Top 26 Book Club Books to Read in 2026

Looking for book club recommendations for the new year? Just choose one of these top 26 book club books for 2026.

My neighborhood book club night used to be one of the highlights of each month. We’d gather together in someone’s living room and discuss the best book club books … or just gossip and share life advice.

How times have changed.

My book club hasn’t met since the pandemic, but that doesn’t mean yours can’t. Your format might change, but your discussion doesn’t need to end.

If you are looking for good books for a book club, I’ve got you covered. With discussion-worthy historical fiction, fascinating nonfiction, and fun reads from the last few years, you won’t have to debate what new book club books to read next.

Here are my top favorite book club books for 2026. Right now there are 26, but I’ll keep adding amazing new releases as I read them.

The bestselling author of The Midnight Library presents a new novel about second chances. The Midnight Train cannot change the past but it can let you relive moments that mean the most to you. Those moments that flash before your eyes at the end of your life. For Wilbur, his best days were his Venice honeymoon with Maggie. He wishes he could go back and change things but doing so might just risk everything.

Publication Date: 26 May 2026
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The curmudgeonly old Elsie Fitzpatrick has lived on Kenny Lane for sixty years and mostly kept to herself until the nosy little girl across the street insists on becoming Elsie’s friend. When Elsie’s neighbor dies, the police are quick to suspect Elsie after they learn she is the notorious “Mad Mabel.” For the people around Elsie have a history of dying.

Publication Date: 21 April 2026
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Growing up unloved in the foster care system, Alix has always found refuge in books. While reading in the Boston Public Library, Alix stumbles upon a hidden door that leads her to a hidden library. In the Astral Library, you can find a new life inside your favorite book. As Alix befriends the Librarian and prepares for her new life, an enemy emerges who threatens the very foundations of the library.

Publication Date: 17 February 2026
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From the author of The Light Between Oceans comes a sweeping family saga set in remote Western Australia. The MacBrides have lived at Meredith Downs, a thousand acres of arid land, for generations. In 1958, Phil MacBride swerves to avoid a kangaroo and the lives of the MacBride family are forever changed. As further tragedies ensue, the youngest MacBride is forced to make decisions between love and duty.

Publication Date: 3 March 2026
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Hope, Ash and Caro met in an online book club and have been close friends ever since even though they’ve never met in real life. When each woman hits a crossroads in her life, they decide to plan a girls trip to a national park. Hope needs to get away from her recent fame as an actress, Ash has watching her marriage struggle as she’s grown her business, and Caro has been hit hard by the loss of a patient. Together, they hope to escape life for a few days but when one woman vanishes they learn that know of them have been telling the whole truth.

Publication Date: 7 April 2026
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During the Great Depression in Oxford, Mississippi, three women come up with an audacious plan to take control of their lives. At the county orphanage, eleven-year-old Meg fights to keep her spirits up even though she is unlikely to be adopted. Birdie has come to town to beg her social-climbing sister to help the family she left behind. Meanwhile, Charlie is determined to overcome her past with fury and grit. Together, they must show resilience in a time where women’s freedom is fragile in the newest novel from the author of The Help.

Publication Date: 5 May 2026
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Katarina Shaw always knew she was destined to be an Olympic ice skater even if she didn’t have the support or pedigree it usually requires. When she meets Heath Rocha, a lonely kid in foster care, Katarina finds the perfect partner to make her dreams – and desires – come true. Ten years after a shocking event ends their Olympic careers and relationship, an unauthorized documentary forces Katarina to break her silence about what happened in this sports romance inspired by Wuthering Heights.

Publication Date: 14 January 2025
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Raised by a single mother in Maine, Mia and Cricket Lowe have always been close. While Mia has become the academically minded caretaker, Cricket has thrown herself into become a soccer superstar. As the two sisters grow, they must grapple with their mother’s past and how to balance loyalty to each other with their own wishes and desires as they make impossible choices to pursue their dreams.

Publication Date: 1 July 2025
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Beth and Frank live a happy life on a farm until their world takes a turn when Frank’s brother shoots a dog going after their sheep. Turns out the dog belongs to Beth’s teenage love, Gabriel Wolfe. Suddenly Beth is brought back in Gabriel’s life as she babysits his young son who reminds Beth of her own who tragically died. As tensions, rumors, and jealousies mount, Beth must choose between who she was and who she wants to be.

