Reading Group Choices

11/29/2025

If you're burned out from Black Friday shopping, we suggest reading therapy, especially with a cozy Christmas romance like The Christmas King by Karen Kingsbury, one of our November recommended books.

While searching for her family’s long-lost heirloom ring, military widow Vanessa Mayfield meets handsome antique dealer Ben Miller. The two are drawn to each other and forge a friendship that soon becomes a deep and breathtaking romance. But neither are sure that what they’ve found can last.

Get into it at ReadingGroupChoices.com

11/27/2025

The best part of Thanksgiving is falling asleep after dinner, curled up on the couch with a book. Let us know if you need some inspiration. ReadingGroupChoices.com.

11/26/2025

One of our November Recommended Books is When Crickets Cry by Charles Martin. New York Times bestselling author Charles Martin’s beloved When Crickets Cry (with over 575,000 copies sold!) is now available in a stunning deluxe edition featuring a shimmering revamped cover, designed end papers, sprayed edges, author signature stamped into the case, and new bonus content.

From New York Times bestselling author Charles Martin comes the moving story of a heart surgeon who’s hiding his own heart, a little girl whose heart won’t last much longer, and a shared journey toward healing for both of them–for fans looks for the emotional depth of Fredrik Backman and the Southern atmosphere of Delia Owens.

It begins on the shaded town square in a sleepy Southern town. A spirited seven-year-old has a brisk business at her lemonade stand. But the little girl’s pretty yellow dress can’t quite hide the ugly scar on her chest.

Her latest customer, a bearded stranger, drains his cup and heads to his car, his mind on a boat he’s restoring at a nearby lake. The stranger understands more about the scar than he wants to admit. And the beat-up bread truck careening around the corner with its radio blaring is about to change the trajectory of both their lives.

Before it’s over, they’ll both know there are painful reasons why crickets cry . . . and that miracles lurk around unexpected corners.

Check it out! https://readinggroupchoices.com/books/when-crickets-cry/

11/25/2025

Gift season is here, and with it, an avalanche of gift guides for others. We're all for sharing the love, but if you need a little treat for yourself this holiday season, enter one of our giveaways. We've got multiple books with multiple chances to win. Perfect for curling up after a long day of shopping and wrapping. Check 'em out:

Reading Group Choices is your resource for book recommendations, book club discussion topics, and reading group guides. Win free books in monthly book giveaways.

11/24/2025

One of our November Recommended Books is...The Berry Pickers by National Bestselling author Amanda Peters.
A four-year-old Mi’kmaq girl goes missing from the blueberry fields of Maine, sparking a mystery that will haunt the survivors, unravel a family, and remain unsolved for nearly fifty years.

July 1962. A Mi’kmaq family from Nova Scotia arrives in Maine to pick blueberries for the summer. Weeks later, four-year-old Ruthie, the family’s youngest child, vanishes. She is last seen by her six-year-old brother, Joe, sitting on a favorite rock at the edge of a berry field. Joe will remain distraught by his sister’s disappearance for years to come.

In Maine, a young girl named Norma grows up as the only child of an affluent family. Her father is emotionally distant, her mother frustratingly overprotective. Norma is often troubled by recurring dreams and visions that seem more like memories than imagination. As she grows older, Norma slowly comes to realize there is something her parents aren’t telling her. Unwilling to abandon her intuition, she will spend decades trying to uncover this family secret.

For readers of The Vanishing Half and Woman of Light, this showstopping debut by a vibrant new voice in fiction is a riveting novel about the search for truth, the shadow of trauma, and the persistence of love across time.

Learn more!

The Berry Pickers is a best book club book for discussion, a novel about a four-year-old Mi’kmaq girl who goes missing, sparking a mystery that will haunt the survivors, unravel a family, and remain unsolved for nearly fifty years.

11/21/2025

One of our November Recommended Books is....Skylighting by Charles Hansmann. In the wake of his wife’s death, Nick Nacht finds himself adrift, seeking emotional renewal among strangers in unfamiliar places.

As he navigates the challenges of grief, he encounters a tapestry of lives– an impulsive teenage girl, a married woman with a hidden agenda, a new neighbor’s pet bird, a young poet grappling with her own demons, and a woman who translates indigenous texts.

Over the course of a year, from the sunny shores of Florida to the vibrant Mediterranean, these vivid encounters push him toward a reckoning with his deep feelings of loss and abandonment. Recommended if you need a good cry. https://readinggroupchoices.com/books/skylighting/

11/20/2025

New Yorkers! Don’t miss the chance to discuss this “swelling, heaving tsunami of a novel” (The Australian). As always, wine awaits.
So hit that RSVP!

December 2nd 7pm McNally Jackson SoHo RSVP Required The Long and Short of New Directions Join the New Directions crew on an odyssey, no caper, called: THE LIFE OF THE MIND (to borrow a beloved expression by Helen DeWitt). We'll read staff favorites and New Directions staples with an emphasis on writ...

11/19/2025

Our newsletter is the best way to stay on top of new releases, book world news, and giveaways. The November issue dropped yesterday. Are you on the list?

11/18/2025

Ever wondered what it's like to be a judge for the Booker Prize? If you're Sarah Jessica Parker, you're reading 153 books in less than a year, missing family activities, and learning to use spreadsheets. Read her reflections in the New York Times.

The actor had to read so many books (153) she bowed out of most family activities. Still, she said, collaborating to pick a winner was worth the sacrifice.

11/17/2025

One of our November Recommended Books is Racing Uphill by Stacia Kalinoski, a gripping memoir about confronting life with epilepsy.

When twenty-nine-year-old reporter Stacia Kalinoski regained consciousness on a couch at the TV station where she worked, she assumed that she’d had another seizure. But the electrical storm that had just torn through her brain was more destructive than she could have imagined, and the broadcast journalism career she loved swiftly came to an end. Forced to confront the reality of her medical condition, Kalinoski made the risky decision to undergo brain surgery, targeting the epilepsy that was ravaging her life.

In sharing the remarkable opportunity that epilepsy presented for her courage and growth, Stacia Kalinoski speaks to anyone facing an uphill battle and offers inspiration for taking control of one’s own health. Read more and buy the book today!

Racing Uphill is a best book club book for discussion, a candid, inspiring story of a woman's experience with a chronic, unpredictable neurological condition.

11/14/2025

One of our November Recommended Books is I Wanted to be Wonderful by Lihi Lapid. This book begins where most love stories leave off: at the beginning of real life.

I WANTED TO BE WONDERFUL follows the lives of two women in their first years of marriage and motherhood. One is a fictional character trying to live the happily-ever-after many imagine for themselves, and the second woman is inspired by the author herself, relating the most intimate moments of her life.

Both couples start their marriages full of idyllic happiness, but as the stressors of everyday life seep into their daily lives, that spark of young love begins to dim.

Read more and purchase the book!

I Wanted to Be Wonderful is a best book club book for discussion, a braided story of women struggling to live up to modern pressures: about shattered dreams; and about finding the strength to gather up the pieces and to learn to smile again.

11/13/2025

Giveaway time! Win a copy of My Name Means Fire!

It's an unflinching and stunning debut memoir of an Iranian girl’s coming-of-age, experiencing abuse, war, and superstition—and her survival through dissociative identity disorder, which offered her an inner world into which she could escape.

Ten lucky readers will receive a free copy. Enter today!

Reading Group Choices is your resource for book recommendations, book club discussion topics, and reading group guides. Win free books in monthly book giveaways.