New year, new book list! As avid readers and book clubbers, we're always looking out for the next hot book that will spark discussion and move our souls at our monthly meetings.
We're looking ahead at 2024's new book releases, and we're adding a bunch to our book club polls and Want to Read shelves.
Whether your club craves thought-provoking literary works, gripping page-turner thrillers, fascinating historical fiction, or swoon-worthy romance, the most anticipated 2024 book club contenders have something for all tastes. Check out the full list -- from long-awaited follow ups by bestselling authors to promising debut novels creating lots of chatter -- below.
If you're looking for book club inspiration that's already been published, you can check out our book club predictions from 2023 and what ended up being 2023's most popular book club books. From our Top Books page, you can also check out what books are trending with book clubs on our website each month.
Our ultimate list of the best book club books for 2024!
The Clinic by Cate Quinn
From the critically acclaimed author of Black Widows comes a thriller set in a remote rehab clinic on the Pacific Northwest coast, in which the death of a woman inside prompts her sister to enter the clinic as a patient in order to find the truth. Perfect for fans of Stacy Willingham and Tarryn Fisher!
Sugar, Baby by Celine Saintclare
In the vein of Luster, Maame, and Queenie, an unflinching portrayal of high-paid sex work in the age of the internet—an intoxicating, bold debut novel from a dazzling new voice.
A compelling journey of self-discovery that offers sharp commentary on race, beauty, and class, Sugar, Baby is an electric, original, spellbinding novel that will keep readers turning the pages until the very end.
Bright and Tender Dark by Joanna Pearson
A thrilling, exquisitely written debut novel about a murder on a college campus and its aftermath twenty years later.
Jumping between 2019 and 1999, Bright and Tender Dark takes us from the era of Reddit threads and online obsession to the evangelism-infused culture of the late ’90s to reveal what really happened to nineteen-year-old Karlie Richards. It is a compulsively readable, prismatic literary mystery that brilliantly mines the mythology of murder, the power of urban legend, and the psychological urge to both protect and exploit what you love but cannot have.
Traveling without Moving: Essays from a Black Woman Trying to Survive in America by Taiyon J. Coleman
A stunning lyrical commentary on the constructions of race, gender, and class in the fraught nexus of a Black woman’s personal experience and cultural history. Powerfully moving between a first-person lens and a wider-ranging critique of U.S. society, policy, and academia, Taiyon J. Coleman explores what it means to write her story and that of her family, bringing forth the inherent contradictions between American ideals and Black reality.
“Hope is a nest of yellowjackets in this collection of personal essays. Coleman hammers the page to make sense of a world that refuses to make sense of her.” —Nikky Finney
A Plague on Both Your Houses: A Novel in the Shadow of the Russian Mafia by Robert Littell
So long as the violence appears to be random—a corpse here, a corpse there—the bleeding hearts won’t lose a wink of sleep. Two warring mafias fight for Moscow after the fall of the Soviet Union, forcing Yulia and Roman to navigate the minefield of a star-crossed love affair as they attempt to escape a destiny that appears preordained in this thrilling new tale of love and war from New York Times bestselling author Robert Littell.
Maria's Scarf: A Memoir of a Mother's Love, a Son's Perseverance, and Dreaming Big by Zoro
As the fatherless, biracial child of a Mexican immigrant, Danny Donnelly was never expected to amount to much. Through it all, Danny transformed himself into Zoro, one of the world’s greatest drummers. Eloquent, hilarious, and remarkably tender, Maria’s Scarf: A Memoir of a Mother’s Love, a Son’s Perseverance, and Dreaming Big, tells the story of a family fighting for survival against almost insurmountable odds.
Same As It Ever Was by Clare Lombardo
The Magisterial New Novel by the New York Times Bestselling Author of The Most Fun We Ever Had
Julia Ames, after a youth marked by upheaval, has found herself on the placid plateau of mid-life. Having nearly derailed her life several times, making desperate bids for the kind of connection that always felt inaccessible to her, she finally feels that she has come to terms with whatever life can throw at her.
She’s unprepared, though, for what comes next: a surprise announcement from her straight-arrow son, an impending separation from her spikey teenaged daughter, and a seductive resurgence of the past, all of which threaten to draw her back into the patterns that kept her on a razor’s edge for most of her life.
Traversing the rocky terrain of family life, Same As It Ever Was is another elegant and tumultuous family saga in the tradition of Elizabeth Strout and Ann Patchett.
Family Family by Laurie Frankel
"Not all stories of adoption are stories of pain and regret. Not even most of them. Why don't we ever get that movie?"
Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange
The Pulitzer Prize-finalist and author of the breakout bestseller There There ("Pure soaring beauty."The New York Times Book Review) delivers a masterful follow-up to his already classic first novel. Extending his constellation of narratives into the past and future, Tommy Orange traces the legacies of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 and the Carlisle Indian Industrial School through three generations of a family in a story that is by turns shattering and wondrous.
Funny Story by Emily Henry
A shimmering, joyful new novel about a pair of opposites with the wrong thing in common, from #1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Henry.
The Fury by Alex Michaelides
The Fury is the anticipated third novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Silent Patient, Alex Michaelides. The story unfolds on a posh Greek island where a reclusive ex–movie star, Lana Farrar's, annual gathering takes a dark turn and one of her guests is murdered. What follows is a twisty mystery and game of cat-and-mouse. With echoes of The Talented Mr. Ripley and The Glass Onion, Michaelides's newest thriller weaves a tale of love, betrayal, and murder that Lucy Foley calls "gloriously atmospheric and utterly riveting." With praise from literary giants and early readers, The Fury is poised to be a book club must-read, delivering a gripping narrative that keeps you turning pages.
The Women by Kristin Hannah
From the worldwide bestselling author of The Four Winds, The Nightingale and Firefly Lane (now a hit series on Netflix), The Women is an epic historical fiction novel about the American women who volunteered to serve in Vietnam. Following twenty-year-old Frankie McGrath, who leaves her idyllic life in California to enlist with the Army Nurse Corps when her brother is shipped out to serve, The Women tells a bold story of war, loss, courage, friendship, and coming-of-age during a turbulent and divisive period in history.
These book selections comprise titles chosen by the Bookclubs editorial staff, as well as the top titles recommended for book clubs by some of our publishing sponsors, such as Bloomsbury, Sourcebooks, University of Minnesota Press, Blackstone, and Doubleday. If you purchase books through the links on this page, we may earn an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you.