Our Read with Jenna Book Club Picks

From powerful and emotional women’s fiction to an inspiring and heart-wrenching memoir, with #ReadWithJenna you’re sure to find great picks for your book club.

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Summer Sisters: A Novel by Judy Blume


The Celebrants: A Novel by Steven Rowley

Big Chill for our times, celebrating decades-long friendships and promises—especially to ourselves—by the bestselling and beloved author of The Guncle.

“This heartwarming coming of age story follows a group of five college friends all about to enter their 50s . . . Alternating between the present day gathering and previous ‘funerals’ from past years, you’ll grow attached to these characters . . . and when you finish, you’ll want to go hug your BFFs.”—The Skimm

“What can stave off the fear of death, or rescue you from one of life’s less fatal heartbreaks? Steven Rowley, ever warm and witty, offers up lifelong friendship, and I am inclined to believe him.”—Emma Straub, author of All Adults Here and This Time Tomorrow

Available in Hardcover, ebook, and Audio Editions.

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Chain-Gang All-Stars: A Novel by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

The explosive, hotly-anticipated debut novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Friday Black, about two top women gladiators fighting for their freedom within a depraved private prison system not so far-removed from America’s own.

“A new and necessary American voice.”—Tommy Orange, The New York Times Book Review

Available in Hardcover, eBook, and Audio Editions.

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Sam: A Novel by Allegra Goodman

What happens to a girl’s sense of joy and belonging—to her belief in herself—as she becomes a woman? This unforgettable portrait of coming-of-age offers subtle yet powerful reflections on class, parenthood, addiction, lust, and the irrepressible power of dreams.

“I’ve been an Allegra Goodman fan for years, but Sam is hands down my new favorite. I loved this powerful and endearing portrait of a girl who must summon deep within herself the grit and wisdom to grow up.”—Lily King, New York Times bestselling author of Writers & Lovers

Available in Hardcover, eBook, and Audio Editions.

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The Secret History: A Novel by Donna Tartt

A contemporary literary classic and “an accomplished psychological thriller . . . absolutely chilling” (Village Voice), from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Goldfinch.

“A remarkably powerful novel [and] a ferociously well-paced entertainment . . . Forceful, cerebral, and impeccably controlled.”—The New York Times

“A huge, mesmerizing, galloping read, pleasurably devoured . . . Gorgeously written, relentlessly erudite.”—Vanity Fair

Also Available in Spanish: El secreto.

Available in Trade Paperback and eBook Editions.

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The Whalebone Theatre: A Novel by Joanna Quinn

A transporting, irresistible debut novel that takes its heroine, Cristabel Seagrave, from a theatre in the gargantuan cavity of a beached whale into undercover operations during World War II—a story of love, family, bravery, lost innocence, and self-transformation.

The Whalebone Theatre is absolute aces . . . Quinn’s imagination and adventuresome spirit are a pleasure to behold.”—The New York Times

“Utterly heartbreaking and joyous . . . I just disappeared into The Whalebone Theatre and didn’t want to leave.”—Jo Baker, author of Longbourn

Available in Hardcover, eBook, Audio, and Large Print Editions.

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Solito: A Novel by Jaiver Zamora

A young poet tells the unforgettable story of his harrowing migration from El Salvador to the United States at the age of nine in this moving, page-turning memoir hailed as “the mythic journey of our era” (Sandra Cisneros).

“A new landmark in the literature of migration, and in nonfiction writ large.”—Francisco Cantú, author of The Line Becomes a River

Solito is a stone-cold masterpiece, an absolute masterpiece. I know I used that word twice. That’s how you know I mean it.”—Emma Straub, author of the #1 bestseller This Time Tomorrow

Available in Hardcover, eBook, and Audio Editoins.

Also available in Spanish: Solito.

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Memphis: A Novel by Tara M. Stringfellow

A spellbinding debut novel tracing three generations of a Southern Black family and one daughter’s discovery that she has the power to change her family’s legacy.

“I fell in love with this family, from Joan’s fierce heart to her grandmother Hazel’s determined resilience. Tara Stringfellow will be an author to watch for years to come.”—Jacqueline Woodson, New York Times bestselling author of Red at the Bone

Available in Hardcover, eBook, Audio, and Large Print Editions.

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Groundskeeping: A Novel by Lee Cole

An indelible love story about two very different people navigating the entanglements of class and identity and coming of age in an America coming apart at the seams—this is “an extraordinary debut about the ties that bind families together and tear them apart across generations” (Ann Patchett, best-selling author of The Dutch House).

“Scrupulously perceptive . . . Groundskeeping is filled with close observation, detailed shading. It is an absorbing love story, but it is also an examination of class in America, and it captures with sharp insight a moment in recent history.”—Colm Tóibín, author of Brooklyn

Available in Hardcover, eBook, and Audio Download Editions.

