Club Book

Melanie Benjamin is an acknowledged master of historical fiction, not to mention one of the genre’s bestselling authors. Benjamin’s growing collection of work profiles topics ranging from the Nazi occupation of Paris, to silent movie starlet Mary Pickford, to the real-life inspiration behind Alice in Wonderland. Her most popular novels to date include The Aviator’s Wife (2012), the story of the aviatrix spouse of Charles Lindbergh; The Swans of Fifth Avenue (2016), about the headline-making relationship between famed author Truman Capote and a New York socialite; and The Children’s Blizzard (2021), which breathes new life into an infamous 1888 blizzard that still holds distinction as one of the most deadly natural disasters to ever hit the Great Plains. Her latest, California Golden, turns the spotlight to Malibu in the 1960s – and the formative but factious genesis of California surf culture. Booklist touts: “Benjamin’s novel shows what the sun-kissed highlight reels so often missed.”

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Alice Winn is the pen behind one of 2023’s most talked about literary debuts. In Memoriam is a moving story of first love set against the cataclysmic backdrop of World War I. When young Henry Gaunt enlists in the British Army to dispel rumors of his family’s pro-German leanings, boarding school classmate Sidney Ellwood is quick to follow him to the front line. Harrowing experiences in the trenches nurture a forbidden love. In a starred review, Booklist raves that: “Winn’s finely accomplished debut novel is a rare thing: an intoxicating romance and an impossible-to-put-down war story in one. She captures the war as it looked, sounded, and smelled; but the ultimate death-defying acts here are in literature, breathtaking bravery, and love.” Among other high honors, In Memoriam received the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize in 2022 and the Waterstones Novel of the Year Award in 2023.

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Kiley Reid burst onto the literary scene in 2020 with Such a Fun Age, a fast-paced social satire about privilege in America. The New York Times bestselling debut hinges on the layered relationship between newly minted college graduate Emira Tucker and Alix Chamberlain, a wealthy businesswoman who hires Emira as a babysitter. Such a Fun Age was longlisted for the Booker Prize, selected as a Reese’s Book Club Pick, and charted high on Best Book of the Year lists from sources as varied as The Washington Post and Good Housekeeping. Reid’s “masterful, nuanced take on racial biases and class divides” (Entertainment Weekly) is on display once again in Come and Get It. Her sardonic sophomore work follows enterprising writing professor Agatha Paul and dormitory assistant Millie Cousins. In service to an unusual, clandestine writing project, Millie allows Agatha to eavesdrop on her wards through a hole in the dormitory walls. Notes Publisher’s Weekly: “In this blistering send-up of academia… every page sparkles with sharp analysis of [Reid’s] characters.” It hit shelves in January.

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Cristina Henríquez is best known to many as the author behind the modern classic The Book of Unknown Americans (2014). In it, Mexican teenager Maribel suffers a traumatic brain injury, forcing the Rivera family to move to the United States to secure medical care. A budding relationship with a neighbor boy, Panamanian immigrant Mayor Toro, sets in motion a series of events with profound repercussions for all involved. The Washington Post lauds The Book of Unknown Americans as “a ringing paean to love in general: to the love between man and wife, parent and child, outsider and newcomer, pilgrims and promised land.” Henríquez’s own Panamanian heritage and experiences also loom large in much of the author’s other work, including the short story collection Come Together, Fall Apart (2007) and novel The World in Half (2010). Her latest, The Great Divide, hits shelves in March 2024. It centers around the decade-long construction of the Panama Canal and the unsung workers who made this herculean feat of engineering possible.

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Fiction phenom Nita Prose is the author behind the #1 New York Times bestselling mystery The Maid. Readers and critics alike praise Prose’s mastery of plot and place, but reserve greatest acclaim for her memorable protagonist, “realistically different heroine” Molly Gray (NPR). Molly is neurodivergent. Her unique lens on the world proves invaluable for the young maid when a real estate magnate turns up dead at her five-star hotel – and Molly herself becomes a prime suspect. The Maid won Prose the prestigious Anthony and Barry awards for debut novel, among many other industry honors. It also holds distinction as a Good Morning America Book Club pick and as one of only a handful of mystery debuts from the past decade to sell more than one million copies worldwide. Oscar nominee Florence Pugh is set to star soon in a much-anticipated screen treatment. Nita Prose – and Molly Gray – returned in November 2023 with The Mystery Guest.

