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12 Fantastic Book Club Reads Now in Paperback

Your group will love these winners from Liane Moriarty, Matt Haig and more

Christina Ianzito,

AARP

Published August 14, 2025

the covers of 8 books that are new in paperback

(From left) The Bright Sword: A Novel of King Arthur; The Women; The Covenant of Water; Tell Me Everything; Playground; The Swans of Harlem; Here One Moment; The Rulebreaker: The Life and Times of Barbara Walters

AARP (Getty Images; Penguin Random House, 4; Simon & Schuster; Grove Atlantic)

Many book clubs prefer to wait for a bestseller to come out in paperback before selecting it for a group read. Paperbacks are less expensive and more portable than hardcovers, and by the time they are released, the books are often easier to find in libraries.

Well, good news: These 12 great reads are now out in paperback (or will be in the next month or so).

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Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty

Courtesy Penguin Random House

I loved this witty, thought-provoking 2024 novel by the always-entertaining Big Little Lies author. The story, set in Moriarty’s home country of Australia, begins in an airplane, where a motley group of passengers is shaken when a woman on board announces the age at which each person will die. Should they believe her? Probably not, they think, but … what if she’s right? It’s thoroughly entertaining, brightened by Moriarty’s sense of humor while touching on weighty questions about free will, fate and how we choose to spend our time on earth. Moriarty, 58, told NPR the idea came to her “at a time in my life that I was considering my own mortality.”

The Rulebreaker: The Life and Times of Barbara Walters by Susan Page

Courtesy Simon and Schuster

Page, known for The Matriarch: Barbara Bush and the Making of an American Dynasty and other nonfiction works, explores the life of iconic broadcast journalist Barbara Walters. Walters, who died at 93 in 2022, broke ground for women journalists and was one of the world’s most famous, coveted TV interviewers. The author works to uncover the woman behind the legacy, who, “despite her coiffed hair and society pals,” she writes, “was at heart a rulebreaker, even a revolutionary. Sometimes she didn’t exactly break the rules; she simply ignored them, as though they couldn’t possibly apply to her. Women can’t do serious interviews? Just watch her.” (Read what we learned about Walters from Page’s 2024 book here.)

The Bright Sword: A Novel of King Arthur by Lev Grossman

Courtesy Penguin Random House

Does your club like fantasy? It’s not just for kids! The latest from Grossman, an American author and journalist known for his Magicians trilogy, was among the top fantasy reads of 2024 in a Goodreads readers’ poll. It’s the story of young Collum, who sets off for Camelot to serve King Arthur as a knight of the Round Table but soon discovers that the king has died in battle, and Excalibur is gone. He and the other knights must find an adequate heir to the throne, and an elaborate quest begins. Booklist describes the story as “packed with magic, quirky beloved characters, punishing twists and exciting bold action scenes.”

Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout

the cover of the book tell me everything

Courtesy Penguin Random House

The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Olive Kitteridge, Strout returns to familiar characters in Crosby, Maine, in this bestseller, including cranky Olive (now in assisted living) and Lucy Barton, who form a kind of friendship through storytelling. Lucy is also in a deep, complicatedly platonic relationship with Bob Burgess (both are married to other people). Bob is working as a lawyer for a lonely young man who is suspected of killing his missing mother. But the novel isn’t a murder mystery; it’s a beautiful story about regret, acceptance, connection and love in all its forms. Like everything Strout writes, it’s quietly wonderful and wise. You can read our Members Edition interview with the author here.

The Swans of Harlem: Five Black Ballerinas, Fifty Years of Sisterhood, and Their Reclamation of a Groundbreaking History by Karen Valby

the cover of the book the swans of harlem

Courtesy Penguin Random House

This 2024 release paints a fascinating portrait of a trailblazing group of ballerinas — Lydia Abarca, Gayle McKinney-Griffith, Sheila Rohan, Marcia Sells and Karlya Shelton-Benjamin — who began dancing with the Dance Theatre of Harlem in 1969 and later performed for the Queen of England, among other luminaries. Valby describes the challenges they faced while breaking down barriers, including a lack of public recognition (their lives were “set to the thunderous applause and the damp hush of obscurity,” she writes). Her research includes interviews with the five dancers, who have been friends for half a century (a relationship the author first highlighted in a 2021 New York Times story, which inspired the book after it went viral).

All Fours by Miranda July

Courtesy Penguin Random House

This quirky novel is hilarious — a raunchy joy ride and one of my favorites from 2024 — though it’s not for everyone. (One reader wrote on Goodreads, “It made me feel icky. Like, super duper uncomfortable and nauseous.”) At the very least, it’ll make for a lively and humorous book club discussion. The story is told from the perspective of a 45-year-old woman who leaves her emotionally distant husband and kid in Los Angeles for a cross-country road trip to New York. The twist: She secretly holes up in a motel near home for a few weeks instead and begins a very different, fantastically strange journey in search of freedom (or something). Her transformative break from everyday life includes a sexually charged, obsessive relationship with a handsome young man named Davey, a wonderfully over-the-top motel-room redecoration project and a passionate dance of desire that manages to be both very funny and poignant. Starz has reportedly snapped up the rights for a TV series adaptation.

