Reading lists
Best Book Club Books of 2027: The Most Anticipated New Releases
The new books we think clubs will be reading in 2027, in order of release. We're starting with January and adding more as the year goes on.
Published Oct 27, 2026
Some months, a 400-page book club pick just isn't going to happen. When everyone's calendar is full, a short book gives your club a fighting chance of finishing it, and of actually talking about the ending. These short books to read are all under 250 pages (most are under 200!), and are books that clubs on Bookclubs have read and rated highly.
The list starts with the short novels clubs read most, then covers new releases, easy reads, books in translation, sci-fi and fantasy, nonfiction and classics. If you want something even shorter, try one of the most anticipated short story collections of 2026.
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Jump to a section:
- Short Novels for Book Club (6)
- New Short Books (6)
- Easy Book Club Books (5)
- Short Books in Translation (4)
- Short Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books (5)
- Short Nonfiction Books (4)
- Short Classic Books (5)
Short Novels for Book Club
Clubs on Bookclubs have read Small Things Like These more than any other book on this list. The rest of this section covers a marriage told in fragments, a love story in London and a single day aboard a space station.
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Small Things Like These In 1985 Ireland, coal merchant Bill Furlong makes a discovery at the local convent that tests his courage and his town's silence. Keegan's novella Foster is equally compelling. Buy the Book Add to Shelf |
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How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water Laid off from the lamp factory in her mid-50s during the Great Recession, Cara Romero is sent to a job counselor and ends up telling the story of her life. Buy the Book Add to Shelf |
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Orbital Six astronauts and cosmonauts circle the Earth over a single day, watching the planet pass below them in a meditation on the vastness of space and the intimacy of humanity. Winner of the 2024 Booker Prize. Buy the Book Add to Shelf |
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Red at the Bone Moving back and forth in time, Jacqueline Woodson follows two families brought together by an unexpected teen pregnancy, and asks how young people make lifelong decisions before they know who they are. Buy the Book Add to Shelf |
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Open Water Two Black British artists, a photographer and a dancer, meet in a crowded London pub and fall in love, until fear and violence test them over the course of a year. Buy the Book Add to Shelf |
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Dept. of Speculation Told in short, sharp fragments, a wife looks back on her marriage and the moment it nearly broke, with as much wit as rage. Buy the Book Add to Shelf |
New Short Books
Recent short novels, including Elizabeth Strout's latest, an end-of-the-world road trip, a governess with very dark plans and a 2026 International Booker finalist translated from Bulgarian.
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The Things We Never Say History teacher Artie Dam already feels isolated, despite his outwardly idyllic life, and then life reveals a secret that upends his world. Shortlisted for the 2026 Booker Prize. Buy the Book Add to Shelf |
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Audition An actress meets a young man for lunch in Manhattan, and two versions of the story that follows ask whether we ever really know the people we love. Pulitzer Prize and Booker Prize finalist. Buy the Book Add to Shelf |
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Victorian Psycho Governess Winifred Notty arrives at Ensor House to tutor the Pounds children while trying to stifle her violent compulsions, and she has very special plans for Christmas. Buy the Book Add to Shelf |
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We Burned So Bright With a rogue black hole a month from Earth, husbands Don and Rodney set off on an end-of-the-world road trip from Maine to Washington State to take care of unfinished business. Buy the Book Add to Shelf |
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Transcription A writer drops his phone in a hotel sink on the way to interview his ninety-year-old mentor in this exploration of fathers and sons, male friendship, and the impact of technology on human connection and memory. Buy the Book Add to Shelf |
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She Who Remains In a rural Albanian village still ruled by ancient laws, Bekija chooses to become a "sworn virgin," setting off a heartbreaking chain of events. This groundbreaking queer novel was shortlisted for the 2026 International Booker Prize. Buy the Book Add to Shelf |
Easy Book Club Books
These are the quickest, most readable books on the list, good for a group with mixed tastes or members who are short on reading time. Several take on illness and death, but with plenty of warmth and humor.
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The Five People You Meet in Heaven After he dies, war veteran Eddie meets five people in the afterlife, and each of them helps explain what his life on Earth meant. Buy the Book Add to Shelf |
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The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 1 In 1883 London, Emma M. Lion records her sideways view of life at Lapis Lazuli House, with an eccentric cousin, a formidable aunt and some very odd neighbors. Buy the Book Add to Shelf |
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An Elderly Lady Is Up to No Good Maud is 88, has no family or friends, and has no qualms about a little murder in these darkly funny stories. Buy the Book Add to Shelf |
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The Deal of a Lifetime A father tells his estranged son about a little girl with cancer in the hospital nearby, and has to find out what his own life has been worth. Buy the Book Add to Shelf |
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What Does It Feel Like? Sophie Kinsella's autobiographical novella follows novelist Eve as she wakes up after brain tumor surgery and has to learn to walk, talk and write again. Poignant yet full of humor. Buy the Book Add to Shelf |
Short Books in Translation
Short novels translated from Japanese, Spanish and Italian. They range from quiet (The Housekeeper and the Professor) to very much not (Hurricane Season).
