BookBrowse Blog - Book Club Reading Lists

The Best Books for Book Clubs in 2026

Fri, 03 Oct 2025 13:29:00 -0500

Ready to start planning your book club selections for 2026? We’re here to help. These books have all been published in hardcover or paperback within the last year (or will be soon), and we’ve paired almost all of them with handy discussion guides—either from the publisher or written by our reviewers—for your convenience. Most have been featured on BookBrowse in reviews or as the subject of online discussions, and we’ve included our own comments below, along with links to the discussions, which we hope will inspire you in your own. Whether you’re looking for a contemporary narrative or a historical one, a reflective bit of character fiction or a family saga, we have you covered. Happy reading in the year ahead!

Please note that discussions may contain spoilers.

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Some of the Best Recent and Ongoing Series for Book Clubs

Thu, 02 Oct 2025 12:34:00 -0500

Reading a duology, trilogy, or longer series with your book club can be a special experience. Discussing linked books set in the same universe allows you to take an extended journey together, and the eager awaiting of a sequel or the next installment featuring a beloved character is a delicious anticipation that’s even better when shared. But what are the best series for book clubs? It might seem like series are the territory of certain types of genre fiction, like high fantasy, which many book groups don’t make a habit of reading, but in fact, there’s a wide variety out there that lend themselves well to discussion. Below, we present recent and ongoing series that seem ideal for book clubs—and in some cases are already very popular with them. Many of the books in these series have been subjects of BookBrowse reviews or online discussions—and we have reading guides for a lot of them!

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The Best Books for Book Clubs in 2025

Wed, 23 Oct 2024 08:00:00 -0500

How are your book club picks looking for 2025? To help book clubs choose their reads for next year, we've compiled a big list of favorites that we think would make great discussion selections. Almost all these books are paired with reading guides and have been featured (or will be featured) on BookBrowse, and all are either recent or upcoming hardcover or paperback releases. Some are even tried-and-tested titles from our own online book club, and we've included the discussion links below for inspiration. If you'd like to see even more titles publishing in 2025, you can check out our Most Anticipated Books for 2025. Happy reading!

Please note that discussions may contain spoilers.

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Book Clubs' All-Time Favorite Books (2024)

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 16:27:00 -0500

What are your favorite book club books of all time?

In our most recent survey, we asked subscribers to tell us what their overall top three book club books were. More than 800 responded, and we've compiled their answers to calculate the current top ten books for book club discussion.

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The Most Popular Book Club Historical Fiction of 2023

Fri, 12 Apr 2024 12:28:00 -0500

Historical fiction is often a well-loved genre for book clubs. It allows members to learn more about a particular time and place at their leisure while enjoying the twists and turns of a good story and sharing it with others.

We've already published the results of our most recent annual survey showing the Top 10 book club books of 2023, but how did historical novels fare? Below are the works of fiction set in past eras that book club members took the most pleasure in discussing.

The Most Popular Historical Fiction for Book Clubs in 2023 (with Pub Year)

	Book	% of Respondents
1	Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus (2022)	18.6%
2	Horse by Geraldine Brooks (2022)	12.9%
3	The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese (2023)	7.8%
4	West With Giraffes by Lynda Rutledge (2021)	5.5%
5	The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride (2023)	5.1%
6	Lady Tan's Circle of Women by Lisa See (2023)	3.4%
7	The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray (2021)	3.0%
8	The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles (2021)	3.0%
9	Trust by Hernan Diaz (2022)	2.0%
10	The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell (2022)	1.4%

The above information is based on a February 2024 survey of BookBrowse email subscribers. Only subscribers were eligible to take part so as to prevent the ratings being skewed by enthusiastic fan bases. Respondents were asked to name up to three favorites that they discussed in a book group setting in 2023; 3268 votes were cast.

The popularity of historical fiction is already evident by its presence in our general Top 10. Six of the ten, led by Lessons in Chemistry from Bonnie Garmus and Horse from Geraldine Brooks, are historical novels, leaving room for four more favorites. Filling the 7th and 8th place spots in a tie are Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray's The Personal Librarian, the story of Belle da Costa Greene, who hid her identity as a Black woman while working as J.P. Morgan's librarian in the early 20th century, and Amor Towles' The Lincoln Highway, which follows a spontaneous series of road trip adventures undertaken by a pair of brothers in the 1950s. These two titles also made our overall Top 10 of 2022, taking the #4 and #2 spots respectively.

Trust by Hernan Diaz, coming in at #9, is a metafictional feast of a novel featuring four accounts of a wealthy couple living in 1920s New York. Along with The Personal Librarian and Towles' novel, this work gives readers a unique glimpse into American history, and provides food for thought on the nature of truth and perspective.

Maggie O'Farrell's The Marriage Portrait, sliding in at #10, sweeps us away in another direction entirely. Set in 16th-century Italy, it relates a high-tension, alternate version of the story of the real Lucrezia de' Medici, daughter of a Grand Duke of Tuscany, in which she attempts to foil her husband's plans to murder her.

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