Whether you're wondering if a book might be right for your book club, or you just want to see what others have said about a book you've read, BookBrowse's Book Club discussions are an excellent resource. In 2019, our members exchanged views on 14 different books.

What sets BookBrowse's Book Club apart from others online is the quality of the discussion. Participants come together with the intent of sharing and learning from each other, just as they would if they were physically in the same room, and by reading through and, if you wish, taking part in these discussions, you can gain a good sense of whether a book is going to be a good fit for your book club.

Most of these discussions are now closed for new posts, but you can browse them all to find out what people thought of each book and discover which topics generated the most lively debate.

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Looking to start 2020 off right with some excellent book club selections? We're here to help. All of these books received positive reviews from BookBrowse and are coming out in paperback in the first three months of 2020, and all but one has a reading guide. So if your New Year's resolution is to be more prepared (or if this was your resolution last year, but you never got around to it), take this opportunity to start planning ahead for a great year of lively book club discussions!

There are options for readers of all tastes and interests, from historical fiction to novels examining social issues, to nonfiction investigative reporting. Many of these books involve complex female characters, from Madeline Miller's Circe to the Korean seafood divers in Lisa See's The Island of Sea Women. Both Alan Brennert's Daughter of Moloka'i and Myla Goldberg's Feast Your Eyes examine mother-daughter relationships, though the authors approach their subject from vastly different angles. Sarah Bird's Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen is a fictionalized version of the life of an American heroine with grit and heart in equal measures. These and more to explore below!

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This month we recommend half a dozen historical fiction selections from across the ages, all of which are recently released in paperback. It's an eclectic mix of critically-acclaimed novels covering a diverse range of time and subject matter. What does the past have to teach us about the present? What's changed and what's stayed the same? How do we relate to characters from such different times and places than ourselves? There are so many pressing questions to be explored within the pages of a good historical novel. Tiffany Blues, The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek and American Princess feature adventurous and unconventional female protagonists living in the early 20th century, while Washington Black, The Winter Soldier, and Unsheltered consider the social and political issues of the 19th to early 20th.

If you click to "more about the book", you'll find plentiful information to help you decide which of these books are right for you and/or your book club; including reviews, "beyond the book" articles, excerpts, reading guides, and more.

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Who doesn't love being on the cutting edge and discovering the next big thing? This month, we recommend debut novels by authors who are rising stars in the literary world and are already creating quite a buzz, snagging coveted literary awards and nominations, and spots on "best of" lists. All six books have recently been released in paperback and are recommended for book club discussion--and come with discussion guides.

Tommy Orange's There There (a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize) and Caleb Johnson's Treeborne both explore the intersections of place, history and personal identity. Zeyn Joukhadar's The Map of Salt and Stars offers an emotionally resonant look at the Syrian refugee crisis, while Fatima Farheen Mirza's A Place for Us (a New York Times bestseller) is centered around an Indian family navigating cultural and religious differences. Shobha Rao's Girls Burn Brighter presents an inspiring and defiant narrator who summons the courage to flout familial and societal expectations. Similarly, Leah Franqui's America for Beginners narrates an Indian mother's transformation as she visits the United States in search of her son.

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It's summer, a time when you might be looking for a captivating read to bring along on vacation. If your book club is seeking thrills, or looking to solve a mystery; look no further than these six books, all of which are recently released in paperback with solid reviews and helpful guides that should spark lively discussions in your group.

If you have a penchant for unreliable narrators, consider Alice Feeney's Sometimes I Lie or Greer Hendricks' The Wife Between Us, both of which delightfully upend expectations and keep the reader guessing to the end. Ali Land's Good Me, Bad Me and Christopher J. Yates' Grist Mill Road explore the psychological implications of witnessing or experiencing a terrible crime secondhand. Mariah Fredericks' A Death of No Importance is a historical mystery set in the early 20th century for fans of period pieces, and Jane Harper's Force of Nature features a sharp-minded federal agent tracking a killer in the Australian Outback (and made BookBrowse's 2018 Best Books list).

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Choosing only a handful of books to read about the Caribbean is like holding a small mound of snow in your palms. You know each snowflake is unique and you also know that you've only touched a fraction of what is falling from the sky. And while you may be hard pressed to find snow on any part of the Caribbean, you can easily discover countless stories about these 7,000 islands, and all of them are different. Still, just as it is magical to hold those few snowflakes, it is also magical to read any of the half dozen books we've culled together here.

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