Club Book

Ali Hazelwood holds a doctorate in neuroscience and a faculty position at a prestigious university. She also moonlights as one of the most popular romance authors writing today. Hazelwood’s distinctive brand centers on women in STEM fields and academia. She burst onto the literary scene in 2021 with The Love Hypothesis . Fellow romance writer Christina Lauren calls Hazelwood’s debut “contemporary...

Oscar Hokeah is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and the Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma. He also proudly claims Mexican ancestry on his father’s side. Hokeah’s award-winning fiction explores intertribal identity and multicultural heritage. He honed his craft at the prestigious Institute of American Indian Arts, and his prose can be found in American Short Fiction , World Literature Today , and Literary H...

Janie Chang’s bestselling historical fiction is inspired by her Chinese ancestry, as well as that culture’s rich folkloric traditions. She gained a loyal following with Three Souls (2013) and Dragon Springs Road (2017), and reached a still wider audience with the 2020 release of The Library of Legends . Set against the Japanese invasion of China during World War II, this book club favorite centers...

Will Schwalbe is an acclaimed memoirist and entrepreneur. Amateur chefs may know him best as the mind behind Cookstr, the world’s largest free recipe database. Cookstr is owned today by Macmillan Publishing, where Schwalbe is now executive vice president of editorial development and content innovation. Schwalbe’s authorial debut, Send: Why People Email So Badly and How To Do It Better , first hit...

According to a poll conducted by the BCC, novelist and screenwriter Nick Hornby ranks as one of most influential people in British culture. Hornby is best known to American readers for his chart-topping novels High Fidelity (1995), About a Boy (1998), and Juliet, Naked (2009) – each of which has been adapted for the screen. Hornby’s beloved memoir Fever Pitch (1992), centered around the author’s s...

Marie Myung-Ok Lee is a treasured voice in Korean American literature. Her latest novel, The Evening Hero, follows the trials and travails of Korean obstetrician Dr. Yungman Kwak. In the wake of the Korean War, Kwak left his family and village to pursue the American Dream in rural Minnesota. Lee’s poignant, time-jumping narrative encompasses “rural hospital closures, anti-Asian racism, and how war...

Leila Mottley is the pen behind Nightcrawling , one of the most-anticipated and best-reviewed fiction releases of 2022. Set in the author’s native Oakland, California, this searing debut welcomes readers into the world of 17-year-old Kiara Johnson. After her rent skyrockets, Kiara turns to sex work to stave off homelessness. She soon finds herself in the crosshairs of a far-reaching scandal and ac...

Historical fiction phenom Kristin Harmel is the #1 international bestselling author behind book club favorites The Sweetness of Forgetting (2012) and The Winemaker’s Wife (2019). She reached a still wider audience with the publication of The Book of Lost Names in 2020. Inspired by a true story of WWII heroism, The Book of Lost Names tells the tale of a talented forger who uses her gifts to help Je...

British Pakistani novelist Mohsin Hamid’s international bestsellers have been translated into an astounding forty languages. They include The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007) and Exit West (2017), two novels shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia (2013), which won the Tiziano Terzani International Literary Prize. Hamid is also an in-demand journalist and op...

Jamie Ford made waves in 2009 with the publication of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet , which charted on The New York Times Best Seller list for more than two years. It also won Ford the 2010 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature. His follow ups, Songs of Willow Frost (2013) and Love and Other Consolation Prizes (2017), solidified the author’s standing as one of historical fiction’s...

Speculative fiction writer Peng Shepherd burst onto the literary scene in 2019 with The Book of M . In this critically acclaimed debut, people all across the globe are mysteriously shedding their shadows – and a few days later, losing their memories as well. Booklist praises the premise as “existential apocalypse that is eerie, dark, and compelling.” The Book of M won Shepherd the coveted Neukom I...

Acclaimed essayist and poet Boyah J. Farah immigrated to the United States in the mid-1990s as part of the Somali diaspora, when thousands of families fled the war-torn Horn of Africa. Instead of finding safety and freedom, Farah quickly learned that his adoptive country is plagued by deep-seated issues of its own. Systemic injustices against Black people run a wide gamut, from widespread police p...

Rebecca Roanhorse is among a small cohort of “Indigenous novelists reshaping North American science fiction, horror, and fantasy – genres in which Native writers have long been overlooked” ( The New York Times ). Roanhorse’s speculative fiction, much of which is informed by her Navajo heritage, has earned the genre’s coveted Nebula, Hugo, Campbell, and Locus awards. Titles of note include Trail of...

