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Looking to start or join a book club? Welcome! We're a book club networking site with listings for local groups, author events, and phone chats. View map of book clubs.
You'll note in our database that a number of listings are for 'reader's circles.' These are a new kind of book group where people attend with whatever they're reading. The only structure is if participants decide to have an 'optional book.' Otherwise, everyone just brings their own books, articles, magazines, and conversation goes from there. The idea is to loosen the usual format so participants can select their own reading and attend even if they're still in the middle of a book. Conversation inevitably covers the books brought and many other subjects as well.
Reader's Circle seeks to renew the spirit of dialogue that animated the coffeehouses of early modern England and the salons of Enlightenment France. Franklin's Junto and the Lyceums of the 19th century also suggest the tone of American life we hope to facilitate.
Unlike some .org’s, which may in fact be for-profit businesses, Reader’s Circle is the real thing. All donations are used to support our mission: to build an inclusive community, the reading public brought together as a body instead of existing merely as an abstraction.
Each year Reader's Circle serves 200,000 inquires for local book clubs in 5 countries. Top cities include: New York City, London, Chicago, Seattle, Los Angeles, Washington, DC, Philadelphia, San Francisco, San Diego, Boston, Brooklyn, Portland, Cambridge, Minneapolis, Arlington, Houston, Austin, San Jose, Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, and Phoenix.
Authors in blue available for phone chats
Additional recommendations in black
![]() | The Stars Move StillAndy Regan What happens when a cold calculating individual chooses to punish the most vulnerable in the community for misplaced revenge? In May 1927 a quiet town in Michigan suffers the most traumatic of days as its school becomes the target. Based on the true events of the... |
![]() | Black EarthTimothy Snyder In this epic history of extermination and survival, Timothy Snyder presents a new explanation of the great atrocity of the twentieth century, and reveals the risks that we face in the twenty-first. Based on new sources from eastern Europe and forgotten testimonies from Jewish survivors... |
![]() | The Curse of SacerdozioGlen Aaron It seemed like a great honor. I was the first Jicarilla Apache to graduate Harvard Law School. Then, I was selected from many applicants to clerk for Supreme Court Justice Anton Sacerdozio. The judge did not actually select the clerkship candidates. The court... |
![]() | AlienationRahel Jaeggi The Hegelian-Marxist idea of alienation fell out of favor after the postmetaphysical rejection of humanism and essentialist views of human nature. Jaeggi draws on the Hegelian philosophical tradition, phenomenological analyses grounded in modern conceptions of agency, and recent... |
![]() | What Matters MostHelen Bea Kirk Meagan Morris has lost everything. Her family is dead, and all that remains of them, all that was endowed to her, has been stolen.Desperate to retrieve her legacy, Meagan disguises herself and attempts to rob King of her grandmother’s pearls at gunpoint. When Officer Dell arrives at the scene, King doesn’t... |
![]() | Karl MarxGareth Stedman Jones As the 19th century unfolded, its inhabitants had to come to terms with an unparalleled range of economic, political, religious and intellectual challenges. Distances shrank, new towns sprang up, and inventions transformed the industrial landscape. In the aftermath of Waterloo, a European... |
![]() | The Taste of AirGail Cleare A simple phone call disrupts Nell Williams's well-ordered life. Her mother, Mary, is in a hospital in Vermont. But her mother is supposed to be safely tucked away in an assisted-living facility in Massachusetts, so Nell can't fathom why she would be so far from home. After notifying her sister, Bridget, Nell... |
![]() | Faith as an OptionHans Joas Many people these days regard religion as outdated and are unable to understand how believers can intellectually justify their faith. Nonbelievers have long assumed that progress in technology and the sciences renders religion irrelevant. Believers, in contrast, see religion as vital to... |
![]() | Marion HatleyBeth Castrodale To escape a big-city scandal, a Depression-era lingerie seamstress flees to the countryside, where she hopes to live and work in peace. Instead, she finds herself unraveling uncomfortable secrets about herself and those closest to her. In February of 1931, Marion Hatley steps off... |
![]() | The Fire Next TimeJames Baldwin At once an evocation of Baldwin's early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of racial injustice, this book is an intensely personal and provocative document. It consists of two "letters," written on the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, exhorting Americans to attack the legacy of racism... |
![]() | Letters from the OutsGary Delanoeye First there was Checking in at the Crowbar Hotel and readers were introduced to Harly, Rage, the hookers, and Sammy – characters that make the Crowbar Hotel (a juvenile detention facility) buzz with life, intrigue, pathos, and humor. The "next novel" is here: Letters from the Outs... |
![]() | The Idea of SocialismAxel Honneth The idea of socialism has given normative grounding and orientation to the outrage over capitalism for more than 150 years, and yet today it seems to have lost much of its appeal. Despite growing discontent, many would hesitate to invoke socialism when it comes to envisioning life... |
![]() | Sapphire PavilionDavid E. Grogan Steve Stilwell’s former Navy JAG Corps buddy Ric Stokes has been jailed for possession of heroin in Vietnam. He was found in the same room with his traveling companion Ryan Eversall, dead of an overdose and in the company of a prostitute. Steve knows his friend is a straight arrow. Was... |