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Black Cake: A Novel by Charmaine Wilkerson

In this moving debut novel, two estranged siblings deal with their mother’s death and her hidden past—a journey of discovery that takes them from the Caribbean to London to California and ends with her famous black cake.

Black Cake is a satisfying literary meal, heralding the arrival of a new novelist to watch.” —Associated Press

“I was instantly taken in by this multigenerational tale of identity, family, and the lifelong push and pull of home. This novel has a tremendous heart at its center, and I felt its beat on every page. What an extraordinary debut.”—Mary Beth Keane, New York Times bestselling author of Ask Again, Yes

Available in Hardcover, eBook, Audio Download, and Large Print Editions.

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The Family: A Novel by Naomi Krupitsky

A captivating debut novel about the tangled fates of two best friends and daughters of the Italian mafia, and a coming-of-age story of twentieth-century Brooklyn itself.

“Krupitsky has constructed a work of exquisite tension . . . A tremendous debut.”—Fiona Davis, author of The Lions of Fifth Avenue

“It’s been a long time since I’ve stayed up all night to read a book . . . Krupitsky has created a riveting story powerful in its realism.”—Diane Chamberlain, author of Big Lies in a Small Town

Available November 2nd in Hardcover, eBook, and Audio Editions.

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The Lincoln Highway: A Novel by Amor Towles

The bestselling author of A Gentleman in Moscow and Rules of Civility and master of absorbing, sophisticated fiction returns with a stylish and propulsive novel set in 1950s America.


Beautiful Country: A Novel by Qian Julie Wang

An incandescent memoir from an astonishing new talent, Beautiful Country puts readers in the shoes of an undocumented child living in poverty in the richest country in the world.

“Heartrending, unvarnished, and powerfully courageous, this account of growing up undocumented in America will never leave you.”—Gish Jen, author of The Resisters

“Deeply compelling . . . I was moved by the love and resilience of this family thrust into darkness…that casts an urgent light on a reality that extends way beyond America’s borders.”—Hisham Matar, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Return

“Engaging readers through all five senses and the heart, Wang’s debut memoir is a critical addition to the literature on immigration as well as the timeless category of childhood memoir.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

Available in Hardcover, eBook, Audio, and Large Print Editions.

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The Turnout by Megan Abbott

Bestselling and award-winning author Megan Abbott’s revelatory and mesmerizing new novel set against the hothouse of a family-run ballet studio.

“Abbott is a legend for good reason . . . Her latest is a dizzyingly fascinating story of a family-owned dance studio and the weight of unrequited ambition. An instant classic.”—The Washington Post

“Abbott is a master of atmosphere, and in the blood, sweat, tears, bruises, ripped toenails, broken bones, rivalries, desires, and tutu-pink dreams that fill the studio during its annual production of The Nutcracker, she creates a world of almost unbearable tension, pirouetting ever further into darkness.”—Entertainment Weekly

Available in Hardcover, eBook, Audio, and Large Print Editions.

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Hell of a Book by Jason Mott

An astounding work of fiction from a New York Times bestselling author Jason Mott, always deeply honest, at times electrically funny, that goes to the heart of racism, police violence, and the hidden costs exacted upon Black Americans, and America as a whole.

Hell of a Book more than lives up to its title. Playful, searching, raw and necessary, this writing, this voice, this novel twisted me up and turned me inside out, dazzled me, surprised me and moved me.”—Charles Yu, author of National Book Award winner Interior Chinatown

“I think it (“Hell of a Book”) is going to lead to some incredible conversations.”—Jenna Bush Hager

One of Entertainment Weekly‘s 15 Books you Need to Read This June | One of The NY Post‘s Best Summer Reading books | One of GMA’s 27 Books for June | One of USA Today‘s 5 Books Not to Miss | One of Fortune‘s 21 Most Anticipated Books Coming out in the Second Half of 2021

Now Available in Hardcover, eBook, and Audio Editions.

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Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid

From the New York Times bestselling author of Daisy Jones & The Six and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo . . . Four famous siblings throw an epic party to celebrate the end of the summer. But over the course of twenty-four hours, their lives will change forever.

“One of the most anticipated [books] of the year—and rightfully so . . . It’s a must-read.”—Parade

“It’s 1983 in Malibu, and the famous Riva siblings are hosting their annual end-of-summer party—a legendary affair. By morning, the house is in flames, a blaze fueled by smoldering secrets and long-simmering drama. [Taylor Jenkins] Reid has once again crafted a fast-paced, engaging novel that smoothly transports readers between decades and story lines.”—The Washington Post

Available in Hardcover, eBook, Audio, and Large Print Editions.

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Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead


Send for Me by Lauren Fox


The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison powerfully examines our obsession with beauty and conformity—and asks questions about race, class, and gender with her characteristic subtly and grace.

