Start preparing now for a fruitful year of reading! This month we bring you our annual list of best books for book clubs, which covers a wide variety of works that entertain and expand horizons. Among our top picks for 2022 are Kaitlyn Greenidge's post-Civil War novel Libertie, Marie Benedict's fictionalized telling of Agatha Christie's disappearance The Mystery of Mrs. Christie, and Margaret Coker's journalistic account of Iraqi counterterrorism The Spymaster of Baghdad.

We also bring you our book club participant's comments on Joshua Henkin's Morningside Heights, a thoughtful novel about the shifts and changes a decades-long marriage undergoes.

Be sure to check out our other current and upcoming discussions below.

Very best,

Davina

If you have not, we suggest you go to "about the book."

When Ohio-born Pru Steiner arrives in New York in 1976 after graduating from Yale, she follows in a long tradition of young people determined to take the city by storm. But when she falls in love with Spence Robin, her hotshot young Shakespeare professor, her life takes a turn she couldn't have anticipated. Thirty years later, something is wrong with Spence. The Great Man can't concentrate; he falls asleep reading The New York Review of Books. With their daughter Sarah away at medical school, Pru must struggle on her own.

"This was so much better than I imagined and so much more interesting than I had hoped. It is a sad story but it is suffused with such compassion, growth, hope and complexity that I was entranced. The characters are so well-developed and amazingly real that after finishing the book I still think about each of them and wonder what they are doing now." - gerrieb

"I read for character and from the first page I was drawn to Pru... Spence’s illness was very sad and I realized more of what people with Alzheimer’s go through... A good book for book clubs to discuss." - Maggie

"I loved this gem of a book and its quiet, thoughtful examination reminded me of Stewart O’Nan's Henry, Himself and Emily, Alone in its poignance and lack of action. The characters are so well-drawn and dialogue well-crafted, I felt like I was air dropped into their home where I could silently participate in their daily events. This was the first book I read by Joshua Henkin and will not be the last." - paulak

About the Book / Discuss

2021 has proven to be another uncertain and unpredictable year. We hope that you have weathered it well. As you begin to gear up for next year, here is a list of books as a starting point for whatever need your book club is looking to fill, whether learning more about the world, diversion or simply a unique and memorable experience. To that end, we have selected a dozen works newly released, or soon to be released, in paperback that we think will be great choices for your book club in 2022.

Our picks this year span debuts, works by established authors, and several different places and periods in history. They feature many people, particularly women and girls, who find themselves in a state of transition, out of place or belonging to multiple places. In A Million Things by Emily Spurr, 10-year-old Rae must fend for herself when her mother disappears. In the The Narrowboat Summer by Anne Youngson, three women who have come to crossroads in their lives take a journey together along the canals of England. In The Kindest Lie by Nancy Johnson, Ruth Tuttle finds she must go backwards before she can move forwards, unearthing a secret that she attempted to leave behind years earlier. Patricia Engel’s Infinite Country follows a teenage girl, Talia, whose family is spread across continents, and Love and Fury by Samantha Silva pays tribute to a major early feminist who forged her own path in both life and work, Mary Wollstonecraft.

From time to time, we make an issue of The BookBrowse Review, our twice-monthly membership e-magazine, available to all for free, and this is one of those times.

The link is bookbrowse.com/mag/free

If you are already a BookBrowse member, thank you! If you are not and you are able, please consider joining. In addition to the twice-monthly e-magazine, you'll have access to a whole host of other member-exclusive features; and you will be supporting BookBrowse, helping to keep our service independent and strong. All for just $3.25 a month!

BookBrowse also makes an excellent gift -- a year of great reading about exceptional books.

Discussions are open to all, so please join us! If you would like to receive a message when a particular discussion opens, you can sign up for a one-time notification. You can also find inspiration for your book club among our almost 200 past discussions.

Usually published once a month, Book Club News is one of BookBrowse's four free newsletters. We also publish BookBrowse Highlights every Thursday, Publishing This Week every Sunday; and Librarian News monthly.