12 Fantastic Book Club Reads Now in Paperback

Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club by J. Ryan Stradal 

Stradal is the author of Kitchens of the Great Midwest and The Lager Queen of Minnesota, and this 2023 novel is another warmhearted multigenerational story set in the Midwest. It is focused on a young couple from two Minnesota restaurant families — one running an old-school supper club — who feel the weight of their legacies. Then a tragic accident leads them in new directions.

Holly by Stephen King

Does your book club like scary stuff? You can’t go wrong with the master of suspense, who offers a supremely creepy story featuring Holly Gibney from a few of the author’s other novels (Mr. Mercedes, The Outsider). This 2023 novel revisits the private detective, who’s now on the case of a string of disappearances and contending with twisted husband and wife professors with some very dark secrets.

A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them by Timothy Egan

A Pulitzer Prize winner for his reporting at The New York Times, Egan focuses this deeply researched history on KKK supporters, including top politicians and officials, and corruption galore in the early 20th century. He singles out one particularly evil character, Sen. David Curtis ‘‘D.C.” Stephenson, who was eventually convicted of murder and other crimes. This title made lots of best of 2023 lists.

Clytemnestra by Costanza Casati 

This book had its own dramatic beginning: It was meant to be published in March of last year, but its release was pushed to May because the initial truckload of books burned in a fire. The “blazing novel,” as the publisher has since billed it, offers a feminist spin on the story of ancient Greece’s legendary queen of Sparta, the matriarch of an epically dysfunctional (and cursed) family, who murdered her husband, Agamemnon, and later was killed by her children Electra and Orestes. Casati has a new novel coming in January, Babylonia, an epic historical fantasy based on the myth of the Assyrian orphan-turned-queen Semiramis.

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

This huge book club favorite and major bestseller was released in 2022. It’s a charming, funny debut about Elizabeth Zott, a chemist in 1960s California who becomes the host of a cooking show and ends up teaching viewers about far more than how to bake a cake. Among other issues, it explores sexism in the 1950s and ’60s. It was turned into an Apple TV+ series starring and produced by Brie Larson.

The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray

This 2021 novel is based on the real-life story of Belle da Costa Greene, a light-skinned Black woman (her father was the first Black man to graduate from Harvard) who was hired by J.P. Morgan in 1905 as his personal librarian, a job she held for some 40 years. Born Belle Marion Greener, she hid her Black identity while becoming a powerful figure in the New York art and book world. Al Roker’s production company reportedly has optioned the book for a potential series.

 Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

The 2021 bestseller is the first novel by Ishiguro (the literary superstar who authored, among others, 1989’s The Remains of the Day) since he was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 2017. The lovely, albeit somewhat dystopian, story is about a robot doll — an “artificial friend” — named Klara who becomes a sickly, lonely young girl’s companion. At a time when chatbots are filling our daily news feeds, it explores themes about identity and technology’s ability (or lack of it) to mimic and elicit human emotions.

Coming soon:

North Woods by Daniel Mason (in paperback Oct. 1)

This 2023 novel is a must-read. The unique premise is wonderfully executed. It’s the story of one house in western Massachusetts and its various inhabitants, from the precolonial era to modern times. The past ends up haunting (sometimes literally) the people who cycle through the home, including the twin daughters of an apple farmer and a man with mental illness who can perceive the ghosts that still live in his midst. Mason offers rich, evocative depictions of the changing wooded landscape, which evolves along with the humans it harbors.

The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng (in paperback Oct. 1)

The author’s novel The Garden of Evening Mists was on the short list for the 2012 Booker Prize, and The House of Doors made the Booker’s long list last year. Set in 1920s in Malaysia — where the author is from — it features the famed writer William Somerset Maugham and some deep secrets between friends. “It’s about the power of stories, how they can transcend cultures and borders, transcend even time itself,” Eng said in an interview for the Booker Prize website.  

Absolution by Alice McDermott (in paperback Oct. 29) 

This absorbing story is set in Vietnam, where newlywed Tricia is living with her husband, who works for Navy intelligence and is stationed there during the war. She bonds with another young wife, Charlene, and we learn about the two friends’ attempts to assist the Vietnamese in small ways, as Tricia tells their story to Charlene’s daughter decades later. McDermott, a beautiful writer, won the National Book Award for Charming Billy (1998), and her novel At Weddings and Wakes was a finalist for a Pulitzer (1992).

Editor's note: This article was originally published on March 31, 2023. It has been updated to reflect new information.