Publication Date: 4 March 2025
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When Phoebe Stone turns up at the grand Cornwall Inn in Newport, Rhode Island, everyone just assumes she is another wedding guest. Yet, Phoebe just happened to book the long-anticipated trip she always dreamed of taking with her husband, which now she plans to use to commit suicide after her divorce. Quickly, the entire bridal party finds themselves confiding in Phoebe, helping Phoebe see her own life in a different light.

Publication Date: 30 July 2024
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Written as a fictional “memoir”, The Three Lives of Cate Kay tells the life story of Cate Kay, whose bestselling book trilogy turned into the hit movie franchise of the decade. Cate Kay’s identity has been a closely guarded secret for years even from her literary agent. As a teen, Annie and her best friend dreamed of moving to California to be movie stars. After a tragedy, Annie runs away, living under an assumed name for decades. To regain her life, Annie is finally ready to reclaim her name and make all parts of herself whole once again. 

Publication Date: 7 January 2025
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March 20, 2026 – In a last-ditch effort to save Earth from an extinction-level event, a group of astronauts is sent on a desperate mission in a cobbled-together spacecraft. But when Ryland Grace wakes up, he has no memory of his mission or why the rest of the crew is dead. The sole survivor, he must take on an impossible task with no margin for failure.

Publication Date: 4 May 2021
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January 9, 2026 – Poppy and Alex have been best friends forever even though she’s a wild child full of wanderlust and he’s an introverted bookworm. Although she lives in New York City and he still lives in their hometown, every year they take a week-long vacation together. Until two years ago, when their trip ended in a falling out. Now Poppy convinces Alex to take one final vacation with her in an attempt to fix their relationship … and maybe even fall in love.

Publication Date: 11 May 2021
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October 2, 2026 – Struggling writer Lowen Ashleigh receives the chance of a lifetime when Jeremy Crawford hires her to complete the bestselling book series written by his wife, Verity. Just months after their daughters’ deaths, Verity was left in a catatonic state after a car accident. Going through Verity’s study, Lowen stumbles upon an unpublished autobiography full of erotic obsessions and dark confessions. Now Lowen can’t stop thinking about how Verity’s sexy husband deserves better, debating whether to show him Verity’s writings.

Publication Date: 7 December 2018
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Soon after her son’s birth, Cora and her young daughter Maia set out to officially register the baby’s name. Gordon expects that Cora will name the baby after him like generations of his family have done. Yet, Cora is tempted to name the baby Julian and Maia wants to name her brother Bear. The Names is a thoughtful story that showcases how each potential name – and the abusive father’s reaction to each name – changes the family’s trajectory.

Publication Date: 6 May 2025
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On the day her cousin Monife tragically dies, Ebun gives birth to a daughter who looks strickingly like her cousin. Her whole life, Eniiyi’s family believes she is the reincarnation of Monife, fated to follow her exact footsteps to a similar end. Add to that, the family is cursed that no man will call the house his home, leaving three generations of brokenhearted women living in the same house in Lagos, Nigeria. When Eniiyi falls in love with a boy she saves from drowning, she struggles against the family’s superstition, determined to break the pattern of trauma.

Publication Date: 4 November 2025
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A runaway foster kid, eighteen-year-old Louisa has spent her whole life fascinated by a famous painting of a pier with three barely discernable teens sitting on the end. After a chance run-in with the artist just before her death, Louisa inherits the painting from his best friend, Ted. Together, Ted and Louisa set out on a cross-country train journey where Ted tells her the story of one fateful summer where the best friends avoided their chaotic home lives while encouraging the artist to paint something for a competition.

Publication Date: 6 May 2025
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Amy Griffin has always been a runner: as a child in Texas, as an athlete at the University of Virginia, and throughout her years of career and motherhood in New York. But her picture-perfect habit hid a darker secret – Amy has always been running from her childhood trauma that she has been hiding even from herself. Griffin’s heartbreaking memoir recounts her journey using psychedelic therapy to recover repressed memories and the limits of the justice system. Griffin also ponders the way women are trained to maintain appearances instead of trusting themselves.

