Here are our reading groups’ favorite fiction books of 2023 based on our survey results.
THE MYSTERY OF MRS. CHRISTIE
Marie Benedict
In December 1926, Agatha Christie goes missing. Investigators find her empty car on the edge of a deep, gloomy pond, the only clues some tire tracks nearby and a fur coat left in the car -- strange for a frigid night. Her World War I veteran husband and her daughter…
THE JANE AUSTEN SOCIETY
Natalie Jenner
International Bestseller Just after the Second World War, in the small English village of Chawton, an unusual but like-minded group of people band together to attempt something remarkable. One hundred and fifty years ago, Chawton was the final home of Jane Austen, one of England's finest novelists. Now it's home…
SMALL THINGS LIKE THESE
Claire Keegan
The landmark new novel from award-winning author Claire Keegan It is 1985 in a small Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and family man faces into his busiest season. Early one morning, while delivering an order to the local convent, Bill makes a…
REMARKABLY BRIGHT CREATURES
Shelby Van Pelt
For fans of A Man Called Ove, a charming, witty and compulsively readable exploration of friendship, reckoning, and hope that traces a widow's unlikely connection with a giant Pacific octopus After Tova Sullivan’s husband died, she began working the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium, mopping floors and tidying up.…
LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY
Bonnie Garmus
Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. In fact, Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out that there is no such thing as an average woman. But it’s the early 1960s and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute takes a very unscientific view of equality. Except for one:…
LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND
Rumaan Alam
A magnetic novel about two families, strangers to each other, who are forced together on a long weekend gone terribly wrong. From the bestselling author of Rich and Pretty comes a suspenseful and provocative novel keenly attuned to the complexities of parenthood, race, and class. Leave the World Behind explores…
OLGA DIES DREAMING
Xochitl Gonzalez
A blazing talent debuts with the tale of a status-driven wedding planner grappling with her social ambitions, absent mother, and Puerto Rican roots, all in the wake of Hurricane Maria. It’s 2017, and Olga and her brother, Pedro “Prieto” Acevedo, are bold-faced names in their hometown of New York. Prieto…
THE SAINTS OF SWALLOW HILL
Donna Everhart
Where the Crawdads Sing meets The Four Winds as award-winning author Donna Everhart immerses readers in a unique setting – a turpentine camp buried deep in the vast pine forests of Georgia during the Great Depression—for a captivating story of friendship, survival, and three vagabonds' intersecting lives… During the Great Depression, wretched labor…
THE PHONE BOOTH AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD
Laura Imai Messina
The international bestselling novel sold in 21 countries, about grief, mourning, and the joy of survival, inspired by a real phone booth in Japan with its disconnected “wind” phone, a place of pilgrimage and solace since the 2011 tsunami. When Yui loses both her mother and her daughter in the…
THE WAR NURSE
Tracey Enerson Wood
Based on a true story, The War Nurse is a sweeping historical novel by USA Today bestselling author Tracey Enerson Wood that takes readers on an unforgettable journey through WWI France. She asked dozens of young women to lay their lives on the line during the Great War. Can she…
BLACK BUCK
Mateo Askaripour
For fans of Sorry to Bother You and The Wolf of Wall Street—a crackling, satirical debut novel about a young man given a shot at stardom as the lone Black salesman at a mysterious, cult-like, and wildly successful startup where nothing is as it seems. There’s nothing like a Black…
THE BOOK WOMAN'S DAUGHTER
Kim Michele Richardson
Bestselling historical fiction author Kim Michele Richardson is back with the perfect book club read following Honey Lovett, the daughter of the beloved Troublesome book woman, who must fight for her own independence with the help of the women who guide her and the books that set her free. In…
MAAME
Jessica George
An unforgettable debut about a young British Ghanaian woman as she navigates her twenties and finds her place in the world, for readers of Queenie and The Other Black Girl. Maame (ma-meh) has many meanings in Twi but in my case, it means woman. It’s fair to say that Maddie’s life in London…
THE SECOND LIFE OF MIRIELLE WEST
Amanda Skenandore
A story of resilience, repulsion, and the Roaring 20’s based on the little-known history of Carville, America’s only leper colony, by RUSA Award-winning author and registered nurse Amanda Skenandore. Based on the little-known true story of America’s only leper colony, The Second Life of Mirielle West by RUSA Award-winning author…