Book clubs are a great way to meet new authors, read diverse themes, and discuss books with other book lovers. Those who belong to one can attest that nothing beats reading a great book and discussing the characters, plot, and themes with people who share the same interests. But finding the right book to captivate a book club can sometimes be a struggle. If you’re looking for books with stories that can spark lively discussions, you’ve come to the right place.
In our latest book recommendation, we have compiled a list of seven books that are great for your book club’s future gatherings. Our recommendations include a poignant collection of short stories, a remarkable memoir about war, a complicated love story, a book exploring race and identity, and other works of fiction and non-fiction. These books will ignite conversations, and foster connections among your reading community.
Read our recommendations below.
THERE WAS A COUNTRY: A PERSONAL HISTORY OF BIAFRA
Author: CHINUA ACHEBE
Genre: MEMOIR
The defining experience of Chinua Achebe’s life was the Nigerian civil war, also known as the Biafran War, of 1967–1970. The conflict was infamous for its savage impact on the Biafran people, Chinua Achebe’s people, many of whom were starved to death after the Nigerian government blockaded their borders. By then, Chinua Achebe was already a world-renowned novelist, with a young family to protect. He took the Biafran side in the conflict and served his government as a roving cultural ambassador, from which vantage he absorbed the war’s full horror. Immediately after, Achebe took refuge in an academic post in the United States, and for more than forty years he has maintained a considered silence on the events of those terrible years, addressing them only obliquely through his poetry. Now, decades in the making, he documents his experience.
In There Was a Country, Achebe masterfully relates his experience, both as he lived it and how he has come to understand it. To read this book is to reminded that artists have a particular obligation, especially during a time of war. All writers, Achebe argues, should be committed writers—they should speak for their history, their beliefs, and their people. Combining history and memoir, poetry and prose, There Was a Country is a distillation of vivid firsthand observation and forty years of research and reflection.
THE VANISHING HALF
AUTHOR: THE VANISHING HALF BY BRIT BENNETT
GENRE: FICTION
The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern Black community and running away at age sixteen, it’s not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it’s everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her Black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters’ storylines intersect?
Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person’s decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins.
PARABLE OF THE TALENTS
AUTHOR: OCTAVIA E. BUTLER
GENRE: FICTION
Lauren Olamina’s love is divided among her daughter, her community, and the revelation that led Lauren to found a new faith that teaches ‘God Is Change’. But in the wake of environmental and economic chaos, the US government turns a blind eye to violent bigots who consider the mere existence of a Black female leader a threat. And soon Lauren must either sacrifice her child and her followers—or forsake the religion that can transform human destiny. Set in socially and economically depressed California in the 2030s, Lauren must fight back to save the new world order.
YOU MADE A FOOL OF DEATH WITH YOUR BEAUTY
AUTHOR: AKWAEKE EMEZI
GENRE: FICTION
It’s been five years since the accident that killed the love of Feyi Adekola’s life and she’s almost a new person now—an artist with her own studio, and sharing a brownstone apartment with her ride-or-die best friend, Joy, who insists it’s time for Feyi to ease back into the dating scene. Feyi isn’t ready for anything serious, but a steamy encounter at a rooftop party turns into a whirlwind summer she could have never imagined: a luxury trip to a tropical island, decadent meals in the glamorous home of a celebrity chef, and a major curator who wants to launch her art career.
Feyi has even started dating the perfect guy, but their new relationship might be sabotaged before it has a chance by the dangerous thrill she feels towards the one person in the house who is off-limits. This new life she asked for just got a lot more complicated, and Feyi must begin her search for real answers. Who is she ready to become? Can she release her past and honor her grief while still embracing her future? And, of course, there’s the biggest question of all—how far is she willing to go for a second chance at love? In this novel, Akwaeke Emezi’s vivid writing takes readers into a world of healing, and the constant bravery of choosing love against all odds.
Transcendent Kingdom
AUTHOR: Yaa Gyasi
GENRE: FICTION
In Transcendent Kingdom, we meet Gifty, a fifth-year candidate in neuroscience at Stanford School of Medicine studying reward-seeking behavior in mice and the neural circuits of depression and addiction. Her brother, Nana, was a gifted high school athlete who died of a heroin overdose after a knee injury left him hooked on OxyContin. Her suicidal mother is living in her bed. Gifty is determined to discover the scientific basis for the suffering she sees all around her.
But even as she turns to the hard sciences to unlock the mystery of her family’s loss, she finds herself hungering for her childhood faith and grappling with the evangelical church in which she was raised, whose promise of salvation remains as tantalizing as it is elusive. Transcendent Kingdom is a deeply moving portrait of a family of Ghanaian immigrants ravaged by depression and addiction and grief. This book is a novel about faith, science, religion, love.
MANCHESTER HAPPENED
AUTHORS: JENNIFER NANSUBUGA MAKUMBI
GENRE: FICTION
Manchester Happened contains twelve collections of short stories about Ugandans who journey to England, specifically Manchester, for a better life. The collection has two sections: the first section is about the lives of those who decided to leave, and the second section is about characters who decided to visit Uganda after spending a significant amount of time in the UK. Weaving between Manchester and Kampala, this collection is for anyone who has ever wondered what it means to truly belong.
THE SEX LIVES OF AFRICAN WOMEN: SELF-DISCOVERY, FREEDOM, AND HEALING
AUTHOR: NANA DARKOA SEKYIAMAH
GENRE: NON-FICTION
Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah has spent decades talking openly and intimately to African women around the world about sex. For this book she spoke to over thirty African women across the globe while chronicling her own journey toward sexual freedom.
We meet Yami, a pansexual Canadian of Malawian heritage, who describes negotiating the line between family dynamics and sexuality. There’s Esther, a cisgendered hetero woman studying in America by way of Cameroon and Kenya, who talks of how a childhood rape has made her rebellious and estranged from her missionary parents. And Tsitsi, an HIV-positive Zimbabwean woman who is raising a healthy, HIV-free baby.
Across a queer community in Egypt, polyamorous life in Senegal, and a reflection on the intersection of religion and pleasure in Cameroon, Sekyiamah explores the many layers of love and desire, its expression, and how it forms who we are.
In these confessional pages, women control their own bodies and pleasure and assert their sexual power. Capturing the rich tapestry of sex positivity, The Sex Lives of African Women is a book that celebrates the liberation, individuality, and joy of African women’s multifaceted sexuality.