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Book Club Picks April 2026 |
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The Life Impossible
by Matt Haig
The New York Times Bestseller An odyssey of action and awe. --The New York Times A wry and tender love-letter to the best of being human. --Benedict Cumberbatch The remarkable next novel from Matt Haig, the author of #1 New York Times bestseller The Midnight Library, with more than nine million copies sold worldwide What looks like magic is simply a part of life we don't understand yet... When retired math teacher Grace Winters is left a run-down house on a Mediterranean island by a long-lost friend, curiosity gets the better of her. She arrives in Ibiza with a one-way ticket, no guidebook and no plan. Among the rugged hills and golden beaches of the island, Grace searches for answers about her friend's life, and how it ended. What she uncovers is stranger than she could have dreamed. But to dive into this impossible truth, Grace must first come to terms with her past. Filled with wonder and wild adventure, this is a story of hope and the life-changing power of a new beginning.
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The Good Daughters
by Brigitte Dale
In 1912, three young women from wildly different backgrounds are bound together by their desire to have a say in their future. Charlotte, disappointed to discover that college isn't the key to the freedom she longed for, shocks her family when she moves to London and joins a group of suffragettes willing to upend social norms for the vote. Aristocratic Beatrice, with a law degree she legally can't put into practice and a fiancâe she's not particularly excited to marry, escapes to London to spend her last months of unmarried life with the suffragettes, and falls deeply--and dangerously--into forbidden love. Emily, the daughter of the warden of the infamous Holloway Jail, grieves her mother and saves her wages for a better life outside the prison's walls. Her best chance at escaping the drudgery of her life is to stay out of trouble, but when the suffragettes land in her father's cells, she must consider risking not only her family's livelihood, but her own future--
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33 Place Brugmann
by Alice Austen
NATIONAL BESTSELLER Alice Austen uses her considerable gifts to remind us that the past and the present are more connected than we wish to believe, and that vigilance, loyalty and art hold the key to survival. This is a beautiful and deeply engaging novel. -- Ann Patchett, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Tom Lake An outstanding debut novel--a love story, mystery, and philosophical puzzle, told in the singular voices of the residents of a Beaux Arts apartment house in Belgium during World War II.On the eve of the Nazi occupation, in the heart of Brussels, life for the residents of 33 Place Brugmann is about to change forever. Charlotte Sauvin, an art student raised by her beloved architect father in apartment 4L, knows all the details of the building and its people: how light falls on wood floors and voices echo off the marble staircase, the distinct knock of her dear friend, Julian Raphaël, the son of the art dealer's family across the hall. Then the Raphaëls disappear, leaving everything behind but their priceless art collection, which has simply vanished. All else that's familiar fractures when whispers of German occupation become reality, and the lives of the residents grow increasingly intertwined. Charlotte's godmother Masha, a beautiful seamstress living upstairs, deepens her risky affair with a wartime compatriot of Colonel Warlemont in 3L--a man far more calculating than his neighbors believe. When a Nazi functionary with an interest in the Raphaëls moves into the building, knowing who can and cannot be trusted becomes a matter of life and death. In the face of their perilous new reality, every member of this accidental community will discover they are not the person they believed themself to be. When confronted with a cruel choice--submit to the regime or risk their lives to save one another--each learns the truth about what, and who, matters to them the most. A propulsive and exquisitely written tour de force, 33 Place Brugmann champions the restorative power of love, courage, and art in times of great threat.
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The Fisherman's Gift
by Julia R. Kelly
The Light Between Oceans meets The Snow Child in this novel set in a Scottish village in the weeks after a young boy mysteriously washes up on shore, causing the buried secrets of the insular community to come to light and rekindling an old love story. Breathtaking. An exquisitely written, pitch-perfect look at love and shame, what is lost and what is found. --Jeannette Walls, New York Times bestselling author of The Glass Castle and Hang the Moon It's 1900 and Skerry, a small Scottish fishing village, is destined for an unyielding winter. During a storm, a young boy washes up on the shore. He bears an uncanny resemblance to teacher Dorothy's son, lost to the sea at the same age many years before, his body never found. The village is soon snowed in, and Dorothy agrees to look after the child until they can uncover the mystery of his origins. But over time, the lines between reality and desperate hope start to blur as the boy reminds Dorothy more and more of her own lost child. The boy's arrival also finally forces Dorothy to face the truth about her brief but passionate love affair with Joseph, the fisherman who found the boy on the shore and who has been the subject of whispers connecting him to the drowning of Dorothy's son years earlier. As the past rises to meet the present, long-buried secrets are unearthed within this tight-knit community, and the child's arrival becomes a catalyst for something far greater than any of them could imagine.
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The Paris Express
by Emma Donoghue
NATIONAL BESTSELLER From the bestselling and soul-stirring (Oprah Daily) author of Room, a sweeping historical nail-biter (People) of a novel about an infamous 1895 disaster at the Paris Montparnasse train station.Based on an 1895 disaster that went down in history when it was captured in a series of surreal, extraordinary photographs, The Paris Express is a propulsive novel set on a train packed with a fascinating cast of characters who hail from as close as Brittany and as far as Russia, Ireland, Algeria, Pennsylvania, and Cambodia. Members of parliament hurry back to Paris to vote; a medical student suspects a girl may be dying; a secretary tries to convince her boss of the potential of moving pictures; two of the train's crew build a life away from their wives; a young anarchist makes a terrifying plan, and much more. From an author whose writing is superb alchemy (Audrey Niffenegger, New York Times bestselling author), The Paris Express is an evocative masterpiece that effortlessly captures the politics, glamour, chaos, and speed that marked the end of the 19th century.
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