Tia Williams is a tour de force in the style industry. For more than two decades, she served as beauty editor for iconic magazines including Elle , Glamour, and Essence . She also pioneered the “beauty blog” with her influential, award-winning site Shake Your Beauty. Williams parlayed many of her first-hand experiences into The Accidental Diva (2001), her debut novel, which “accurately relates the...

Few authors today boast the cross-genre appeal or international following of novelist James Rollins. Over the past three decades, Rollins has published standalone thrillers, the popular Jake Ransom middle grade series, and the novelization of the 2008 Steven Spielberg film Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull . Rollins is equally adept at epic fantasy. Recent ventures include The Ord...

Jason Mott is the pen behind Hell of a Book , winner of the 2021 National Book Award for Fiction. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly described Mott’s modern masterpiece as “a cinematic novel that tackles what it means to live in a country where Black people live life under the hanging sword of fear.” In alternating and ultimately intertwined narratives, Hell of a Book follows the cross-country...

Maggie Shipstead is the author behind Great Circle , one of the most anticipated, best reviewed, and bestselling fiction releases of 2021. Her modern masterpiece intertwines the stories of Marian Graves, an aviation daredevil patterned after Amelia Earhart, and a Hollywood ingenue who attempts to adapt Marian’s larger-than-life story for the big screen a century later. In a starred review, Kirkus...

Chart-topping novelist Julie Otsuka is the daughter of Japanese immigrants, and a poignant chronicler of the Japanese American experience across the first half of the twentieth century. Her breakout debut When the Emperor Was Divine (2003) shines light on California’s dehumanizing concentration camps for Japanese Americans – a shameful and often overlooked chapter of American history. It holds dis...

Victoria Christopher Murray boasts more than 30 books to her credit – and is as versatile as she is prolific. Her writing runs the gamut from contemporary romance, to teen novels, to short story collections and even Christmas novellas. Over the course of her career to date, Murray has received an NAACP Image Award, the Phillis Wheatley Trailblazer Award for African American Fiction, and nine Afric...

Brendan Slocumb is a classically trained violinist and accomplished music educator. During his own education at the University of Carolina Greensboro, Slocumb served as concertmaster for the University Symphony. Slocumb has since performed violin and guest conducted for renowned orchestras including the Washington Metropolitan Symphony. Over his two-decade teaching career, Slocumb has earned accol...

Internationally acclaimed British novelist Maggie O’Farrell is the author behind eight bestselling novels. Readers and critics alike praise her “demonstrated mastery at depicting strained relationships, skewed family loyalties, and the just reachable light at the end of the tunnel” ( Star Tribune ). Standouts include her Betty Trask Award winning debut After You’d Gone (2000), Somerset Maugham Awa...

Pulitzer Prize winner Jane Smiley is “one of America’s most accomplished and wide-ranging writers” ( Dallas Morning News ). Her thirty books to date include two short story collections, two biographies, and eight books geared towards young readers. Her influential and admired novels include the Pulitzer Prize winning A Thousand Acres (1991), a modern retelling of King Lear. Smiley returned to the...

Chart-topping novelist Kawai Strong Washburn lives in Minnesota but hails proudly from the Big Island of Hawai’i. His upbringing on the magical Hāmākua Coast inspires and infuses his first fiction foray, Sharks in the Time of Saviors . It centers on the family of Nainoa “Noa” Flores, a native son blessed by the Islands’ ancient gods with unique abilities. As mysterious as they are impressive, Noa’...

Tamara Winfrey-Harris is a nationally renowned columnist and speaker. Her work focuses on the fraught intersection of race and sex. In 2015, Winfrey-Harris published The Sisters Are Alright: Changing the Broken Narrative of Black Women in America. This popular essay anthology “exposes anti- Black-woman propaganda all around us, and shows the truth of what it’s like to be a Black woman in America”...

Prince was one of the most original, accomplished and beloved musicians of our time. He was also, undeniably, one of the most enigmatic. In early 2016, “The Purple One” approached Dan Piepenbring, the 29-year-old editor of literary magazine The Paris Review , about collaborating on the superstar’s memoir. Prince envisioned the project as a way to reveal more of himself to his legions of fans. His...