9 Book Club Picks to Cozy Up with This Winter

The January Book Club Favorites pick, Kate Morton’s latest novel is sure to be a hit with book clubs everywhere. Told from multiple perspectives across time, THE CLOCKMAKER’S DAUGHTER is a story of murder, mystery, thievery, art, love, and loss. Flowing through its pages like a river is the voice of a woman who stands outside time, whose name has been forgotten by history but who has watched it all unfold: Birdie Bell, the clockmaker’s daughter.

Miranda July meets Mary Karr in this brilliant debut novel from Jen Beagin—about a cleaning lady on a quest for self-acceptance after her relationship with a loveable junkie goes awry.

Inspired by Laurie Frankel’s own transgender child, this beautiful and often heartbreaking novel was a recent Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick. When their youngest son, Claude, expresses his love for dresses and his ultimate desire to be a girl, Rosie and Penn aren’t sure how to handle the situation. As Claude grows and becomes Poppy, they encourage her to stay true to herself, while grappling with this ever-growing secret and a multitude of hard decisions.

For fans of the Debra Messing film of the same name, Jasmine Guillory’s THE WEDDING DATE is a light and breezy romance that Roxane Gay lauds as a “charming, warm, sexy gem of a novel.” On the eve of his ex’s wedding festivities, Drew Nichols is stranded in an elevator with the perfect candidate for a fake girlfriend, Alexa Monroe. For Alexa, it’s a strange proposition, but there’s something about Drew that’s hard to resist.

Before you jump into Diane Setterfield’s new novel, ONCE UPON A RIVER, make sure you’ve read and discussed this beloved book club read. Biographer Margaret Lea is approached by a well-loved but gravely ill author who has a surprising request: she wants Margaret to capture her life’s story before it’s too late. Although Margaret’s never read the author’s work, she’s intrigued and soon gets immersed in her strange and troubling history.

A delightful mix of thrilling and darkly funny, this witty debut follows two Nigerian sisters, Korede and Ayoola, who have a dark secret—Ayoola is a sociopath whose boyfriends keep turning up dead. When Korede’s crush—a handsome doctor at the hospital where she works—asks for Ayoola’s phone number, Korede must reckon with what her sister has become and how far she’s willing to go to protect her.

Shahryar, a recent PhD graduate and father of nine-year-old Anna, must leave the US when his visa expires. In their last remaining weeks together, we learn Shahryar’s history, in a vil¬lage on the Bay of Bengal, where a poor fisherman and his wife are preparing to face a storm of historic proportions. For book clubs that loved Khaled Hosseini’s THE KITE RUNNER, THE STORM explores the humanity that connects us beyond the surface differences of race, religion, and nationality.

For fans of ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE and LILAC GIRLS, Kristin Harmel’s rich and emotional novel was the November Book Club Favorites pick. THE ROOM ON RUE AMÉLIE follows three characters—Ruby, a newlywed who arrives in Paris just as the Nazis are about to invade; Charlotte, a young Jewish girl who watches her life fall apart when the deportations begin; and Thomas, a British Royal Air Force pilot who finds himself forever changed by what he encounters in the City of Light—as fate brings them together under the shadow of the occupation. Together, they must learn to survive, and open themselves to the possibility of a future.

THE FISHERMEN is the Cain and Abel–esque story of an unforgettable childhood in 1990s Nigeria. When their strict father has to travel to a distant city for work, the four brothers skip school and go fishing. At the ominous nearby river, they meet a dangerous local madman who persuades the oldest of the boys that he is destined to be killed by one of his siblings. If your book club couldn’t stop talking about BEHOLD THE DREAMERS, make THE FISHERMEN your next pick ahead of the release of Chigozie Obioma’s second novel, AN ORCHESTRA OF MINORITIES.

Read the full review of THE FISHERMEN.