The Best Book Club Books of Spring 2024

Now a household name, Freida McFadden is a great author to consider for book club options. As a new nurse practitioner at a men’s maximum security prison, Brooke Sullivan only has a few rules to follow, and all of them mean that her intimate relationship with Shane Nelson could cause her to lose her job. 

Shane lives a double life as the penitentiary’s most notorious murder criminal, and Brooke’s former high school sweetheart and star quarterback. No one knows about this double life but Brooke. Nor do they know that her testimony was what put him there in the first place. But Shane knows—and he hasn’t forgotten. 

This is a story about two families, the Georgious and the Özkans, in the tense summer of 1972. Along with many others, both families had moved to Famagusta, Cyprus to flee the rest of the island’s ethnic violence for a city known for its good fortune. 

While the Greeks and Turkish originally worked together harmoniously, a Greek coup took the city by surprise—and when Turkey invaded to protect the Turkish Cypriots, Famagusta was shelled, the city was evacuated, and the two families of which we speak were the only ones left in the deserted city after the chaos. 

One of the most-watched TV series of contemporary society, we’re sure you’ve seen at least one episode of Sex and the City—especially now that it's on Netflix—and here’s your chance to read the book that started it all. 

The chronicles of the surprising and often comical mating habits of the New York Elite are exposed through Candace “Carrie” Bushnell’s exceedingly candid column in the New York Observer.  Fun fact—this book was inspired by Mary McCarthy's classic controversial novel, The Group.

A dark gripping historical gothic, The Doll Factory is set in London in 1850, beginning with two people meeting at the erection of The Great Exhibition in Hyde Park. Iris is an aspiring artist doomed to the monotony of painting faces on dolls day after day, and Silas is a collector who is immediately entranced by Iris’ strange and beautiful nature. 

When he asks her to model for pre-Raphaelite artist Louis Frost, she agrees only if he will teach her to paint. For Iris, this meeting was an opportunity, but Silas has vowed to make her his since the fleeting moment they met, and his obsession only darkens…

The night before her daughter’s wedding, June Reid loses her entire family in one swift moment; her daughter, her daughter’s fiance, her ex-husband, and her boyfriend Luke, leaving June as the only survivor. 

Not knowing what to do, she drives across the country, the shared heartbreak from everyone involved weaving an unexpected yet desperately needed community. Did You Ever Have a Family is an absorbing, powerful fiction debut about the family we’re given and the family we choose. 

Candy Everybody Wants is the coming-of-age story of Wisconsin native Jayson Blocher, a young and starry-eyed determined to achieve fame and fortune. 

His quirky, ever-changing cast of supporters accompanies him on his chaotic journey from Broadway to Hollywood, where he encounters everything from first loves to kidnapping mysteries. But most important of all, he discovers that being America’s sweetheart may not be everything it’s cracked up to be. 

The Crittenden Preparatory School in rural Connecticut is one of New England’s most elite prep schools. But like all things, social upheaval has made its way onto campus. The headmaster’s wife, Clarissa Spotswood, finds herself in the midst of faculty and student intrigues, a role which she is desperately unprepared for as she’s spent the last 30 years standing obediently beside her husband. 

Presenting as the model society wife, her facade is in shambles upon discovering the horrific events within the school’s insular community. But Clarissa’s own journal entries reveal a secret history of her own. 

A philosophical exploration of Judaism’s laws and practices, Disobedience is the story of a small, tight-knit Jewish Orthodox community in London. When the community’s beloved rabbi dies, they must plan a memorial service and find a worthy replacement. 

The rabbi’s nephew (and likely successor) Dovid is the one to call his cousin Ronit to inform her of her father’s passing, but as Ronit left the community long ago to pursue her dreams of becoming a career woman, her reappearance exposes tears in the fabric of the community. 

An astonishing and richly atmospheric tale of New York in 1985, Church of Marvels is the story of the lives of several strangers as they come together. Sylvan Threadgill finds an abandoned newborn baby in the muck while cleaning the privies behind the tenement houses. An orphan himself, he vows to find her family. 

Oldie Church and her sister Belle were raised within her mother’s Coney Island sideshow, The Church of Marvels. But when the church burns down, killing their mother in the process, Belle abandons Oldie for Manhattan, leaving Oldie desperate to find her. 

Alphie awakens one day to find herself trapped in Blackwell’s Lunatic Asylum, convinced she was put there by her husband’s wicked mother. But when she meets another young, beautiful, non-speaking girl with an incredible talent in her ward, there may be hope for them both. 

Petra has always struggled in love, but then, in her sixties, she finally falls in love with Jeremy, an old friend who was visiting from abroad. The only problem is that Jeremy is her best friend’s husband. 

But just as Petra is getting comfortable in her new love, she’s drawn to South Africa to see Bev, the best friend who’s life she’s been ruining, unbeknownst to Bev, of course. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, two other women have been struggling with a similar situation; Texan Lorrie playing Petra’s role and Li-Jing beginning to wonder what exactly her husband’s West African business trips entail…it just goes to show that no matter where you are, everyone has something to hide.