Publication Date: 11 March 2025
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For the last five years, Alice Storm has been estranged from her wealthy family and cut off from their influence and vast wealth. When her father dies, Alice travels to the family’s private island off the Rhode Island coast. But Alice’s father has left the family one last challenge – an inheritance game where members must stay on the island for a week and complete assigned tasks. Can Alice survive a week with her family and can she trust the connection she feels to her dad’s 

Publication Date: 8 July 2025
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Holland St. James believes in magic and fell in love with the Professor’s mysterious course on Local Legends and Urban Myths in Los Angeles. While on a date, Holland comes across a sign for The Watchman who tells her that she will die at midnight on Halloween unless she finds an ancient magical object, the Alchemical Heart. Suddenly Holland is presented with two different men who both claim they were sent by her twin sister to protect her from the other man. As Holland is thrust into a world of magic, she must decide who to trust.

Publication Date: 7 October 2025
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Bex was Lizzie’s best friend in college until Bex ghosted her after graduation. Now, Bex has remade herself into Rebecca Somers, a tradwife influencer chronicling her life on a ranch with her husband Grey and their six children. Out of the blue, Bex offers Lizzie an exclusive interview and a trip to a large influencer conference. When Bex disappears and Grey is murdered, Lizzie must dive into the sordid side of the real lives of mom influencers.

Publication Date:15 July 2025
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In the time space, a massive library exists filled with books containing the memories of those who have died. The library is only accessed by special watches once passed from father to son but now in the hands of the government. Trapped in the library as a child, Lisavet begins to collect memories when she realizes governement agents are entering the library to destroy books to tell their version of history, But the arrival of an American spy will make Lisavet realize how much she is missing.

Publication Date: 26 August 2025
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Following her controversial bestselling novel American Dirt, Jeanine Cummins returns with a tale of a  multigenerational Puerto Rican family. In 1980, Rafaela leaves her home in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and moves her young family to Missouri where her husband grew up. Not wanting to be like her socially isolated mother, Ruth gives up her language and habits to blend into life as an American teen. Decades later, Ruth’s daughter Daisy returns to Puerto Rico only to be critically injured in a hurricane. Now three generations of women must come to terms with the choices and secrets that have shaped their family.

Publication Date: 13 May 2025
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In the 1980s, Joan Goodwin is an unassuming professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University helping her sister to raise her niece. When she sees an ad for the first women scientists to join NASA’s Space Shuttle Program, Joan finds herself training to be an astronaut with a colorful cast of characters that teach her about the transformative power of love.

Publication Date: 3 June 2025
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When her father unexpectedly dies, seven-year-old Ellie and her mother are thrust from the 1950s upper class in Tehran to live in a tiny home downtown. Ellie soon befriends Homa and the two girls are inseparable, sharing dreams of becoming “lion women” someday. After her family fortunes change, Ellie rejoins the wealthy ranks of society, becoming the most popular girl at her elite high school. Just as Iran is reaching a political breaking point, politically active Homa reappears in Ellie’s life causing a disruption that will change them both forever.

Publication Date: 2 July 2024
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In the excitement of the Allied victory in Europe during WWII, Cal Jenkins and Margaret Salt share an intimate moment that will affect their families for generations to come. Haunted by his inability to fight in the war, Cal lives with his wife Becky, a seer who helps families connect with the dead they have lost. Meanwhile, Margaret’s husband is serving on a Navy cargo ship when she gets word that the unthinkable may have happened. Over the ensuing decades, Cal and Margaret’s secrets haunt their families since nothing can stay secret forever in a small Ohio town.

Publication Date: 2 September 2025
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What Book Club Books Are You Reading in 2026?

Do you know what your book club is reading in the new year? What book club books of 2026 are you most excited to read? As always, let me know in the comments!

More Book Club Books:

• The Best Books of 2025
• The Best Upcoming Book Releases
• 58 Remarkable Coming of Age Books
• 45 Sweeping Literary Books
• 62 Page Turners That Will Hook You

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