![]() | The New Jim CrowMichelle Alexander Once in a great while a book comes along that changes the way we see the world and helps to fuel a nationwide social movement. The New Jim Crow is such a book. Praised by Harvard Law professor Lani Guinier as "brave and bold," this book directly challenges the notion that the election of Barack... |
![]() | Miracle ManWilliam R. Leibowitz Miracle Man by William R. Leibowitz has been unanimously heralded by reviewers and readers. One of Amazon’s Top 100 Novels of 2015, a New York Times Best Seller, an Amazon Top 10 Best Selling Thriller, and winner of a national Best Thriller award, the enthusiasm for this unique novel has been... |
![]() | Fuel on the FireGreg Muttitt The departure of the last U.S. troops from Iraq at the end of 2011 left a broken country and a host of unanswered questions. What was the war really about? Why did the occupation drag on for nearly nine years, while most Iraqis, Britons, and Americans desperately wanted it to end? And why did the... |
![]() | Just How Long Is a LifetimeD.A. Sciortino When Luisa, a young girl in nineteenth-century Sicily, falls in love with Giovanni, she is destined for heartache. Luisa’s father has plans for her – to marry the heir of the vineyard that both Luisa’s and Giovanni’s families work on. Avoiding trouble, Giovanni’s father... |
![]() | A New View of SocietyRobert Owen In his early works Owen argues that, since individuals are wholly formed by their environment, education is the crucial factor in transforming them. Later he came to adopt far more radical positions, proposing nothing less than 'the emancipation of mankind' and the creation of a 'new... |
![]() | Enter the HurtJim Eddison In August 1951 three small children are cast adrift on a stormy sea when they are admitted into Care in the large Industrial city of Leeds in Northern England. Their father is unable to care for them after their mother is admitted to hospital while pregnant with her fourth child. While in the hospital... |
![]() | Capital in the Twenty-First CenturyThomas Piketty What are the grand dynamics that drive the accumulation and distribution of capital? Questions about the long-term evolution of inequality, the concentration of wealth, and the prospects for economic growth lie at the heart of political economy. But... |
![]() | A Road Ran Through ItTony Kreit ‘A Road Ran Through It’, is my story. It is a young man’s story. It takes us to times of rebellion against my enforced induction into the Royal Air Force in 1960. It is also about the realisation that some important actions taken against me by the military authorities, at... |
![]() | America's War for the Greater Middle EastAndrew J. Bacevich From the end of World War II until 1980, virtually no American soldiers were killed in action while serving in the Greater Middle East. Since 1990, virtually no American soldiers have been killed in action anywhere else. What caused this shift? Bacevich, one of the... |
![]() | Arkansas SummerAnne Moose Arkansas Summer is a powerful novel about love and racial terror in the Jim Crow South. It's 1955, and Catherine has joined her father in Arkansas after her grandfather's death. She's a California college student, and it's her first visit to her grandparents' farm since the summer she was... |
![]() | The Nordic Theory of EverythingAnu Partanen A Finnish journalist, now a naturalized American citizen, asks Americans to draw on elements of the Nordic way of life to nurture a fairer, happier, more secure, and less stressful society for themselves and their children. Moving to America in 2008, Anu Partanen quickly went... |
![]() | Life with My Idiot FamilyKathy and Gary Picard Seven-year-old little girls love their daddy. Kathy was no exception, so when her daddy started paying "special" attention to her, she felt "special" in turn. Her daddy loved her... what could be better than that? Few betrayals run as deep as the betrayal of being sexually... |
![]() | Reconstruction: Unfinished RevolutionEric Foner Foner chronicles the way in which Americans responded to the unprecedented changes unleashed by the war and the end of slavery, addressing the ways in which the emancipated slaves' quest for economic autonomy and equal citizenship shaped the political agenda of... |
![]() | The Cat on Salter's PointAnita Dixon Thomas The Cat on Salter’s Point is a story of a young social worker, Rachel Thomas, who embarks on a crazy adventure when she accepts her first social worker job at Salter’s Point Regional Hospital. It is a psychiatric facility outside of Seattle. On her first day, a suicidal... |
![]() | My Struggle: Book 4Karl Ove Knausgaard My Struggle: Book 4 finds an eighteen-year-old Karl Ove Knausgaard in a tiny fishing village in northern Norway, where he has been hired as a schoolteacher and is living on his own for the first time. When the ferocious winter takes hold, Karl Ove – in the company of the Håfjord locals, a warm and... |
![]() | Tough Karma: A Race Against TimeLaura Simmons From the Author of Little Bits of Karma comes a chilling new tale of loss, tragedy, psychic warfare, and eternal love. Amber Macklin's world is cruelly shattered when she loses her baby girl three months after her husband's sudden death. Her cousin, Bryce, comes to her... |
![]() | The Shock of the AnthropoceneChristophe Bonneuil & Jean-Baptiste Fressoz The Earth has entered a new epoch: the Anthropocene. What we are facing is not only an environmental crisis, but a geological revolution of human origin. In two centuries, our planet has tipped into a state unknown for millions of years. How did we get to this point? Refuting... |
![]() | Rubbing StonesNancy Burkey Dr. Jane O'Neil, an American psychiatry professor, books her family on a rafting trip down the Zambezi River, seeking redirection and reconnection with her troubled son. Katura Masaku, a smart but impulsive teenager in Botswana, sneaks across the border to Victoria Falls, naively confident... |
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