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Science fiction superstar John Scalzi has gained a large and loyal following through what Kirkus Reviews calls his “insufferably good, trademark brand of fun yet think-y sci-fi adventure.” His debut, Old Man’s War (2005), won Scalzi speculative fiction’s Astounding (formerly John W. Campbell) Award for Best New Writer and launched the New York Times bestselling series of the same name. Scalzi also penned the Locus Award winning Interdependency trilogy and a host of popular standalone novels. The latter includes Redshirts, winner of the 2023 Hugo Award for Best Novel, and The Kaiju Preservation Society, winner of the 2023 Locus Award and other high science fiction honors. Scalzi’s latest novel, Starter Villain, centers on an unassuming substitute teacher who unexpectedly inherits a long-lost uncle’s supervillain business – complete with island volcano lair. Publishers Weekly raves that Starter Villain is “a breezy and highly entertaining genre send-up [which] subverts classic supervillain tropes with equal measures of tongue-in-cheek humor and common sense.”

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Science fiction superstar John Scalzi has gained a large and loyal following through what Kirkus Reviews calls his “insufferably good, trademark brand of fun yet think-y sci-fi adventure.” His debut, Old Man’s War (2005), won Scalzi speculative fiction’s Astounding (formerly John W. Campbell) Award for Best New Writer and launched the New York Times bestselling series of the same name. Scalzi also penned the Locus Award winning Interdependency trilogy and a host of popular standalone novels. The latter includes Redshirts, winner of the 2023 Hugo Award for Best Novel, and The Kaiju Preservation Society, winner of the 2023 Locus Award and other high science fiction honors. Scalzi’s latest novel, Starter Villain, centers on an unassuming substitute teacher who unexpectedly inherits a long-lost uncle’s supervillain business – complete with island volcano lair. Publishers Weekly raves that Starter Villain is “a breezy and highly entertaining genre send-up [which] subverts classic supervillain tropes with equal measures of tongue-in-cheek humor and common sense.”

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ReShonda Tate is as versatile as she is prolific. In total, the bestselling author has published more than 50 books to date. Tate runs a wide gamut from contemporary romance, to teen fiction, to nonfiction, and even poetry. Standouts include her sophomore novel Let the Church Say Amen, which was adapted for the screen by producer Queen Latifah and actor-turned-director Regina King. Tate turns her prodigious talents to historical fiction in 2024 with The Queen of Sugar Hill, which spotlights the largely unknown story of Hollywood actress Hattie McDaniel. Best known for her portrayal of “Mammy” in Gone with the Wind, McDaniel holds notable distinction as the first African American woman to win an Academy Award. Unfortunately for her, that historic Oscar would put her in the crosshairs of controversy for the rest of her life. In an early review, historical fiction mainstay Jillian Cantor raves that “The Queen of Sugar Hill is an impeccably researched biographical novel… brimming with heart, heartbreak, and resilience.”

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Tracy K. Smith has published five well-received poetry collections to date and served as the 22nd Poet Laureate of the United States from 2017-2019. Her sophomore release, Duende, received the coveted James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. Smith cemented her growing reputation with Life on Mars, which “blends pop culture, history, elegy, anecdote, and sociopolitical commentary to illustrate the weirdness of contemporary living” (Publishers Weekly). It won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. Smith branched into memoir in 2015 with National Book Award finalist Ordinary Light. Her latest project is To Free The Captives: A Plea for the American Soul. Based on scholarship and the author’s own experience and earnest soul-searching, Smith’s latest “etches a portrait of where we find ourselves as a society four hundred years into the American experiment” and offers a blueprint for “fulfilling our duties to each other and to the future” (Knopf Doubleday). It debuts November 7, 2023.

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Elizabeth Acevedo is a Dominican-American author and spoken word artist. She is best known for her 2018 young adult novel-in-verse The Poet X, which won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature and the prestigious Carnegie Medal. Acevedo’s follow-ups, With the Fire on High (2019) and Clap When You Land (2020), solidified Acevedo’s standing as one of the foremost YA writers of her generation. She also holds distinction as the Young People’s Poet Laureate for 2022-2023, a National Poetry Slam champion, and a frequent TED Talk presenter. Family Lore, the author’s first novel for adults, hits shelves in August. Flor Marte has a gift: she can predict, to the day, when someone will die. When she asks her family to schedule a wake – a wake without a death – Flor’s three sisters are left to wonder if the clairvoyant has seen her own death or is driven by other motives. Spanning the three days prior to this most unusual family gathering, Family Lore traces the lives (and uncovers the long-held secrets) of all four Marte sisters.

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