Book Group Best Bets
Looking for fiction that will spark conversation? Try one of these recent novels from a variety of genres for your next book group discussion. Annotations from NoveList, unless otherwise noted. (Updated February 2024)
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Between Two Moons
Twin sisters Amira and Lina, who live in a Muslim neighborhood in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, are graduating from high school. But their excitement is dimmed by their troublesome older brother's return from prison, a police raid on a local business that sets off protests, and a sudden act of violence that pulls everyone apart. (Library Journal)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Chain-gang All-stars
The star of a popular, but controversial for-profit program in the private prison industry that basically turns prisoners into gladiators contemplates freedom.
Format: Book
Availability: All copies in use
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Rouge
From the critically acclaimed author of Bunny comes a horror-tinted, gothic fairy tale about a lonely dress shop clerk whose mother’s unexpected death sends her down a treacherous path in pursuit of youth and beauty. Can she escape her mother’s fate—and find a connection that is more than skin deep?
Format: Book
Availability: All copies in use
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Big Swiss
A woman in upstate New York who works transcribing therapy sessions for a sex coach becomes infatuated with one of his clients, a repressed married woman from Switzerland who has a refreshing attitude towards trauma.
Format: Book
Availability: All copies in use
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Better the Blood
A tenacious Māori detective, Hana Westerman juggles single motherhood, endemic prejudice, and the pressures of her career in Auckland CIB. Led to a crime scene by a mysterious video, she discovers a man ritualistically hanging in a secret room and a puzzling inward-curving inscription. Delving into the investigation after a second, apparently unrelated, death, she uncovers a chilling connection to an historic crime: 160 years before, during the brutal and bloody British colonization of New Zealand, a troop of colonial soldiers unjustly executed a Māori Chief.
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Flux
Four days before Christmas, 8-year-old Bo loses his mother in a tragic accident, 28-year-old Brandon loses his job after a hostile takeover of his big-media employer, and 48-year-old Blue, a key witness in a criminal trial against an infamous now-defunct tech startup, struggles to reconnect with his family. So begins Jinwoo Chong’s dazzling, time-bending debut that blends elements of neo-noir and speculative fiction as the lives of Bo, Brandon, and Blue begin to intersect, uncovering a vast network of secrets and an experimental technology that threatens to upend life itself.
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Tremor
Masterfully exploring what constitutes a meaningful life in a violent world, this startling work of realism and invention examines the passage of time and how we mark it, reckoning with human survival amidst history's brutality as well as demonstration the possibility of joy.
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Availability: Available
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All the Sinners Bleed
Former FBI agent Titus Crown returns to his hometown and decides to run for sheriff to fight a bigoted police force and must trust his instincts when a serial killer appears to be hiding in plain sight.
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Ozark Dogs
After his son is convicted of capital murder, Vietnam War veteran Jeremiah Fitzjurls takes over the care of his granddaughter, Joanna, raising her with as much warmth as can be found in an Ozark junkyard outfitted to be an armory. He teaches her how to shoot and fight, but there is not enough training in the world to protect her when the dreaded Ledfords, notorious meth dealers and fanatical white supremacists, come to collect on Joanna as payment for a long-overdue blood debt.
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Behind You Is the Sea
A new novel that gives voice to the diverse residents of a Palestinian American community in Baltimore—from young activists in conflict with their traditional parents to the poor who clean for the rich—shows lives which intersect across divides of class, generation and religion
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Availability: Available
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