Here are our reading groups’ favorite fiction books of 2019 based on our survey results.
THE GREAT ALONE
Kristin Hannah
Ernt Allbright, a former POW, comes home from the Vietnam war a changed and volatile man. After losing yet another job, he impulsively decides to move his family off the grid to Alaska, America’s last true frontier. Thirteen-year-old Leni is coming of age caught in the riptide of her parents’…
AN AMERICAN MARRIAGE
Tayari Jones
An Oprah’s Book Club Selection A New York Times Bestseller Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. He is a young executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career. But as they settle into the routine…
THE TATTOOIST OF AUSCHWITZ
Heather Morris
This beautiful, illuminating tale of hope and courage is based on interviews that were conducted with Holocaust survivor and Auschwitz-Birkenau tattooist Ludwig (Lale) Sokolov—an unforgettable love story in the midst of atrocity. In April 1942, Lale Sokolov, a Slovakian Jew, is forcibly transported to the concentration camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau. When…
THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
Colson Whitehead
Cora is a young slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. An outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is on the cusp of womanhood—where greater pain awaits. And so when Caesar, a slave who has recently arrived from Virginia, urges her to join him on the Underground Railroad, she…
THE BOOK WOMAN OF TROUBLESOME CREEK
Kim Michele Richardson
The folks of Troublesome Creek have to scrap for everything—everything except books, that is. Thanks to Roosevelt’s Kentucky Pack Horse Library Project, Troublesome’s got its very own traveling librarian, Cussy Mary Carter. Cussy’s not only a book woman, however; she’s also the last of her kind, her skin a shade…
CARNEGIE'S MAID
Marie Benedict
Clara Kelley is not who they think she is. She’s not the experienced Irish maid who was hired to work in one of Pittsburgh’s grandest households. She’s a poor farmer’s daughter with nowhere to go and nothing in her pockets. But the other Clara Kelley has vanished, and pretending to…
SOLD ON A MONDAY
Kristina McMorris
From New York Times bestselling author Kristina McMorris comes another unforgettable novel inspired by a stunning piece of history. 2 CHILDREN FOR SALE The sign is a last resort. It sits on a farmhouse porch in 1931, but could be found anywhere in an era of breadlines, bank runs, and…
A GENTLEMAN IN MOSCOW
Amor Towles
From the New York Times bestselling author of Rules of Civility—a transporting novel about a man who is ordered to spend the rest of his life inside a luxury hotel With his breakout debut novel, Rules of Civility, Amor Towles established himself as a master of absorbing, sophisticated fiction, bringing…
THE STARS ARE FIRE
Anita Shreve
From the New York Times best-selling author of The Weight of Water and The Pilot’s Wife (an Oprah’s Book Club selection): an exquisitely suspenseful new novel about an extraordinary young woman tested by a catastrophic event–based on the true story of the largest fire in Maine’s history In October 1947, Grace Holland is experiencing two simultaneous…