In Morrison’s bestselling first novel, Pecola Breedlove—an 11-year-old Black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others—prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so that people will look at her, so that her world will be different. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning, and the tragedy of its fulfillment.

Here, Morrison’s writing is “so precise, so faithful to speech and so charged with pain and wonder that the novel becomes poetry” (The New York Times).

Available in Hardcover, Trade Paperback, eBook, and Audio Editions.

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Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi


Here for It: Or, How to Save Your Soul in America; Essays by R. Eric Thomas

From the creator of Elle’s “Eric Reads the News,” a heartfelt and hilarious memoir-in-essays about growing up seeing the world differently, finding unexpected hope, and experiencing every awkward, extraordinary stumble along the way.

R. Eric Thomas didn’t know he was different until the world told him so. Everywhere he went—whether it was his rich, mostly white, suburban high school, his conservative black church, or his Ivy League college in a big city—he found himself on the outside looking in.

In essays by turns hysterical and heartfelt, Thomas reexamines what it means to be an “other” through the lens of his own life experience. He explores the two worlds of his childhood: the barren urban landscape where his parents’ house was an anomalous bright spot, and the Eden-like school they sent him to in white suburbia. He writes about struggling to reconcile his Christian identity with his sexuality, the exhaustion of code-switching in college, accidentally getting famous on the internet (for the wrong reason), and the surreal experience of covering the 2016 election for Elle online, and the seismic changes that came thereafter. Ultimately, Thomas seeks the answer to these ever more relevant questions: Is the future worth it? Why do we bother when everything seems to be getting worse? As the world continues to shift in unpredictable ways, Thomas finds the answers to these questions by reenvisioning what “normal” means and in the powerful alchemy that occurs when you at last place yourself at the center of your own story.

Available in Hardcover, eBook, and Audio Editions.

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The Comeback by Ella Berman

A deep dive into the psyche of a young actress raised in the spotlight under the influence of a charming, manipulative film director and the moment when she decides his time is up.

At the height of her career and on the eve of her first Golden Globe nomination, teen star Grace Turner disappeared.

Now, tentatively sober and surprisingly numb, Grace is back in Los Angeles after her year of self-imposed exile. She knows the new private life she wants isn’t going to be easy as she tries to be a better person and reconnect with the people she left behind.

But when Grace is asked to present a lifetime achievement award to director Able Yorke—the man who controlled her every move for eight years—she realizes that she can’t run from the secret behind her spectacular crash and burn for much longer. And she’s the only one with nothing left to lose.

Available in Hardcover, eBook, and Audio Editions.

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Friends and Strangers by J. Courtney Sullivan

An insightful, hilarious, and compulsively readable novel about a complicated friendship between two women who are at two very different stages in life, from the bestselling author of Maine and Saints for All Occasions.

Elisabeth, an accomplished journalist and new mother, is struggling to adjust to life in a small town after nearly twenty years in New York City. Alone in the house with her infant son all day (and awake with him much of the night), she feels uneasy, adrift. She neglects her work, losing untold hours to her Brooklyn moms’ Facebook group, her “influencer” sister’s Instagram feed, and text messages with the best friend she never sees anymore. Enter Sam, a senior at the local women’s college, whom Elisabeth hires to babysit. Sam is struggling to decide between the path she’s always planned on and a romantic entanglement that threatens her ambition. She’s worried about student loan debt and what the future holds. In short order, they grow close. But when Sam finds an unlikely kindred spirit in Elisabeth’s father-in-law, the true differences between the women’s lives become starkly revealed and a betrayal has devastating consequences.

Available in Hardcover, eBook, Audio, and Large Print Editions.

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A Burning by Megha Majumdar

For readers of Tommy Orange, Yaa Gyasi, and Jhumpa Lahiri, an electrifying debut novel about three unforgettable characters who seek to riseto the middle class, to political power, to fame in the moviesand find their lives entangled in the wake of a catastrophe in contemporary India.

Jivan is a Muslim girl from the slums, determined to move up in life, who is accused of executing a terrorist attack on a train because of a careless comment on Facebook. PT Sir is an opportunistic gym teacher who hitches his aspirations to a right-wing political party, and finds that his own ascent becomes linked to Jivan’s fall. Lovely—an irresistible outcast whose exuberant voice and dreams of glory fill the novel with warmth and hope and humor—has the alibi that can set Jivan free, but it will cost her everything she holds dear.

Available in Hardcover, eBook, Audio, and Large Print Editions.

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All Adults Here by Emma Straub

A warm, funny, and keenly perceptive novel about the life cycle of one family—as the kids become parents, grandchildren become teenagers, and a matriarch confronts the legacy of her mistakes.