Orbital by Samantha Harvey

Courtesy Grove Atlantic

The winner of the 2024 Booker Prize, Orbital is a lyrical, thought-provoking story set during one day on the International Space Station. “Rotating about the earth in their spacecraft, they are so together, and so alone, that even their thoughts, their internal mythologies, at times convene,” Harvey writes of the craft’s six occupants. Orbital’s 16 chapters represent the 16 revolutions the spaceship makes around Earth in 24 hours. While astronauts eat, sleep and do their space jobs, Harvey gets at the sheer outer-worldliness of it all: In weightlessness, Pietro feels his body dissolving; if he stayed long enough, he thinks, would he become something amphibious, like a tadpole? Nell, the meteorologist, watches a typhoon grow over Asia and thinks of it as the earth emoting. The English author has said she wanted the novel to avoid sci-fi fantasies of space. A bonus for book clubs with members pressed for time: It’s relatively short, at 224 pages (see our suggestions for other short novels here).

How the Light Gets In by Joyce Maynard

the cover of the book how the light gets in

Courtesy Harper Collins

Maynard is the author of the bestselling memoir At Home in the World and novels such as To Die For and Labor Day (and is also known for her brief relationship with the author J.D. Salinger). This brilliant, moving story is a kind of sequel to her 2021 novel Count the Ways, which you don’t need to have read to become lost in this one. It’s centered on Eleanor, now in her 50s, who has moved from Boston back to the New Hampshire farm where she and her ex-husband, Cam, raised their family, to care for the dying Cam and live with her brain-injured adult son, Toby. Over 15 years, Eleanor wrestles with a baffling estrangement from her oldest daughter, along with guilt and resentment spurred by the long-ago accident that hurt Toby — all while falling into a passionate but unfulfilling affair. And yet, as she ages, we see her begin to appreciate the love and beauty that her life holds despite (or because of) its many disappointments and apparent wrong turns.

The Women by Kristin Hannah

Courtesy St. Martin's Press

The most recent megahit from the author of giant bestsellers such as 2021’s The Four Winds and the cinematic World War II–era novel The Nightingale (2015) takes place during the political tumult of the 1960s, when Frances “Frankie” McGrath, a sheltered young nursing student, joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows her brother to Vietnam. Her experience at war is eye-opening and often terrifying, leaving her with emotional wounds that are not soon healed after she returns home to face disrespect and such comments as “There are no women in Vietnam, dear.” Warner Bros. has acquired film rights. (Read our interview with Hannah about the book.)

Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese

the cover of the book the covenant of water

Courtesy Grove Atlantic

This may be a book you avoided after considering the weight of the thing: It’s a 715-page commitment. But if you’ve got ample reading time, you won’t regret diving into this absorbing bestseller, which weaves together multiple storylines — including that of a family in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast, wrestling with what appears to be a curse: Someone from every generation dies by drowning. Oprah Winfrey chose the 2023 novel for her book club and called it “One of the best books I’ve read in my entire life.” Verghese, an Ethiopian American doctor of internal medicine and professor at Stanford University School of Medicine, is the author of the 2009 bestseller Cutting for Stone, among other books.

Coming soon

The Life Impossible by Matt Haig (paperback release: September 2)

the cover of the book the life impossible

Courtesy Penguin Random House

If you’re a fan of his hugely bestselling 2020 novel The Midnight Library, you may have already sped through this more recent (2024) story from Haig — a master at penning heartwarming, uplifting tales. If not, consider The Life Impossible, featuring retired teacher Grace Winters, who (very uncharacteristically) leaves her quiet English life to move to a rundown house on Ibiza she inherited from a long-ago friend. It’s a massive step out of her comfort zone, and Grace gradually pieces together her friend’s past while reckoning with her own.

Playground by Richard Powers (paperback release: September 30)

Courtesy W.W. Norton & Company

Book clubs have loads to discuss about this beautiful story by the acclaimed Powers, whose novel The Overstory won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize. Its title has layers of meaning. It refers on one level to the ocean and humanity’s role in preserving it and, consequently, ourselves, and also to the technological (AI) advancements that are complicating the rules of the game, so to speak. The book is about a group of characters, including a famous diver and oceanographer and two friends who meet in college and then find their lives diverging — but just how far isn’t evident until the end of this remarkable tale. It made the Booker Prize long list last year.

Other notable books with paperback versions coming soon:

The Sequel by Jean Hanff Korelitz: a gripping follow-up to Korelitz’s 2021 page-turner, The Plot. (September 30)

John Lewis: A Life by David Greenberg: a deeply researched biography (it was a Pulitzer Prize finalist) of the influential Civil Rights activist and politician. (October 7)

The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich: the story of a mother and daughter in a North Dakota farming community by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author. (November 4)

Christina Ianzito covers scams and fraud, and is the books editor for aarp.org and AARP The Magazine.

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