Fantastic Books Sure to Get Your Book Club Talking

Blending literature and memoir, THIS IS THE STORY OF A HAPPY MARRIAGE stretches from Ann Patchett’s childhood to the present day, from a disastrous early marriage to a later happy one. She writes eloquently about family and friends, the hard work and joy of writing, and the unexpected thrill of opening a bookstore.

After an arranged marriage, Nazneen leaves her home and heart in Bangladesh for the mysterious and challenging city life of London, where she grows to be a devoted wife and mother. To her own amazement, when she begins an affair with a handsome young radical, her erotic awakening throws her old certainties into chaos.

At the age of twelve, Sophie is sent to New York from her impoverished village of Croix-des-Rosets, Haiti. But when she later returns home, she finds a landscape charged with the supernatural and scarred by political violence. This passionate novel bears witness to the traditions, suffering, and wisdom of her family and of Haitian culture.

Twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon, Marion and Shiva come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution. CUTTING FOR STONE is an unforgettable story of love and betrayal, and of two brothers whose fates are forever intertwined.

When reclusive writer Leonora is invited to the English countryside for a weekend away, she reluctantly agrees to make the trip. But as the first night falls, revelations unfold among friends old and new, an unnerving memory shatters Leonora’s reserve, and a haunting realization creeps in: the party is not alone in the woods.

Elsa is seven years old and different. Her eccentric grandmother is Elsa’s best—and only—friend. When she dies and leaves behind a series of letters apologizing to people she has wronged, Elsa discovers that her greatest adventure is just beginning. This is the heartfelt and humorous second novel from the author of A MAN CALLED OVE.

When Elizabeth Endicott arrives in Aleppo, Syria, in 1915 to help deliver food and medical aid to refugees of the Armenian Genocide during WWI, she falls in love with a young Armenian engineer. Years later, their American granddaughter embarks on a journey through her family’s history, uncovering a powerful story of love, loss, and secrets.

Set against the Congo’s fight for independence from political occupation and economic influence, the wife and four daughters of a fierce evangelical Baptist reconstruct the story of their family patriarch and question their own roles in the destructive actions of the West in Africa.

Seamlessly blending elements of crime and Southern literary fiction, CROOKED LETTER, CROOKED LETTER is the powerful and resonant story of two boyhood friends. Torn apart by circumstance, they are brought together again by a terrible crime in a small Mississippi town.

Riley MacPherson’s entire life was shaped by the belief that her older sister Lisa committed suicide as a teenager. More than twenty years later, she finds evidence that Lisa is alive. Her subsequent discoveries will put everything she thought she knew about her family into question.

This ambitious, electrifying work traces the harrowing journey of the famed Sarajevo Haggadah, a beautifully illuminated Hebrew manuscript, from fifteenth-century Spain to war-torn Bosnia. It falls to a renowned book conservator and a young librarian who risked his live to save it to discover its secrets and piece together the mystery of its miraculous survival.

In a seamless blending of fiction and fact, GUESTS ON EARTH tells the story of Evalina, an orphaned thirteen-year-old who is admitted to a mental institution in North Carolina in 1936 where she is taken under the wing of Highland Hospital’s most notable patient, Zelda Fitzgerald.

A fast-paced literary thriller perfect for book clubs. Upon hearing that his mentor, Harry Quebert, has been implicated in a cold-case murder, writer Marcus Goldman sets out to discover what really happened. To save Harry, his own writing career, and eventually even himself, Marcus writes a book that will solve the crime.