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Convenience Store Woman Keiko, 36, is happy working at a Tokyo convenience store, but her family and coworkers keep pushing her toward a husband and a proper career, prompting her to take desperate action. Buy the Book Add to Shelf |
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The Housekeeper and the Professor A young housekeeper is hired to look after a math professor whose memory lasts only eighty minutes, and their shared love of numbers slowly makes a family of them. Buy the Book Add to Shelf |
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Hurricane Season When the village Witch is found dead, unreliable narrators piece together her murder in long, breathless chapters that expose the violence of a rural Mexican town. Buy the Book Add to Shelf |
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The Dry Heart "I shot him between the eyes," the narrator says on the first page, then looks back on the lonely marriage that led her there. Buy the Book Add to Shelf |
Short Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books
Most of these are novellas, which makes them an easy way to try science fiction or fantasy with a club that doesn't usually read it.
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I Who Have Never Known Men Thirty-nine women live in an underground cage with no memory of how they got there. The youngest prisoner, an outcast girl, is the key to their escape and survival in the outside world. Buy the Book Add to Shelf |
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This Is How You Lose the Time War Two agents on opposite sides of a war across time start leaving each other taunting letters that slowly become love letters. For another short pick, check out El-Mohtar's The River Has Roots, a fairy-tale novella about two sisters. Buy the Book Add to Shelf |
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A Psalm for the Wild-Built A tea monk's travels are upended when a robot shows up asking what people need, in a hopeful story about whether having more really matters. Winner of the Hugo Award. Buy the Book Add to Shelf |
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All Systems Red A security android that has hacked its own governor module would rather watch TV than talk to humans, but it has to protect its scientists when a nearby mission goes dark. Buy the Book Add to Shelf |
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Annihilation Four women on the twelfth expedition into Area X, a region cut off from the world for decades, find life they can't explain and secrets they're keeping from one another. Buy the Book Add to Shelf |
Short Nonfiction Books
James Baldwin, Cathy Park Hong, Annie Ernaux and Robin Wall Kimmerer each make a big argument in under 230 pages.
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The Serviceberry Picking serviceberries, Robin Wall Kimmerer asks what the natural world's gift economy can teach us, since "hoarding won't save us, all flourishing is mutual." Buy the Book Add to Shelf |
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The Fire Next Time James Baldwin's seminal letters on race in America, one written to his nephew, draw on his early life in Harlem and exort us to confront racial injustice. Ta-Nehisi Coates modeled the also-short and powerful Between the World and Me on it. Buy the Book Add to Shelf |
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Minor Feelings Cathy Park Hong mixes memoir, cultural criticism and history in essays on the "minor feelings" that come when American optimism doesn't match your reality. Pulitzer Prize finalist. Buy the Book Add to Shelf |
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A Woman's Story After her mother dies of Alzheimer's, Annie Ernaux tries to capture the real woman, the one who existed apart from being her mother. From the winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature. Buy the Book Add to Shelf |
Short Classic Books
If your club has been meaning to read a classic, each of these is under 200 pages. Baldwin shows up again with his classic novel.
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Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin · 176 pages In 1950s Paris, David, a young American who is engaged to be married, falls into a doomed affair with a bartender named Giovanni. Baldwin's If Beale Street Could Talk also comes in at just over 200 pages. Buy the Book Add to Shelf |
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We Have Always Lived in the Castle Shirley Jackson's gothic tale follows peculiar Merricat and her isolated, possibly murderous family, whose fragile routine breaks when a cousin arrives at their estate. Buy the Book Add to Shelf |
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The House on Mango Street Told in short vignettes, this coming-of-age classic follows Esperanza Cordero as she grows up in Chicago and imagines who she will become. Buy the Book Add to Shelf |
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Passing In 1920s Harlem, light-skinned Irene Redfield reconnects with childhood friend Clare Kendry, who passes as white and hides it from her racist husband, in this timeless exploration of race and identity. Buy the Book Add to Shelf |
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Wide Sargasso Sea Jean Rhys gives a voice and a past to the madwoman in the attic of Jane Eyre, Antoinette Cosway, sold into marriage with the proud Mr. Rochester. Buy the Book Add to Shelf |