When Astrid Strick witnesses a school bus accident in the center of town, it jostles loose a repressed memory from her young parenting days decades earlier. Suddenly, Astrid realizes she was not quite the parent she thought she’d been to her three, now-grown children. But to what consequence?

Astrid’s youngest son is drifting and unfocused, making parenting mistakes of his own. Her daughter is pregnant yet struggling to give up her own adolescence. And her eldest seems to measure his adult life according to standards no one else shares. But who gets to decide, so many years later, which long-ago lapses were the ones that mattered? Who decides which apologies really count? It might be that only Astrid’s thirteen-year-old granddaughter and her new friend really understand the courage it takes to tell the truth to the people you love the most.

Available in Hardcover, eBook, Audio, and Large Print Editions.

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 The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Daré

Available in Hardcover, eBook, Audio, and Large Print Editions.

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Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano

A twelve-year-old boy struggles with the worst kind of fame—as the sole survivor of a notorious plane crash.

One summer morning, twelve-year-old Edward Adler, his beloved older brother, his parents, and 183 other passengers board a flight in Newark headed for Los Angeles. Among them are a Wall Street wunderkind, a young woman coming to terms with an unexpected pregnancy, an injured veteran returning from Afghanistan, a business tycoon, and a free-spirited woman running away from her controlling husband. Halfway across the country, the plane crashes. Edward is the sole survivor.

Edward’s story captures the attention of the nation, but he struggles to find a place in a world without his family. He continues to feel that a part of himself has been left in the sky, forever tied to the plane and all of his fellow passengers. But then he makes an unexpected discovery—one that will lead him to the answers of some of life’s most profound questions: When you’ve lost everything, how do you find the strength to put one foot in front of the other? How do you learn to feel safe again? How do you find meaning in your life?

Available in Hardcover, eBook, and Audio Editions.

Also available in Spanish: Querido Edward.

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Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes

From the host of NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast comes a heartfelt debut about the unlikely relationship between a young woman who’s lost her husband and a major league pitcher who’s lost his game.

In a sleepy seaside town in Maine, recently widowed Eveleth “Evvie” Drake rarely leaves her large, painfully empty house nearly a year after her husband’s death in a car crash. Everyone in town, even her best friend, Andy, thinks grief keeps her locked inside, and Evvie doesn’t correct them.

Meanwhile, in New York City, Dean Tenney, former Major League pitcher and Andy’s childhood best friend, is wrestling with what miserable athletes living out their worst nightmares call the “yips”: he can’t throw straight anymore, and, even worse, he can’t figure out why. As the media storm heats up, an invitation from Andy to stay in Maine seems like the perfect chance to hit the reset button on Dean’s future.

When he moves into an apartment at the back of Evvie’s house, the two make a deal: Dean won’t ask about Evvie’s late husband, and Evvie won’t ask about Dean’s baseball career. Rules, though, have a funny way of being broken—and what starts as an unexpected friendship soon turns into something more. To move forward, Evvie and Dean will have to reckon with their pasts—the friendships they’ve damaged, the secrets they’ve kept—but in life, as in baseball, there’s always a chance—up until the last out.

Available in Hardcover, Trade Paperback, eBook, and Audio Editions.

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The Unwinding of the Miracle: A Memoir of Life, Death, and Everything That Comes After by Julie Yip-Williams

As a young mother facing a terminal diagnosis, Julie Yip-Williams began to write her story, a story like no other. What began as the chronicle of an imminent and early death became something much more—a powerful exhortation to the living.

That Julie Yip-Williams survived infancy was a miracle. Born blind in Vietnam, she narrowly escaped euthanasia at the hands of her grandmother, only to flee with her family the political upheaval of her country in the late 1970s. Loaded into a rickety boat with three hundred other refugees, Julie made it to Hong Kong and, ultimately, America, where a surgeon at UCLA gave her partial sight. She would go on to become a Harvard-educated lawyer, with a husband, a family, and a life she had once assumed would be impossible. Then, at age thirty-seven, with two little girls at home, Julie was diagnosed with terminal metastatic colon cancer, and a different journey began.

The Unwinding of the Miracle is the story of a vigorous life refracted through the prism of imminent death. When she was first diagnosed, Julie Yip-Williams sought clarity and guidance through the experience and, finding none, began to write her way through it—a chronicle that grew beyond her imagining. Motherhood, marriage, the immigrant experience, ambition, love, wanderlust, tennis, fortune-tellers, grief, reincarnation, jealousy, comfort, pain, the marvel of the body in full rebellion—this book is as sprawling and majestic as the life it records. It is inspiring and instructive, delightful and shattering. It is a book of indelible moments, seared deep—an incomparable guide to living vividly by facing hard truths consciously.

Available in Hardcover, Trade Paperback, eBook, and Audio Editions.

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